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Does the internet even understand feminism?
- Thread starter Boss Doggie
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DirtyDeedsDoneDirtCheap
Banned
Isn't feminissm centered around gender roles and sexuality, though? What the hell does religion and ethnicity have to do with it? That's more equality in general. I don't think there's a single person in that picture that knows what is feminism.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Intersectional feminism includes all marginalized groups.
DirtyDeedsDoneDirtCheap
Banned
Sound to me like they need a new name that doesn't make people think they are going to be about women only, but what the hell do I know.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
^ yeah that's usually how this conversation goes.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Renaming your movement to placate your stubborn, purposely ignorant detractors is following a red herring. After that, it'll be something else women need to change. Which shows why feminism is necessary.
Devolution
Member
Let's rename everything egalitarianism but then when we decide we need to focus on the plight of a specific group, I wonder what we'll call it.
ThroneZwei
Banned
Well, the internet is inherently sexist isn't it? Just a bunch of tubes sticking from one end to another, letting that data flow on through.
Racism. Or sexism.
Arkos
Nose how to spell and rede to
I KEEP seeing this thread and thinking it says "fetishism" and I'm like Um ya I think the internet is on top of that
As for the OPs question, a lot of people are idiots, a lot of people just aren't familiar with actual feminist theories, or only with some of the better known feminist theories, and a lot of people think that "feminism" as in lol chicks doing stuff is all that feminism actually is. I dunno, wanted to include an attempt though
As for the OPs question, a lot of people are idiots, a lot of people just aren't familiar with actual feminist theories, or only with some of the better known feminist theories, and a lot of people think that "feminism" as in lol chicks doing stuff is all that feminism actually is. I dunno, wanted to include an attempt though
Estocolmo
Member
Why i am not a feminist, thanks to youtube, even though I live in the holy land of feminism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y5fgYvGAts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y5fgYvGAts
Which isn't to say that separate movements for other marginalized groups aren't important or necessary; it is simply to say that someone who subscribes to intersectional feminism should be expected to support other causes as well.
It's not just a single documentary; the entire branch of masculinities studies grew out of the intellectual work of feminists, and this documentary (appears to be) borrow heavily from that work. I think the documentary represents a larger trend, not just an anomaly.
To be sure, feminism is primarily about achieving equality for women. But feminists aren't arguing, "Well, we spend just as much time talking about the issues that men face so men don't need to do anything about the issues that face them." This misreading probably stems from the fact that feminists are often seen arguing against men's rights groups. But in those cases, it isn't the men's rights advocacy that's the problem; it's the anti-feminist and misogynistic form it takes that is the problem.
When I say that feminism addresses the issues that men face, I mean that it does so implicitly. I believe that most - though not all - of the issues that men face are a result of the male gender role. Insofar as feminism is about the deconstruction of prescribed gender roles, feminism supports men in that respect. But that doesn't mean that it isn't important to make that implicit support explicit - which is precisely what that documentary does, or what this book does, or what, say, any of the male feminists participating in this topic are attempting to do.
It is hard to believe, but there have been multiple studies over several decades confirming numbers in that range:
- The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISCVS): 2010 Summary Report, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010 12.3%
- Rape in America: A Report to the Nation. Arlington, VA: National Center for Victims of Crime and Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, 1992. 13%
- Drug-Facilitated, Incapacitated and Forcible Rape: A National Study. Charleston, SC: Medical University of South Carolina, 2007. 16.1%
- Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Rape Victimization: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, Washington, DC: US Department of Justice 14.8%
(... I think one of those links might not work, but probably you could find it by searching for the title? Sorry!)
Boss Doggie
all my loli wolf companions are so moe
tumblr seems to be the breeding place of all things stupid though. Makes you wonder if the extremists and the chauvinists waging war at each other would make a nice scene.
On a related note, I also blame the "reaction" of media in regards to "solving" their sexist problems. Simply having a female character to placate the woes of not having a female character is a bad move.
On a related note, I also blame the "reaction" of media in regards to "solving" their sexist problems. Simply having a female character to placate the woes of not having a female character is a bad move.
Devolution
Member
This youtube is racist and fucking disgusting.
