This is an invitation to anyone who labels herself a feminist to tell me specifically what that means to you. As readers know, I often discuss how I don’t like, believe in, or approve of feminism. But there are a number of women in the Disaffected audience, and who I “know” on social media, who identify themselves as feminists. And many of them are interesting people with engaging things to say (I don’t mean that to sound condescending, honest).
Perhaps sometimes it's not sexism women deal with when breaking into a mostly male dominion, but bias against outsiders, which a man would face just the same if he wasn't from the same background as the other men, or had some other noticeable difference.
Sure, there is a bit of casual sexism from some individual men when women do things that are traditionally male. But to call it systemic, or patriarchal -- it seems like we have just lazily adopted this as the default position when the fact is, it's been 30+ years now that women really do have access to everything men do, and can achieve a lot if they adopt the right attitude, display the right aptitude, and make a damn effort.
We should be teaching *all* kids to build confidence, grit and resilience, rather than creating grievance narratives for 50% of them purely based on their sex (and doing the same for racial minorities and whatnot).
We will always see unbalances in outcomes purely because men and women, on average, have different brains and interests and ways of obtaining skills. That's why I resent so many industries putting all this effort into mentoring women, or giving grants only to women, and so on.
Just like affirmative action will benefit racial minorities from privileged backgrounds who are already competing in a fair playing field --- while discriminating overtly against whites, regardless of background -- these female-focused initiatives benefit the women who already have access to the roles and positions they want -- while overtly discriminating against males. It's just ethically wrong.
Hear, hear! I do consider myself a radical feminist and I do call myself one, but all of this is SPOT ON. This is why I'm a radfem- I want to take this movement back to its roots.
Nailed it. Not a feminist, but plenty of men thinking they can be women are. Nauseating. What is feminism now? I don't hate men and I am not liking how many are treated in society being decent masculine men..like my husband.
I think that today’s feminism is the freakish love-child of Andrea Dworkin and Helen Gurley Brown. It’s totally weird and creepy, like almost everything espoused by the woke.
Feminism to me is simply allowing women to self determine.
I don’t believe men have a natural desire to subjugate women. I think there are shitty people who like being shitty, and they tend to be shitty to whoever they can get away with, depending on context. Everybody kicks downward, and women are everywhere. I think it’s just a sad state of affairs, not a plot.
We see very quickly the problem we're in with the term "feminism." Of course, obviously, I agree with you that women should be able to self-determine.
But you see, as clearly as I see, that there are many other women, all of whom, like you, call themselves "feminists," who DO believe the extreme things I noted above.
This is not my fault, and it's not men's fault. This is a communication problem.
I’m torn, at this point. I honestly never really thought feminism needed to exist as some complicated “theory” (what are they theorizing? How do they test? It’s not a science; it’s literature). Classes about it should have been history classes, end of. All the “Girl Power” stuff always bothered me too. The point was equality, not overt promotion, and some of it was just mean.
Did you see the Ponerology podcast about the passive-parasitic psychopaths? That’s who I think has effectively taken over the left, as well as groups for LGB, women, and POC (“We’re coming for your children! LOL”). Didn’t Burlington have some initiative to bring Yoga to black people?
These people are effectively NPCs that rely on us lucid players to give them boundaries. Lately we haven’t been allowed to do that, so they’re running wild. It seems to be becoming more and more clear that all of us (or as many as will realistically do it) have to stop being quite so cowardly, undisciplined and selfish. All of us trying to tilt shit slightly in our own favor leads to opening for legit dangerous people to take over. That’s how corruption works. We have to push back, every single time.
I should have pushed back against the corruption of feminism back then, when I saw/heard it. I didn’t really see a way to do it. I will now, though.
Is it weird that I’m excited to watch the backlash? Oh Lawd, it’s gonna be righteous.
"...simply allowing women to self determine" assumes that men have been allowed to self-determine and women weren't until...feminism.
But for the most part men were no more allowed to "self-determine" than women and besides, what does "self-determine" even mean, anyway, when throughout most of human history we were all encumbered by variables and dependencies and responsibilities that limited our capacity to "self-determine."
Meanwhile, men have been lying dead on battlefields because they "self-determined" it. Meanwhile, women now "determine" whether to have children or not (while rending their garments over universities closing because women aren't making enough humans to fill the seats thanks to "self-determining."
May I ask you why you felt you needed to interject all that?
I’m honestly curious. Are you under the impression that I don’t realize that men have had a hard time of it too? Do guys like you really think women aren’t aware of all your problems? Jesus, you never stop talking about it and making it our problem. Then you wonder why we roll our eyes at you. You sound like a little boy who is mad his sister got a present on her birthday.
Edit: Also, fuck you, dude. If men hadn’t used the internet since its inception to teach each other how to use and abuse women, maybe we’d be more interested in pairing up and having kids. I can tell you one thing: any population crisis we are currently having is 100% ON MEN. The market said NO to abuse. Deal with it, or become a better person.
Edit the second: Here we see just how easy it is for tempers to rise. I’m not apologizing, just pointing it out.
It's hilarious and so indicative of the twisted, DARVO "feminist" perspective that you called me a "dude," bitch. Feminism is not "simply" anything. It's a knot of deception -- not just for women, but also for men. It's created utter chaos -- for men and women. Period. "Simply self-determination." THAT'S DUMB - your nasty reaction just proves my point.
