Criticism of Feminism

@msolga,

msolga wrote:

edit: followed by "Wife Chops Off Husband's Penis, Throws in Garbage Disposal" !
Oh honestly. Something that happens often?
What's to come?

I think you're just miffed because this made you think: "Why oh why didn't I come up with this idea?"

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@Thomas,

Not at all, Thomas.
You do me a grave disserve! Wink

Why on earth would I want to chop of some man's penis?
For the record, I don't know a single woman (of my own acquaintance, that is) who would think that a great idea.
Just bizarre.

But seriously, my complaint was that it is extreme examples like this that make the headlines. Look at what this extreme feminist has done! (same as that litany of unflattering "feminist" quotes from the woman in that video .... from the Suffragettes on ...)

I doubt the woman who did that (chopped of the penis, I mean) was doing it in solidarity with feminists ... I think it's more likely she was crazy.
She certainly wasn't doing any feminists any favours, that's for sure!

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@failures art,

failures art wrote:

"Genderism" does sound awful. I'm campaigning for humanism.

I believe you do, but I don't believe it's the word you are looking for in this context. Humanism isn't a generalization of feminism. Rather, it's the opposite of theism (kind of). Humanists believe that the universe has not had a creator, that ethical values are made not by god for mysterious divine ends, but by humans for humans serving human ends. And so forth. Opposing discrimination is a sideshow in the humanist project. If you're looking for a a general term for that, you probably want the word egalitarian.

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@msolga,

I meant (of course): You do me a grave disservice!

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@Thomas,

Ah, that is a good term.
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@failures art,

failures art wrote:

Bristling? No.

I am not bristling over the thought of doing something feminine. I'm disagreeing that the nurturing behaviors are inherently feminine.

Again, you are here arguing against something I've never said.

I didn't say anything about traits being inherently masculine or feminine. What I have said has been more towards the opposite. I think they've been imposed from without -- and feminism is about transcending those roles that have been imposed from without. Having the option to do whatever one would like, regardless of imposed gender roles.

Egalitarianism is fine, I like it better than humanism, it still has the same problem of generality, though. Egalitarianism covers racism, homophobia, ageism, classism, etc., etc. Feminism is about gender equality specifically.

And msolga makes good points about what greater specificity means in terms of actually getting things done. And we all seem to agree that more needs to be done.

As for the "how would I like it if a masculine term is used for all people," how about "anthropology"? (Literally "study of man," but generalized to all people.) That's not the only one. It's just there, in the background.

Meanwhile, I'm not even arguing that "feminism" is the best possible word for the present set of concepts it covers -- I'm arguing that it IS the current word, and I understand why. Msolga laid out some of the reasons. Feminism has definitely evolved, though the duality was always present. In fighting for women to be able to transcend gender roles, there was always an element of men's gender roles, as they have so much to do with each other.

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@sozobe,

I hadn't really thought of that before, but as I come up with more and more instances where the word "man" refers to all people, men and women, the more it seems like poetic justice that the word "feminism" would come to represent gender equality, for men and women. Of all words to cross that border....

Mankind
Anthropology
Anthropomorphic
All men are created equal....

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@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

failures art wrote:

Bristling? No.

I am not bristling over the thought of doing something feminine. I'm disagreeing that the nurturing behaviors are inherently feminine.

Again, you are here arguing against something I've never said.

I didn't say anything about traits being inherently masculine or feminine. What I have said has been more towards the opposite. I think they've been imposed from without -- and feminism is about transcending those roles that have been imposed from without. Having the option to do whatever one would like, regardless of imposed gender roles.

You said that being nurturing is feminine. I'm sorry, but how else can such a statement be interpreted? You're speaking to the nature of each gender when you attribute something to one or the other. I simply disagree in such a generalization.

sozobe wrote:

Egalitarianism is fine, I like it better than humanism, it still has the same problem of generality, though.

We disagree that this is a "problem." I believe that addressing gender inequality from the vantage of one gender (feminism) is inadequate. Working from a neutral point I believe is better.

sozobe wrote:

Egalitarianism covers racism, homophobia, ageism, classism, etc., etc. Feminism is about gender equality specifically.