Boss Doggie
all my loli wolf companions are so moe
Yeah no, that's not so different from some people claiming to be charity groups exploiting people.
freenudemacusers
Member
this... is some video alright. Right into straight up victim blaming in under three minutes.
shadowsdarknes
Member
Perhaps my own experience is tainted, but a reboot for the movement to me actually might make sense. There are far too many people who roll their eyes at feminism when it is a perfectly valid line of thinking. I'm not so sure how its going to get better.
freenudemacusers
Member
Has this ever happened to you? I open doors for everyone, and have done so for a decade, and have never once had anyone react negatively to the action.
Thankfully, no. It has happened to a close friend of mine though. I think certain feminists are really against any form of chivalry.
Why would anyone be against strangers doing extra little favors for them?
Why should they?
If you want people to understand your movement it isn't really on them to go out of their way to research it for themselves with no prior reason other than for the sake of knowledge, it's up to you to effectively facilitate interest in them in said subject so they actually have the desire to do so.
There are people on the internet who are completely ignorant of many things. You can't simply expect them to learn about every single one of them on their own, or even to learn about the thing you want them to learn about over all of the other things they don't understand.
freenudemacusers
Member
Some people are assholes? Not sure what that has to do with feminism.
Read what I said. The whole chivalry thing.
Devolution
Member
Let's use radfems as some sort of legitimate reason to disregard an entire gender equality movement.
Vermillion
Banned
Just gender-based favors, usually.
freenudemacusers asks me what that has to do with feminism. I respond by mentioning the symptoms of radical feminism, yes. Whether anyone likes it or not, they are a subset of feminism. And where did I disregard feminism as a whole? My problem is only with the radicals, and they are such an extreme minority that it honestly makes little to no difference what I think.
User 100115
Banned
I am just wondering why one instance you've heard second hand of someone being upset when a door was held open for them means feminism is like that?
That's like me saying 'A friend of mine knew a guy who didn't brush his teeth, so guys don't brush their teeth.'
Edit: As for saying you were talking about radfem, well, you made a general statement in a thread about feminism. People are going to question that.
I said "certain feminists" in my original post, not "feminists." I was clearly not generalizing. And I apologize if me talking about radfems = off-topic here.
Suggestions that the name "feminism" no longer adequately encompasses the aims of the movement or the people it seeks to empower are far from being the exclusive purview of detractors. bell hooks in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center goes so far as to encourage the reader to refrain from self-identifying as a feminist on the grounds that she felt that the movement was excessively reactionary and exclusionary to both women of color as well as men. Similar rationale brought the term "womanism" into usage as an alternative to feminist identification for black women who felt that the feminist movement was either benignly or actively indifferent to their needs. The earlier schism into feminist and radical feminist camps occurred because those identifying as radical feminists felt that mainstream feminist movements were excessively willing to operate within existing power structures and so dissociated themselves by altering the name with which they identified.
Questioning of the terminology adopted by the movement was actually an exceedingly common refrain of works in the early 1980's that largely formed the foundation of intersectional feminism. There's really no good reason to presume stubbornness or willful ignorance when someone suggests that intersectional feminism is, as a philosophical framework, ill-served by being cast as a subset of feminism. The idea that a term useful in discussions of gender philosophy is no longer fully serving the purpose for which it was coined isn't even without direct modern precedent: see, for example, the expansion of the concept of patriarchy into the intersectional concept of kyriarchy.
Presumptions of belligerence on this subject tend to be self-fulfilling, and I really don't think they serve any useful purpose.
Boss Doggie
all my loli wolf companions are so moe
While it's fine not to be knowledgeable, at the very least they should get some facts before they engage something.
Should they? It'd be nice. Is it realistic to expect them to? Not so much.
There's nothing wrong with engaging if you don't know anything about the topic (so long as you stick to listening and asking questions).
Devolution
Member
Not so much off topic as their viewpoints and statements are used to brush the rest of us with. Just sucks is all.
Is it on Wikipedia?
But seriously, no, like most topics, it is difficult to find a single source of comprehensive and accurate information about a particular subject, especially for a broad and nuanced one. I'm sure though that if you crawl enough of the Internet for the subject, you'll get close.