I literally -only- want equal rights and access. That's it. Choice. Justice. Apart from that I think we all need to work on ourselves to keep overcoming the times where women were thought of as less than, and that's on each and every family to teach their kids (of both sexes!).
The rest I don't buy. We've already come quite far in the west and I'm grateful for it. Let's maybe start with protecting the progress made? 😅💙
To continue my previous post, I was too busy raising two kids when not even out of my teens and barely an adult myself. Although it was a real struggle, I now look at it as a blessing because I never adopted the hatred of men that seems to have evolved from the movement and this left me open to having a wonderful second marriage to a quintessential gentleman who still opens the door for me and stands up while removing his hat when a lady enters the room. I truly feel sorry for a lot of these women who will not know the love of a good man.
Lack of love is not proportionately related to the strength of feminist convictions. I often hear that single women are single because they are feminists and hate men. It's time to drop that stereotype. I doubt that Ann Coulter or Heather McDonald are not married because they hate men. Conversely, many so-called feminist activists are comfortably married to well-heeled men.
I don't call myself a feminist anymore, because the word has become so problematic. Say you're a feminist, and you're willingly or not attaching yourself to the major "women's" organizations like NOW, UN Women (both of whom have made a mockery of womanhood) and/or associating yourself with the men-hating movement (#MeToo) – just all kinds of nuttery that I don't want to touch with a ten-ft stick. When I did call myself a feminist, I was signing up for equal $ for same work, equal access to education etc., but I was quickly told I was no feminist, because I didn't consider it unreasonable that $ and effort be spent on training women for jobs for which they don't f.ex. have physical strength. I don't think, f.ex. that women should be allowed to train for all divisions of the military, that they should be in combat (not that we have a military in Iceland, but I've lived in the US for a long time. As an aside, women in Icelandic govmt have made a complete mess of Icelandic society...). There may very well be extraordinarily strong women who can and want to do combat and partake in extreme military operations, but they are decidedly few, and because of that these military divisions are mostly male; adding the odd woman to the mix is bad for morale, and in the military morale doesn't mean the vibe around the water cooler, it's a matter of life and death. I don't think women have proved themselves to be good leaders; because of their psychological makeup they're prone to people-pleasing and making irresponsible decisions based on feelings, not logic; they're more manipulative than men. I think women are largely responsible for allowing the horrible woke philosophy destroy Western institutions; it's mostly women who are pushing the evil "gender/trans" agenda at the federal and state (municipal, schools, county) level.
I've read some articles that label feminism as first wave (70s), second wave (80s/90s) and third wave (where we are today). Some women very clearly label themselves as being at the wave where their feminist evolution "stopped." To have stopped your evolution is considered a bad thing, of course. I was second-wave, heavily influenced by first-wave, and never went any further.
My feminism was defined by reproductive choice concerns, and cemented in 1992 with the Supreme Court case, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. I grew up in NYC and was genuinely worried that myself and my overly hard-working friends – all only able to find crappy relationships because NYC was an early testing ground for today’s painfully casual dating scene – would see their lives come to a complete standstill due to not being able to access an abortion if they needed it.
I have passed through all the “men bad” phases, I admit it. They peaked in intensity, and then I realized they provided me no benefit to hold anymore. I still do get deeply annoyed (even infuriated) when men talk “at” me, but see this as another type of problem, and not the patriarchy.
I am a self-sufficient career woman who is not a feminist. Where I come from, it's a bad word, laughable at best. I agree with your two points and wouldn't go beyond that in my description of women's rights. Currently, Julie Bindel is doing a lot of taking about the ways in which feminism has been mislabeled, but I can't identify with her second-wave lesbian feminism either. But here is something with which you, Josh, might disagree. I think the Men's Rights movement, led by the likes of Tom Golden and Janice Fiamengo, also makes a lot of exaggerated claims about men's misery. Fiamengo recently said, for example, that we discriminate against young men by not considering the mental stress that makes them want to transition. Conversely, she has argued, Abigail Schreier's focus on transitioning teen girls indicates female supremacy. Such claims, as well as my own experience (the difficulty of being taken seriously as a female scholar or professor until well into visible middle age), convince me that the "poor me" narratives should not be promulgated either by men or by women in the West. Everyone has rights up the wazoo.
If you think that women are equal to men, and should be treated as such in law and banking, and in professions, those are historic feminist victories. I can understand just seeing that as normal life now, but I think that the recognition is important.