As it turns out the reasons I am wanting for gender equality happen to be founded on the same rational basis as my wanting all other forms of equality. I'm not concerned with the generality. Why should I be?

sozobe wrote:

And msolga makes good points about what greater specificity means in terms of actually getting things done. And we all seem to agree that more needs to be done.

I think the ACLU proves otherwise. As a group, they don't seem to struggle fighting for all forms of civil rights by being a advocacy group for all people. Has the ACLU failed to address gender equality in your opinion?

sozobe wrote:

As for the "how would I like it if a masculine term is used for all people," how about "anthropology"? (Literally "study of man," but generalized to all people.) That's not the only one. It's just there, in the background.

So wait. One moment we should look to the no need for misplaced even-handedness a la Steinem, and the next feminism as a term for equality is good because elsewhere in our language male words are used?

I don't see poetic justice in this at all. I think the sentiment is misplaced.

sozobe wrote:

Meanwhile, I'm not even arguing that "feminism" is the best possible word for the present set of concepts it covers -- I'm arguing that it IS the current word, and I understand why. Msolga laid out some of the reasons. Feminism has definitely evolved, though the duality was always present.

It's also not simply the term. I'm concerned with treating gender inequality as a male pathology that needs to be addressed. It's a human problem. Men are restricted in many gender roles by intragender socialization, but women also put men there. Likewise, while men have had a role in putting women in gender roles, women also have intragender socialization that keeps them there. The narrative I hear is that no matter which gender is having the issue, it's a problem imposed by men. This kind of narrative is inevitable when speaking to gender issues from the vantage point of one of the genders more directly.

sozobe wrote:

In fighting for women to be able to transcend gender roles, there was always an element of men's gender roles, as they have so much to do with each other.

We agree.

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@failures art,

Gosh, I really didn't think this point would be so hard to make.

failures art wrote:

sozobe wrote:
Again, you are here arguing against something I've never said.

I didn't say anything about traits being inherently masculine or feminine. What I have said has been more towards the opposite. I think they've been imposed from without -- and feminism is about transcending those roles that have been imposed from without. Having the option to do whatever one would like, regardless of imposed gender roles.

You said that being nurturing is feminine. I'm sorry, but how else can such a statement be interpreted? You're speaking to the nature of each gender when you attribute something to one or the other.

I'm really not.

I'm speaking to the nature of gender roles.

A woman is female, a man is male.

Meanwhile, men and women can engage in a variety of behaviors which may be feminine or masculine. Virtually everyone will engage in a mixture -- not purely one category or the other.

I've been referring throughout to behaviors or traits that are so categorized. A woman is not a man because she exhibits some traditionally masculine traits. A man is not a woman because he exhibits some traditionally feminine traits.

A woman is not even manly if she engages in some traditionally masculine behaviors. I would not consider Danica Patrick to be manly, for example, even though drag racing is masculine.

And vice versa.

I made this point earlier, pretty clearly I thought, re: my avatar. That flexed bicep is masculine. That doesn't make Rosie a man, or manly. But it was an adjustment of gender roles.

Do you really not get this? A few different things ride on that so I'll wait before going on to the rest of it.

Men and women do not strictly conform to traditional gender roles. This is a good thing.

Traditional gender roles are becoming more porous with time. This is a good thing.

It doesn't mean that traditional gender roles never existed, or that they are currently obsolete.

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@sozobe,

This is fine and all, but you're reiterating a point you already made, and I understand--I disagree with it.

I disagree with the statement: Nurturing behavior is feminine.

Such a statement is upheld with pure tautology.

As for Rosie the Riveter, it's actually a good point. As a touchstone of feminist imagery, it does seem to fulfill the criteria I've been looking for. I've got little to say about a flexed bicep. I suppose if such a gesture is masculine in your mind, then I won't try to convince you otherwise. I happen to think the message from such a pose is about strength and confidence. I don't think men should lay claim to strength and confidence anymore than women should lay claim to nurturing.

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@failures art,

I think the friction we are having is due to how our brains accept and reject gender binary for given things.