But seriously, no, like most topics, it is difficult to find a single source of comprehensive and accurate information about a particular subject, especially for a broad and nuanced one. I'm sure though that if you crawl enough of the Internet for the subject, you'll get close.
I am a man and I consider myself a feminist. I think that, while a lot of progress has been made, we have not reached equality between men and women yet and more work needs to be done.
However, there is a segment of the feminist movement that tends to be dismissive and antagonistic to any man who attempts to bring up societal inequalities men face (such as pressure to repress emotions/appear "manly," lower performance in education, chances of getting child custody in divorce, etc.). These people are just a sometimes vocal minority, but it always just causes some men to get defensive and reject feminism, as they associate it with this minority that's antagonizing them and telling them their problems aren't really problems (note: I'm not accusing anyone in this thread of that).
On the internet in particular, I would suspect there are a good amount of male nerds who have been disadvantaged in life in some form or another because of the expected role men have in society, and when they're told by an antagonistic feminist that society never treats them unfairly, and that they are in fact misogynistic for even thinking so, it entrenches them against the idea of feminism.
Of course, there's also a good amount of men who are just misogynistic assholes and align against feminism for that reason.
However, there is a segment of the feminist movement that tends to be dismissive and antagonistic to any man who attempts to bring up societal inequalities men face (such as pressure to repress emotions/appear "manly," lower performance in education, chances of getting child custody in divorce, etc.). These people are just a sometimes vocal minority, but it always just causes some men to get defensive and reject feminism, as they associate it with this minority that's antagonizing them and telling them their problems aren't really problems (note: I'm not accusing anyone in this thread of that).
On the internet in particular, I would suspect there are a good amount of male nerds who have been disadvantaged in life in some form or another because of the expected role men have in society, and when they're told by an antagonistic feminist that society never treats them unfairly, and that they are in fact misogynistic for even thinking so, it entrenches them against the idea of feminism.
Of course, there's also a good amount of men who are just misogynistic assholes and align against feminism for that reason.
Devolution
Member
I find the opposite to be true. Probably depends more on your region.
Well, I live in a college town in Oklahoma and nobody is willing to talk about it.
Let me rephrase it to: Good luck talking about feminism outside of highly populated cities or cities with a strong academic background. Those two are not exclusive by any means, by the by.
Ixix, excellent post. I don't agree that intersectional feminism is "ill-served by being cast as a subset of feminism," but it's a great post nonetheless. But I do want to point out that in this context - GAF - most criticisms of the name are not coming from that place, but from detractors. When I talk to people who have concerns about the name, it is usually semantic concern that because the name of feminism is "feminism" it cannot be concerned with men or male issues, and that any refusal to change the name to accommodate those concerns represents insincerity when it comes to professed concern for men's issues, which is then used as a reason for rejecting feminism.
I think that's quite different from rejecting the label "feminism" but still subscribing to positions that are recognizably feminist.
I think the conversations are easier to have because people seem more willing to listen and change their minds in "real life" conversations. On GAF I'll have the same conversations with the same people over and over and over and over (I'm even repeating conversations with some people in this topic!) without their seeming to acknowledge that we ever spoke previously or that they've internalized anything I told them previously. I don't tend to have that experience in real life.
That's just my experience, though.
I think that's quite different from rejecting the label "feminism" but still subscribing to positions that are recognizably feminist.
I think the conversations are easier to have because people seem more willing to listen and change their minds in "real life" conversations. On GAF I'll have the same conversations with the same people over and over and over and over (I'm even repeating conversations with some people in this topic!) without their seeming to acknowledge that we ever spoke previously or that they've internalized anything I told them previously. I don't tend to have that experience in real life.
That's just my experience, though.
I'm sure that criticisms of feminism's name come from people who are intractably opposed to the concept and who have no real interest in improving its branding, so to speak. I just don't honestly think that that really matters and that it doesn't matter even if disingenuous objections constitute the majority. I think that the question of whether or not a name coined to denote gender struggles adequately encompasses a philosophy that does not limit its purview exclusively to gender is a good one whether it is being asked in good faith or not. I also think that in the context of an internet discussion forum all conversations are inherently performative, so even if an individual is asking a question with disingenuous intent you're better served responding in good faith for the benefit of the peanut gallery who may very well be entertaining similar questions (on that note: hi lurkers! Love you guys).