Feminism, for me, is the acknowledgement that women's bodies are geared towards self-sacrifice due to our role in reproduction. This makes us potentially vulnerable to men, not just because they can leave us pregnant and therefore even more vulnerable, but because they are bigger and stronger. That's why my feminism is radical - our bodies are the root. Secondary to that, feminism is about female liberation. We can be fully participating adults *in spite of* the ways our bodies make us vulnerable. This has nothing to do with men, who were also born into a patriarchal system- a system which, ironically, also hurts many men. The most inconvenient truth of feminism is that the patriarchy would collapse tomorrow if women didn't support it. The major feminist issues in the world today are (according to me): freeing women from oppressive brutal societies, most of which are not in the West (with the exception of closed, usually religious communities), and ensuring access to safe and effective healthcare for the female body: management of precocious puberty, access to LARC contraceptives, management of unwanted pregnancy - access to abortion as early as possible for both the woman's safety and our overall humanity, encouraging childbearing in the 20s-30s when its safest, provisioning of skilled birth attendants, management of disorders of the female reproductive system, management of menopause. These are ESSENTIAL WORLDWIDE and especially important in the global East
In terms of Western feminism, there's work to be done but we have won many hard fights. Our issues have become economic and personal. I would like to see strong legal regulation and ethical guidelines making ART, prostitution, and surrogacy very rare and economically infeasible, as these things are damaging to health and elevate the commodification of women's unique bodies rather than the simple recognition of their uniqueness. We must be full adults with incomes to protect ourselves from being trapped in intimately oppressive family situations. That's a long reordering of society, and asking men to step up to the challenges of an increasingly anti-family environment is going to be a slog. Fortunately, feminism has allowed women to leave abusive, ill-chosen and destructive relationships. Making that more rare and less painful through reformation of social family supports, and a functional economy, as well as marriage laws and family court is important feminist work that needs undertaking.
The most man-hating thing I have to say is that male violence against women and girls should continue to be shamed as it was in decades past, and the punishment of such should be severe. Women typically have to use weapons to survive fighting back against a violent man, and the law should - carefully!- consider this reality.
I don’t call myself a feminist anymore. Like so many terms, the definition has moved to reflect dubious and often dangerous ideology.
I’ve spent my working life in a male dominated career (structural engineer in the environmental/nuclear sector) and I believe that access to education and employment and same job/same pay are prerequisites for a meritocracy. Equity of opportunity is what feminism used to mean - it doesn’t now.
I’ve worked with engineers who’ve tried to label me a ‘diversity’ hire and they’ve usually been the least competent, so there was that. Today, that’s probably not the case (im 51).
I believe that women and children aren’t property and deserve protection under the law. Rape, abuse, violence cannot be tolerated if women are equal citizens and children aren’t pawns. This has all been morphed by the funhouse mirror of gender theory and the victimization of children (under the psychotic belief that biological dimorphism is theoretical and that sexual access to children is the next brave frontier).
Today, feminism has come to mean that sexual self-objectification is a valid career goal and life choice, and it’s a soul killer (to start with). In 26 years of recovery, I’ve sponsored more spiritually psychologically dismembered products of that ethos than I can count.
Dec 1, 2023·edited Dec 1, 2023Liked by Josh Slocum
I’m 70, so my definition of feminism goes way back, to the days of “lord and master” laws, which meant that a husband could use a couple’s money for his own ends, leaving his wife vulnerable to and responsible for his financial failures; to the days of raped women—I kid you not when I say I’ve known more than a dozen women who were raped by strangers—being unbelieved, or considered “odd” by police; to the days when gay widows had no say over the life they lived together and had all their mutual belongings taken by errant blood relatives who had rejected them decades before. In short, to the days when actual legal inequalities existed. So I do not relate to the term these days; in fact, I’m quite hostile to the kitchen sink feminism being demanded by young women. (It’s just amazing to me how many instigators of academic bigotry and marketing absurdity are, almost to a person, white women who like to cry and who look like the women in my youth who were members of the Junior League and other “uplift” organizations.) So, to hell with the word—and the women who espouse it today yet sit by as women’s sports is destroyed, Muslim marauders rape and slaughter innocent women, and as adherents choose woke progressivism and political power over personal empowerment. Screw them. But let me offer a picture of *my* meaning: a female character portrayed by Katharine Hepburn* (whose mother was an early supporter of women suffrage) in the 1940s who either slapped a man hard for making unwanted advances or fell happily, without ambivalence, into his arms.
* Unfortunately, Hepburn herself was treated quite shabbily by the guilt-ridden Spencer Tracy, so maybe my image exists only in old movies.
Dec 1, 2023·edited Dec 1, 2023Liked by Josh Slocum
It turns out that the double standard of my young adulthood, though obviously unfair, actually helped women by providing a social framework in which to both navigate and express our desires and public ambitions. Today, absent this good girl/bad girl social binary, a woman might well get beat up if she dared to slap a cad—and then retreat further into the nonsensical expectation of safety. I completely agree that life would be much better for women and men if society reclaimed not the standard itself, but the logic of it, that is, human rather than utopian nature. It’s not at all surprising to me that so many young women are lost, infantilized, and crushingly unhappy. And, that young man—having been beaten down by the overarching demands of contemporary feminism—are far less inclined to stand up for women than they were in my day.
I have hard core nostalgia for just about everything these days. It’s very sad. I feel wistful and ashamed that I didn’t appreciate the 70, 80 and 90’s more.... when I was actually living in those decades. Who knew the world would become insane when the 2000’s came? We were all just worried about Y2K turning off the power grid. Seems laughable now but not in a good way.
That world you're dreaming of never really existed because in reality men were legally beating their wives since it wasn't a crime. Women could slap men in movies, but in real life they were getting killed.
You're living in a dream world of "chivalry" back in the good old days. Total myth.
I agree with the earlier commenter, for me feminism is about simple self-determination.
