Feminism, blessing or disaster?

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Thank heavens I have a Thai lassie!

Just to add two more cents - equality is a good aim, some amount of specialization though we may not want to remove (such as that there are female dominated fields as well as male dominated fields - I do think that's healthy to an extent in that it takes advantage of natural skill sets that differ across gender, the only one of these of course that I sometimes worry about is teaching, guys have a difficulty growing into 'men' without good role models).

While both genders should be taken with equal wait and value/consequentiality as human beings, I do think its a problem lets say when a well known professor at Harvard is fired over offending some in the audience for saying in so many words in an address that men and women are different. The problem - breaking from reality, when philosophical leaders of a culture feel like they need to overstear their policy and claims into non-reality for the sake of rapid or more impressed corrections - the people they're trying to serve in quickening the pace of that movement may or may not be able to see between the lines. When they can, they're likely annoyed by it, when they can't and lets say with certain brands of feminism buy the idea that gender is completely cultured and that men could play with dolls and women with trucks and simply program children out of gender identity - they're dangerously naive views and what that ultimately does for someone who believes it, they're tactics in dealing with the world around them are rendered ineffective because what they think is reality - isn't. Thus, either gender, if they don't get what's going on they're apt to slip and fall quite hard.

Ultimately feminism seeking equality was a good thing - though on some larger cultural angles its fallen on a lot of epistemic problems when its made attempts to completely sanitize the concept of gender or claim that there is absolutely no inherent differences between the sexes. I'm hoping that given another ten or twenty years when the 1960's are that much farther back and the environment of equality is much more matured - that this kind of thing will stabilize out on its own.

Lol, I always thought that aspies, of all people, are the ones one would expect to be especially good with rigorous definitions and logical constructions based on those definitions. But what do we see here? Almost three pages of discussion, yet the subject of discussion is not even defined! What exactly do you mean under feminism? Whom exactly do you call feminists? It appears that you are all talking about different things, no wonder that discussion is going nowhere!

First of all, feminism has not, and never had, anything to do with equality. The movement for equality is called egalitarism. Feminism, as the name implies, is movement for women and in interests of women. Otherwise, there would be no reason why it wouldn't be called masculism, for example. I find the definition found in wikipedia most appropriate:

The definition for th word feminism I got is...A doctrine that advocates equal rights for women. and The movement aimed at equal rights for women.

I agree I don't think women should get special priveledges but what special priveledges are we talking about here?

At a time women were not allowed the same rights as men so it sometimes confuses me whenever I hear women getting special treatment or having it her way. What is this special treatment you guys talk about?

"I've half a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it." - Groucho Marx


The term "feminism" is such a broad umbrella right now, it's difficult to talk about it rationally without devoting an entire book to clarifications and special cases.

I think that since the 1960's, the movement was infiltrated by communists who were using it as a wedge to divide nations using such notions as "all sex is rape", "all men are rapists", "marriage is slavery", "happiness can only be gained by acting like the worst men", "the sexes are not equal, but rather identical", "past problems can only be repaired by gaining as many special privileges as possible", and so on. There's a point where what gets called "feminism" stops helping women, and starts doing them a disservice by creating more damage than it repairs.

It's not just feminism, either - I can see the same sort of problems come up from time to time on WrongPlanet, but substitute aspies for women: "all social interaction is coercion", "all NT's are sadistic members of a mob or swarm", "relationships are slavery", "happiness can only be gained by acting like the worst NT's", "we need special accommodations and privileges just to get by in school and work", and so on. I don't think this sort of over-reaction is healthy for aspies any more than it has been healthy for women, and I can see a time coming where, if aspie activism is carried out to its logical conclusion, it will only deepen and fortify the gulfs between "us" and "them", and actually weaken our credibility as individuals worthy of being treated as equals.

They did good with equality, now men and women are pretty much equal nowadays, but it seems this era's feminists are the radical ones that go beyond the equal rights feminism and into the realms of saying women are actually superior and all that. I'm female and the modern feminists are annoying in my opinion, I like the old ones though, they're the ones that actually made a difference where as the 21st centrury feminists are just wasting their time since inequality in the western world has pretty much passed. What they should be focusing on now is middle eastern/asian countries where men are aloud to beat their wives just because it's what the kuran told them.
And there still are some women now that do want to look after the kids at home but the radical feminists throw b***h fits about it.

Ack, this is painful. But I'm not going to waste my time arguing with myopic babies.

Just keep this in mind: Feminism is a social movement, not a best friend or a mother. It does not have to say nice things to you or nurture your interests. It is only there to liberate and give voice to women. Just like the gay rights movement is to gays and the civil rights movement is to racial minorities... feminism is to women. I'm male-identified and I can see and accept that without feeling threatened.

Feminists are amazing. I'm proud to be one.