Drag racing is masculine? The only drag racer I know is a female coworker of mine.

We're of different generations, so we build our ideas on different framework I believe. Some of the assumptions you may have about what is masculine, feminine, or gender neutral are going to be different than mine. The Mr. Mom story you shared about sozlet is a pretty good example of this. Doesn't mean that sozlet needs to be educated on why such a scene should be emasculating or embarrassing. Quite opposite, sozlet has it right.

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@failures art,

Except that I'm not laying claim to anything. Men who are nurturing = awesome!

But nurturing behavior has historically been considered a feminine trait, yes. This is not something I pulled out of thin air.

I certainly find it surprising that you just reject that, but if you want some proof, sure.

I'll start with a question: historically, how many female nurses vs. male nurses have there been? Why do you think that is?

This one's a little hard to Google -- I've found scads of references to feminine and masculine traits and what they are, but not sure what would necessarily prove that these are societal norms, not just my opinion/ tautology. That it's not something for you to "disagree" with any more than the statement "it used to be that women couldn't vote." Women used to not be able to vote. "Nurturing" has been traditionally been considered a feminine trait.

I'll start with this:

Quote:

WORDS COMMONLY USED TO DESCRIBE FEMININITY

dependent
emotional
passive
sensitive
quiet
graceful
innocent
weak
flirtatious
nurturing
self-critical
soft
sexually submissive
accepting

WORDS COMMONLY USED TO DESCRIBE MASCULINITY

independent
non-emotional
aggressive
tough-skinned
competitive
clumsy
experienced
strong
active
self-confident
hard
sexually aggressive
rebellious

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/sexual-orientation-gender/gender-gender-identity-26530.htm

In case it really needs saying at this point (I wouldn't think so, but you've been surprising me), I don't in any way think that men and women SHOULD adhere to these gender roles -- that women should stick to the descriptions in the "feminine" column, and men to the "masculine" column. It's just a list of what those traditional gender roles have included.

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@failures art,

Yes, she has it right, because that's what her dad and I have been teaching her.

And with that, you show that you still really aren't getting it.

Ah well. Time sink. See ya.

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@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

Except that I'm not laying claim to anything. Men who are nurturing = awesome!

It's awesome to be nurturing, but frankly nothing about this for a man should be considered exceptional, IMO.

sozobe wrote:

But nurturing behavior has historically been considered a feminine trait, yes. This is not something I pulled out of thin air.

I understand this. I simply don't care to perpetuate it simply because. The fact that people have associated nurturing with women, doesn't make nurturing a female thing. It only means that people associate it as so.

When a woman does science (a field historically dominated by men) it would be stupid to simply perpetuate that she was doing something remarkable. It's not remarkable because nothing about being a woman interferes with doing science. Likewise, being nurturing is nothing remarkable for a man.

sozobe wrote:

I certainly find it surprising that you just reject that, but if you want some proof, sure.

I'll start with a question: historically, how many female nurses vs. male nurses have there been? Why do you think that is?

This doesn't prove anything. This can only be a means to support the nature of things based on stereotypes. Since men are no less capable and successful as nurses, I don't think that pointing to Nursing is a good basis for your argument.

That there have been more female nurses is because of social pressure, not any sort of critical examination of men v women. It's not men have been more CEOs because they are objectively better suited for it. I'm not into using a stereotype as a basis. Sorry.

sozobe wrote:

This one's a little hard to Google -- I've found scads of references to feminine and masculine traits and what they are, but not sure what would necessarily prove that these are societal norms, not just my opinion/ tautology. That it's not something for you to "disagree" with any more than the statement "it used to be that women couldn't vote." Women used to not be able to vote. "Nurturing" has been traditionally been considered a feminine trait.