1. That the natural state of the world is permanent female subjugation to men
This is the state of the world in most non-Western countries/cultures, is it not? I don't believe it is necessarily "natural," because humans are such social creatures. Much of our social world is socially constructed and changes radically over time. But there are definitely societies of this form now today. That's a far cry from how things are now in the US, though.
2. That men have an essential, in-born, desire to exploit, rape, or suppress women
That would be a form of essentialism, which is usually not good logic. It is definitely true that there are some men who are this way, and men are on average physiologically stronger and more able to physically rape, abuse, and subjugate others than women. You must believe this to yourself, to some degree, or you wouldn't have a logical basis for separate sports, restrooms, and changing facilities for women. Women have a physiological disadvantage as abusers, but that doesn't mean women are never abusers, either.
3. That it’s sane and sensible to describe any Western country as a “patriarchy”
Women in the US didn't have the right to own property, in most states, until the late 19th century. So if you are saying that patriarchal structures have never existed in this country, much less that they have never been deeply enmeshed in the legal system, that is simply incorrect. However, talk about "the patriarchy" is very sloppy and feminists can't make any kind of verifiable argument based on that. I consider vague talk about "the patriarchy" to be sloppy pop feminism and not to be taken seriously.
Are there still some patriarchal structures in contemporary US society, surely. How much exposure any particular female has to those structures depends on all kinds of factors including her economic class, educational background, the region she lives in, her ethnic and racial background, her religion.
Also side note that when I was coming up as a young butch lesbian, being a radical feminist was part and parcel of that politics. We had the right to own property in the 90s, but it was a real struggle for access and acknowledgement when engaging with various systems. For example, I was bitten by a deer tick in the early 00s, went to a Dr. to get antibiotics, and was told that he wouldn't prescribe them unless I was on birth control. When I told him I didn't need birth control because I was a lesbian, he at first said he didn't believe me, then shamed me for saying so. Having to do battle with a doctor for a treatment you needed because you had a female reproductive system was a part of my young adulthood and, yes, I would describe that system, at that time, as sexist, possibly even patriarchal.
> That it’s sane and sensible to describe any Western country as a “patriarchy”
There's no time period qualifier on that claim. In that sense it is not clear. Human history is long, so is the history of feminism.
Also, just because I show my own logic and thinking process doesn't mean I'm accusing you of anything. If you're going to take offense any time anyone thinks out loud, after having invited others to comment...
2. I don't "take offense any time anyone thinks out loud." Nope, and I won't say "yes, I do that," to make nice. I don't.
I do have some hair triggers on this topic; that I will grant you. I am fairly certain you, in my position, would have them too, had you had my experience being grilled, blamed, asked to prove I'm not a sexist troglodyte, as I have been for so many years. By women I have actually helped and been friends to.
No, you are not those women, and you don't bear that responsibility. But we don't know each other well, and I'm being honest with you when I tell you that, yes, it did sound like that to me. I accept you telling me it wasn't what you meant. That's the best I can do.
Dec 1, 2023·edited Dec 1, 2023Liked by Josh Slocum
Thank you. That's definitely not what I meant, and I appreciate that you invited comment in the first place. I think it's likely that the feminists among your readers are not really the #MeToo, sex-positive, body-positive feminists that hold beliefs like the ones you list, and that we are feminist in a large part because we had sexist experiences much earlier in life. Even if things have changed, whatever feminism we espouse is a part of our identities because it was a part of our process of self-definition. Most of us are second-wave feminists. The things you say you do believe in, equal legal rights and access to education, sports, and jobs, those are all part of second-wave feminism. Which is just as legitimate a version of feminism as third-wave feminism.
In _Conflict Is Not Abuse_, Sarah Schulman describes how people acting out of trauma often pick the wrong targets. It's possible you were called sexist by women acting out of trauma at a person who was available, because whoever hurt them was not. This is pretty common among women. Many of them aren't actually feminist at all, they may not fully understand what feminism is and isn't, they may not care at all about feminism. They may care only about the leverage or cultural capital they can get from calling a man sexist. That doesn't make it right. And I've definitely been accused, by some progressives, of prejudices I do not hold. It's extremely difficult to take that kind of unfair judgement and criticism, to feel that you aren't known or seen.
I'm a feminist. In the 60s and 70s, Second Wave Feminism was necessary. There was real discrimination. I and other women were sexually harassed at work, discriminated against in other ways. Feminism improved my life, it wasn't about ideology, it was a way to be treated as a human being in public. This would not have happened without feminism.
After that, intersectionality destroyed feminism. Other worthwhile things such as environmentalism, humane treatment of animals, etc. have been taken over by the same ideologues. This certainly doesn't discredit those causes.
Thanks to everyone who answered the question.
Comments are closed now. They had a good run, I suppose.
Perhaps sometimes it's not sexism women deal with when breaking into a mostly male dominion, but bias against outsiders, which a man would face just the same if he wasn't from the same background as the other men, or had some other noticeable difference.
Sure, there is a bit of casual sexism from some individual men when women do things that are traditionally male. But to call it systemic, or patriarchal -- it seems like we have just lazily adopted this as the default position when the fact is, it's been 30+ years now that women really do have access to everything men do, and can achieve a lot if they adopt the right attitude, display the right aptitude, and make a damn effort.