I readily call myself a feminist, so I've got zero problems with the name myself. But it's also both logical and readily observable that a movement that calls itself "feminism" and denotes the social structure that it seeks to dismantle "patriarchy" is going to foment some opposition purely on the grounds that these terms are explicitly gendered and positioned overtly in opposition to one another. In the historical function of feminism as a movement for causes such as women's suffrage and emancipation this wasn't no big thing.
It's when you bring intersectionality into the mix and start attempting to explain how modern feminist theory attempts to address and study the systemic issues which men face in their interactions with society and the friction that ethnic, gender, and sexual minorities experience in their interactions with majority culture that legacy terms can start being a hindrance. This is where I personally start feeling far more amenable to the possibility that our current lexical framework is an impediment and where I start feeling particularly sympathetic to bell hooks' stance that identification as a feminist carries connotations beyond bare support of a dictionary definition upholding a philosophy of gender equality.
You can try as you might to explain that patriarchy denotes an extant emergent social structure which proscribes rigidly defined roles based on gender and which does not actually ascribe malefic intent to individual men, but the fact that you need to do so to overcome the immediate response of a man to wonder why your philosophical Death Star is named after his gender is, pragmatically speaking, a significant problem if you're concerned with advancing feminist causes. It's tempting to say that the onus is on them to research the matter and to not take umbrage, but that's really not a reasonable burden to place on someone if your objective is to attain broad-based support for a movement which seeks to dismantle societal assumptions that serve to transform gender into a form of ad hoc destiny.
Which is basically the crux of what I've been getting at: I think there's a divide between feminism as a philosophy and feminism as a political movement, and that the degree to which you prioritize one over the other (or, for that matter, whether you consider the two to be distinct at all) is a major determining factor in your willingness to entertain the notion that the terms coined to conceptualize abstract concepts within a philosophical framework serve as an impediment to effective advocacy of direct action informed by said framework.
This is all more or less what I was driving at when I said that intersectionality was ill-served by being classed as a subset of feminism. Boiling it down to one sentence was a lot easier, though.
storafötter
Member
To be honest even without the Internet people would still misunderstand what feminism encompasses. People found it intimidating in the 19th century as it challenged traditions and hierarchy which are the same reasons why people feel uncomfortable with it.
Of course the Internet is an unfortunate effective tool to send misinformation but then again if you believe anything stupid on the Internet you are at fault. Of course the most radical or fanatical voices within the movement will be heard but you are just a fool to believe that represents such a wide and diverse movement. This has always been a problem for moderates in all types of political or cultural movements before the Internet became common.
It is very likely that people who are very negative to it also have some reservations towards women or women rights/gender equality in general.
Of course the Internet is an unfortunate effective tool to send misinformation but then again if you believe anything stupid on the Internet you are at fault. Of course the most radical or fanatical voices within the movement will be heard but you are just a fool to believe that represents such a wide and diverse movement. This has always been a problem for moderates in all types of political or cultural movements before the Internet became common.
It is very likely that people who are very negative to it also have some reservations towards women or women rights/gender equality in general.
Twitter/blogger feminism is the best. Echo chambers that are just as ridiculous in their obtuse thinking as their frequent, easily reeled in opponents. If the only people you want to converse with are the ones that follow and find you, good luck expanding your knowledge.
And that dang picture at the top of the page. If someone brings up the concept of privilege, I don't bother continuing the conversation. Reminds me of that Razla Aslan video on Fox. Much more patient person than I.
And that dang picture at the top of the page. If someone brings up the concept of privilege, I don't bother continuing the conversation. Reminds me of that Razla Aslan video on Fox. Much more patient person than I.
I think the label is a bigger issue than the actual goals of feminism. Radfems etc. have poisoned the name.
dark_prinny
Banned
Is not possible to understand feminism. Its stupid.
Thanks for being the example.
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