We should be teaching *all* kids to build confidence, grit and resilience, rather than creating grievance narratives for 50% of them purely based on their sex (and doing the same for racial minorities and whatnot).
We will always see unbalances in outcomes purely because men and women, on average, have different brains and interests and ways of obtaining skills. That's why I resent so many industries putting all this effort into mentoring women, or giving grants only to women, and so on.
Just like affirmative action will benefit racial minorities from privileged backgrounds who are already competing in a fair playing field --- while discriminating overtly against whites, regardless of background -- these female-focused initiatives benefit the women who already have access to the roles and positions they want -- while overtly discriminating against males. It's just ethically wrong.
Hear, hear! I do consider myself a radical feminist and I do call myself one, but all of this is SPOT ON. This is why I'm a radfem- I want to take this movement back to its roots.
Nailed it. Not a feminist, but plenty of men thinking they can be women are. Nauseating. What is feminism now? I don't hate men and I am not liking how many are treated in society being decent masculine men..like my husband.
This. So much this.
I think that today’s feminism is the freakish love-child of Andrea Dworkin and Helen Gurley Brown. It’s totally weird and creepy, like almost everything espoused by the woke.
Feminism to me is simply allowing women to self determine.
I don’t believe men have a natural desire to subjugate women. I think there are shitty people who like being shitty, and they tend to be shitty to whoever they can get away with, depending on context. Everybody kicks downward, and women are everywhere. I think it’s just a sad state of affairs, not a plot.
We see very quickly the problem we're in with the term "feminism." Of course, obviously, I agree with you that women should be able to self-determine.
But you see, as clearly as I see, that there are many other women, all of whom, like you, call themselves "feminists," who DO believe the extreme things I noted above.
This is not my fault, and it's not men's fault. This is a communication problem.
I’m torn, at this point. I honestly never really thought feminism needed to exist as some complicated “theory” (what are they theorizing? How do they test? It’s not a science; it’s literature). Classes about it should have been history classes, end of. All the “Girl Power” stuff always bothered me too. The point was equality, not overt promotion, and some of it was just mean.
Did you see the Ponerology podcast about the passive-parasitic psychopaths? That’s who I think has effectively taken over the left, as well as groups for LGB, women, and POC (“We’re coming for your children! LOL”). Didn’t Burlington have some initiative to bring Yoga to black people?
These people are effectively NPCs that rely on us lucid players to give them boundaries. Lately we haven’t been allowed to do that, so they’re running wild. It seems to be becoming more and more clear that all of us (or as many as will realistically do it) have to stop being quite so cowardly, undisciplined and selfish. All of us trying to tilt shit slightly in our own favor leads to opening for legit dangerous people to take over. That’s how corruption works. We have to push back, every single time.
I should have pushed back against the corruption of feminism back then, when I saw/heard it. I didn’t really see a way to do it. I will now, though.
Is it weird that I’m excited to watch the backlash? Oh Lawd, it’s gonna be righteous.
"...simply allowing women to self determine" assumes that men have been allowed to self-determine and women weren't until...feminism.
But for the most part men were no more allowed to "self-determine" than women and besides, what does "self-determine" even mean, anyway, when throughout most of human history we were all encumbered by variables and dependencies and responsibilities that limited our capacity to "self-determine."
Meanwhile, men have been lying dead on battlefields because they "self-determined" it. Meanwhile, women now "determine" whether to have children or not (while rending their garments over universities closing because women aren't making enough humans to fill the seats thanks to "self-determining."
May I ask you why you felt you needed to interject all that?
I’m honestly curious. Are you under the impression that I don’t realize that men have had a hard time of it too? Do guys like you really think women aren’t aware of all your problems? Jesus, you never stop talking about it and making it our problem. Then you wonder why we roll our eyes at you. You sound like a little boy who is mad his sister got a present on her birthday.
Edit: Also, fuck you, dude. If men hadn’t used the internet since its inception to teach each other how to use and abuse women, maybe we’d be more interested in pairing up and having kids. I can tell you one thing: any population crisis we are currently having is 100% ON MEN. The market said NO to abuse. Deal with it, or become a better person.
Edit the second: Here we see just how easy it is for tempers to rise. I’m not apologizing, just pointing it out.
Which battlefield are you laying dead on, honey? I’ll send an Uber.
It's hilarious and so indicative of the twisted, DARVO "feminist" perspective that you called me a "dude," bitch. Feminism is not "simply" anything. It's a knot of deception -- not just for women, but also for men. It's created utter chaos -- for men and women. Period. "Simply self-determination." THAT'S DUMB - your nasty reaction just proves my point.
You’re insane. We’re done talking.
Fine by me, HARPIE.
I agree with your definition of feminism. I managed to escape the “bra burning thing
I literally -only- want equal rights and access. That's it. Choice. Justice. Apart from that I think we all need to work on ourselves to keep overcoming the times where women were thought of as less than, and that's on each and every family to teach their kids (of both sexes!).
The rest I don't buy. We've already come quite far in the west and I'm grateful for it. Let's maybe start with protecting the progress made? 😅💙
Forgive me, but I'm going to ask you to specify. This is what I meant by asking people not to use high-level abstract words.
What is "justice", and I'm asking **specifically**.
"Choice" in what, **specifically**?
What does "access" mean **specifically**.
I have learned little about what you believe. I'm not slamming you, but I am pointing out that you haven't answered with any specificity.
Access: the ability to be in educational/social/economical spaces I'm objectively qualified for (by merit/behavior/etc) where appropriate.
Justice: being judged by exactly the same standards as you before the law.
Choice: no societal predetermination of fate in terms of procreation/career/amount of family caretaking.
I hope that's clear enough? No worries if not, please keep pressing. Maybe it helps to know that I -had/have- all three in the country I'm in?
That did it. Thank you, I do appreciate it.
To continue my previous post, I was too busy raising two kids when not even out of my teens and barely an adult myself. Although it was a real struggle, I now look at it as a blessing because I never adopted the hatred of men that seems to have evolved from the movement and this left me open to having a wonderful second marriage to a quintessential gentleman who still opens the door for me and stands up while removing his hat when a lady enters the room. I truly feel sorry for a lot of these women who will not know the love of a good man.
Lack of love is not proportionately related to the strength of feminist convictions. I often hear that single women are single because they are feminists and hate men. It's time to drop that stereotype. I doubt that Ann Coulter or Heather McDonald are not married because they hate men. Conversely, many so-called feminist activists are comfortably married to well-heeled men.
I don't call myself a feminist anymore, because the word has become so problematic. Say you're a feminist, and you're willingly or not attaching yourself to the major "women's" organizations like NOW, UN Women (both of whom have made a mockery of womanhood) and/or associating yourself with the men-hating movement (#MeToo) – just all kinds of nuttery that I don't want to touch with a ten-ft stick. When I did call myself a feminist, I was signing up for equal $ for same work, equal access to education etc., but I was quickly told I was no feminist, because I didn't consider it unreasonable that $ and effort be spent on training women for jobs for which they don't f.ex. have physical strength. I don't think, f.ex. that women should be allowed to train for all divisions of the military, that they should be in combat (not that we have a military in Iceland, but I've lived in the US for a long time. As an aside, women in Icelandic govmt have made a complete mess of Icelandic society...). There may very well be extraordinarily strong women who can and want to do combat and partake in extreme military operations, but they are decidedly few, and because of that these military divisions are mostly male; adding the odd woman to the mix is bad for morale, and in the military morale doesn't mean the vibe around the water cooler, it's a matter of life and death. I don't think women have proved themselves to be good leaders; because of their psychological makeup they're prone to people-pleasing and making irresponsible decisions based on feelings, not logic; they're more manipulative than men. I think women are largely responsible for allowing the horrible woke philosophy destroy Western institutions; it's mostly women who are pushing the evil "gender/trans" agenda at the federal and state (municipal, schools, county) level.
I meant to say "I didn't consider it unreasonable that $ and effort NOT be spent ..."
I've read some articles that label feminism as first wave (70s), second wave (80s/90s) and third wave (where we are today). Some women very clearly label themselves as being at the wave where their feminist evolution "stopped." To have stopped your evolution is considered a bad thing, of course. I was second-wave, heavily influenced by first-wave, and never went any further.
My feminism was defined by reproductive choice concerns, and cemented in 1992 with the Supreme Court case, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. I grew up in NYC and was genuinely worried that myself and my overly hard-working friends – all only able to find crappy relationships because NYC was an early testing ground for today’s painfully casual dating scene – would see their lives come to a complete standstill due to not being able to access an abortion if they needed it.
I have passed through all the “men bad” phases, I admit it. They peaked in intensity, and then I realized they provided me no benefit to hold anymore. I still do get deeply annoyed (even infuriated) when men talk “at” me, but see this as another type of problem, and not the patriarchy.
I am a self-sufficient career woman who is not a feminist. Where I come from, it's a bad word, laughable at best. I agree with your two points and wouldn't go beyond that in my description of women's rights. Currently, Julie Bindel is doing a lot of taking about the ways in which feminism has been mislabeled, but I can't identify with her second-wave lesbian feminism either. But here is something with which you, Josh, might disagree. I think the Men's Rights movement, led by the likes of Tom Golden and Janice Fiamengo, also makes a lot of exaggerated claims about men's misery. Fiamengo recently said, for example, that we discriminate against young men by not considering the mental stress that makes them want to transition. Conversely, she has argued, Abigail Schreier's focus on transitioning teen girls indicates female supremacy. Such claims, as well as my own experience (the difficulty of being taken seriously as a female scholar or professor until well into visible middle age), convince me that the "poor me" narratives should not be promulgated either by men or by women in the West. Everyone has rights up the wazoo.
If you think that women are equal to men, and should be treated as such in law and banking, and in professions, those are historic feminist victories. I can understand just seeing that as normal life now, but I think that the recognition is important.
Feminism, for me, is the acknowledgement that women's bodies are geared towards self-sacrifice due to our role in reproduction. This makes us potentially vulnerable to men, not just because they can leave us pregnant and therefore even more vulnerable, but because they are bigger and stronger. That's why my feminism is radical - our bodies are the root. Secondary to that, feminism is about female liberation. We can be fully participating adults *in spite of* the ways our bodies make us vulnerable. This has nothing to do with men, who were also born into a patriarchal system- a system which, ironically, also hurts many men. The most inconvenient truth of feminism is that the patriarchy would collapse tomorrow if women didn't support it. The major feminist issues in the world today are (according to me): freeing women from oppressive brutal societies, most of which are not in the West (with the exception of closed, usually religious communities), and ensuring access to safe and effective healthcare for the female body: management of precocious puberty, access to LARC contraceptives, management of unwanted pregnancy - access to abortion as early as possible for both the woman's safety and our overall humanity, encouraging childbearing in the 20s-30s when its safest, provisioning of skilled birth attendants, management of disorders of the female reproductive system, management of menopause. These are ESSENTIAL WORLDWIDE and especially important in the global East
In terms of Western feminism, there's work to be done but we have won many hard fights. Our issues have become economic and personal. I would like to see strong legal regulation and ethical guidelines making ART, prostitution, and surrogacy very rare and economically infeasible, as these things are damaging to health and elevate the commodification of women's unique bodies rather than the simple recognition of their uniqueness. We must be full adults with incomes to protect ourselves from being trapped in intimately oppressive family situations. That's a long reordering of society, and asking men to step up to the challenges of an increasingly anti-family environment is going to be a slog. Fortunately, feminism has allowed women to leave abusive, ill-chosen and destructive relationships. Making that more rare and less painful through reformation of social family supports, and a functional economy, as well as marriage laws and family court is important feminist work that needs undertaking.
The most man-hating thing I have to say is that male violence against women and girls should continue to be shamed as it was in decades past, and the punishment of such should be severe. Women typically have to use weapons to survive fighting back against a violent man, and the law should - carefully!- consider this reality.
Thanks for reading my doctoral thesis.
I don’t call myself a feminist anymore. Like so many terms, the definition has moved to reflect dubious and often dangerous ideology.
I’ve spent my working life in a male dominated career (structural engineer in the environmental/nuclear sector) and I believe that access to education and employment and same job/same pay are prerequisites for a meritocracy. Equity of opportunity is what feminism used to mean - it doesn’t now.
I’ve worked with engineers who’ve tried to label me a ‘diversity’ hire and they’ve usually been the least competent, so there was that. Today, that’s probably not the case (im 51).
I believe that women and children aren’t property and deserve protection under the law. Rape, abuse, violence cannot be tolerated if women are equal citizens and children aren’t pawns. This has all been morphed by the funhouse mirror of gender theory and the victimization of children (under the psychotic belief that biological dimorphism is theoretical and that sexual access to children is the next brave frontier).
Today, feminism has come to mean that sexual self-objectification is a valid career goal and life choice, and it’s a soul killer (to start with). In 26 years of recovery, I’ve sponsored more spiritually psychologically dismembered products of that ethos than I can count.
I’m done with the whole, sorry mess.
My definition and your are very similar - Epistemology is a powerful thing - I’ve learned a lot from Peter Boghossian on this point.
I’m 70, so my definition of feminism goes way back, to the days of “lord and master” laws, which meant that a husband could use a couple’s money for his own ends, leaving his wife vulnerable to and responsible for his financial failures; to the days of raped women—I kid you not when I say I’ve known more than a dozen women who were raped by strangers—being unbelieved, or considered “odd” by police; to the days when gay widows had no say over the life they lived together and had all their mutual belongings taken by errant blood relatives who had rejected them decades before. In short, to the days when actual legal inequalities existed. So I do not relate to the term these days; in fact, I’m quite hostile to the kitchen sink feminism being demanded by young women. (It’s just amazing to me how many instigators of academic bigotry and marketing absurdity are, almost to a person, white women who like to cry and who look like the women in my youth who were members of the Junior League and other “uplift” organizations.) So, to hell with the word—and the women who espouse it today yet sit by as women’s sports is destroyed, Muslim marauders rape and slaughter innocent women, and as adherents choose woke progressivism and political power over personal empowerment. Screw them. But let me offer a picture of *my* meaning: a female character portrayed by Katharine Hepburn* (whose mother was an early supporter of women suffrage) in the 1940s who either slapped a man hard for making unwanted advances or fell happily, without ambivalence, into his arms.
* Unfortunately, Hepburn herself was treated quite shabbily by the guilt-ridden Spencer Tracy, so maybe my image exists only in old movies.
I want the world back where a woman can actually slap a man in the face for getting fresh, and count on men around her to have her back.
If we could regulate this at the social level this way again, I think things would be better.
It turns out that the double standard of my young adulthood, though obviously unfair, actually helped women by providing a social framework in which to both navigate and express our desires and public ambitions. Today, absent this good girl/bad girl social binary, a woman might well get beat up if she dared to slap a cad—and then retreat further into the nonsensical expectation of safety. I completely agree that life would be much better for women and men if society reclaimed not the standard itself, but the logic of it, that is, human rather than utopian nature. It’s not at all surprising to me that so many young women are lost, infantilized, and crushingly unhappy. And, that young man—having been beaten down by the overarching demands of contemporary feminism—are far less inclined to stand up for women than they were in my day.
I have hard core nostalgia for just about everything these days. It’s very sad. I feel wistful and ashamed that I didn’t appreciate the 70, 80 and 90’s more.... when I was actually living in those decades. Who knew the world would become insane when the 2000’s came? We were all just worried about Y2K turning off the power grid. Seems laughable now but not in a good way.
That world you're dreaming of never really existed because in reality men were legally beating their wives since it wasn't a crime. Women could slap men in movies, but in real life they were getting killed.
You're living in a dream world of "chivalry" back in the good old days. Total myth.
I agree with the earlier commenter, for me feminism is about simple self-determination.
1. That the natural state of the world is permanent female subjugation to men
This is the state of the world in most non-Western countries/cultures, is it not? I don't believe it is necessarily "natural," because humans are such social creatures. Much of our social world is socially constructed and changes radically over time. But there are definitely societies of this form now today. That's a far cry from how things are now in the US, though.
2. That men have an essential, in-born, desire to exploit, rape, or suppress women
That would be a form of essentialism, which is usually not good logic. It is definitely true that there are some men who are this way, and men are on average physiologically stronger and more able to physically rape, abuse, and subjugate others than women. You must believe this to yourself, to some degree, or you wouldn't have a logical basis for separate sports, restrooms, and changing facilities for women. Women have a physiological disadvantage as abusers, but that doesn't mean women are never abusers, either.
3. That it’s sane and sensible to describe any Western country as a “patriarchy”
Women in the US didn't have the right to own property, in most states, until the late 19th century. So if you are saying that patriarchal structures have never existed in this country, much less that they have never been deeply enmeshed in the legal system, that is simply incorrect. However, talk about "the patriarchy" is very sloppy and feminists can't make any kind of verifiable argument based on that. I consider vague talk about "the patriarchy" to be sloppy pop feminism and not to be taken seriously.
Are there still some patriarchal structures in contemporary US society, surely. How much exposure any particular female has to those structures depends on all kinds of factors including her economic class, educational background, the region she lives in, her ethnic and racial background, her religion.
Also side note that when I was coming up as a young butch lesbian, being a radical feminist was part and parcel of that politics. We had the right to own property in the 90s, but it was a real struggle for access and acknowledgement when engaging with various systems. For example, I was bitten by a deer tick in the early 00s, went to a Dr. to get antibiotics, and was told that he wouldn't prescribe them unless I was on birth control. When I told him I didn't need birth control because I was a lesbian, he at first said he didn't believe me, then shamed me for saying so. Having to do battle with a doctor for a treatment you needed because you had a female reproductive system was a part of my young adulthood and, yes, I would describe that system, at that time, as sexist, possibly even patriarchal.
> That it’s sane and sensible to describe any Western country as a “patriarchy”
There's no time period qualifier on that claim. In that sense it is not clear. Human history is long, so is the history of feminism.
Also, just because I show my own logic and thinking process doesn't mean I'm accusing you of anything. If you're going to take offense any time anyone thinks out loud, after having invited others to comment...
I think it's reasonable to take me as meaning "today." I really, really do.
I regret saying anything. Thread over.
I'll meet you halfway.
1. Fair enough, thinking out loud.
2. I don't "take offense any time anyone thinks out loud." Nope, and I won't say "yes, I do that," to make nice. I don't.
I do have some hair triggers on this topic; that I will grant you. I am fairly certain you, in my position, would have them too, had you had my experience being grilled, blamed, asked to prove I'm not a sexist troglodyte, as I have been for so many years. By women I have actually helped and been friends to.
No, you are not those women, and you don't bear that responsibility. But we don't know each other well, and I'm being honest with you when I tell you that, yes, it did sound like that to me. I accept you telling me it wasn't what you meant. That's the best I can do.
Thank you. That's definitely not what I meant, and I appreciate that you invited comment in the first place. I think it's likely that the feminists among your readers are not really the #MeToo, sex-positive, body-positive feminists that hold beliefs like the ones you list, and that we are feminist in a large part because we had sexist experiences much earlier in life. Even if things have changed, whatever feminism we espouse is a part of our identities because it was a part of our process of self-definition. Most of us are second-wave feminists. The things you say you do believe in, equal legal rights and access to education, sports, and jobs, those are all part of second-wave feminism. Which is just as legitimate a version of feminism as third-wave feminism.
In _Conflict Is Not Abuse_, Sarah Schulman describes how people acting out of trauma often pick the wrong targets. It's possible you were called sexist by women acting out of trauma at a person who was available, because whoever hurt them was not. This is pretty common among women. Many of them aren't actually feminist at all, they may not fully understand what feminism is and isn't, they may not care at all about feminism. They may care only about the leverage or cultural capital they can get from calling a man sexist. That doesn't make it right. And I've definitely been accused, by some progressives, of prejudices I do not hold. It's extremely difficult to take that kind of unfair judgement and criticism, to feel that you aren't known or seen.
I'm a feminist. In the 60s and 70s, Second Wave Feminism was necessary. There was real discrimination. I and other women were sexually harassed at work, discriminated against in other ways. Feminism improved my life, it wasn't about ideology, it was a way to be treated as a human being in public. This would not have happened without feminism.
After that, intersectionality destroyed feminism. Other worthwhile things such as environmentalism, humane treatment of animals, etc. have been taken over by the same ideologues. This certainly doesn't discredit those causes.