I'll start with this:

Quote:
WORDS COMMONLY USED TO DESCRIBE FEMININITY

dependent
emotional
passive
sensitive
quiet
graceful
innocent
weak
flirtatious
nurturing
self-critical
soft
sexually submissive
accepting

WORDS COMMONLY USED TO DESCRIBE MASCULINITY

independent
non-emotional
aggressive
tough-skinned
competitive
clumsy
experienced
strong
active
self-confident
hard
sexually aggressive
rebellious
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/sexual-orientation-gender/gender-gender-identity-26530.htm

The argumentum ad Google is just another form of argumentum ad populum. Not to mention, I think reading the unbolded words on the list would raise your hair. Using your list, I could say being flirtatious is feminine or being weak is feminine. So if you want to use google as a means, do you plan to pick and choose which words you agree with?

I think this is a poor method.

sozobe wrote:

In case it really needs saying at this point (I wouldn't think so, but you've been surprising me), I don't in any way think that men and women SHOULD adhere to these gender roles -- that women should stick to the descriptions in the "feminine" column, and men to the "masculine" column. It's just a list of what those traditional gender roles have included.

I'm familiar with where we've been. I'm more concerned with where we are going. I "get" it, Soz. I'm not trying to surprise you. We disagree--it's not that, bless my heart, I just can't seem to get it.

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@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

Meanwhile, men and women can engage in a variety of behaviors which may be feminine or masculine.

Expanding on that: If you observe same-sex couples, you will often notice that one partner acts distinctly feminine while the other acts distinctly masculine. So it appears that separating those behavioral roles makes for a useful division of labor in a relationship---no matter what's the total number of testicles involved.

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As usual, a look into a dictionary can help sort out confusion.

When Failure's Art uses the word feminine, he thinks of the American Heritage Dictionary's sense no. 1: "of or relating to women or girls." When Sozobe uses the word feminine, she thinks of the American Heritage Dictionary's sense no. 2: "characterized by or possessing qualities traditionally attributed to women, such as demureness." Rosie the riveter is feminine in sense #1, masculine in sense #2. Apparently, both of you implicitly think that your usage of the word is the only valid one. That's why each of you gets frustrated because the other isn't getting it.

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@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

Egalitarianism is fine, I like it better than humanism, it still has the same problem of generality, though. Egalitarianism covers racism, homophobia, ageism, classism, etc., etc. Feminism is about gender equality specifically.

And msolga makes good points about what greater specificity means in terms of actually getting things done. And we all seem to agree that more needs to be done.

I believe this is empirically untenable. For just one counter-example, Martin Luther King got a lot of things done for Blacks without creating a separate ideology of "blackism". Indeed, he made a point of not doing that. That's why he gave his I-have-been-to-the-mountaintop speech, his last before he got shot, in support of striking garbage workers, not of some Blacks-only organization. It reflects badly on American-history books that America's collective consciousness downplays King's egalitarian agenda. But this agenda reflects very positively on Martin Luther King---especially in terms of getting things done.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

sozobe wrote:
Meanwhile, men and women can engage in a variety of behaviors which may be feminine or masculine.

Expanding on that: If you observe same-sex couples, you will often notice that one partner acts distinctly feminine while the other acts distinctly masculine. So it appears that separating those behavioral roles makes for a useful division of labor in a relationship---no matter what's the total number of testicles involved.

That's an interesting point.

In a homosexual relationship, is one partner more exceptional if they adopt a form of gender role play? I don't believe so, but given that the LGBT community has a whole second order lexicon (e.g. - twinks, bears, otters, etc) for various "types" of gay people, I wonder if this causes friction in some relationship dynamics.

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@Thomas,

That would be a valid observation if I hadn't clarified which definition I was using at the outset.

I don't know if you saw, but this whole tangent started when failures art said it was "somewhat offensive" to him when I said that nurturing is a traditionally feminine trait, and I was happy that this was changing, and men were more free to be nurturing.

http://able2know.org/topic/182363-6#post-4879001

That's how my clarification becomes pertinent. I accept that definition #1 is a definition of feminine. It is not, however, the way in which I was using it. My argument was not "there is only one meaning of the word 'feminine'," it was "this is the meaning of 'feminine' I am using, which is a valid meaning."

Since I am not stating that there is only one valid meaning for the word "feminine," my frustration does not stem from that. It is about the repeated and rather egregious misreadings of what I've been saying that makes me think that continued discussion would be fruitless at best.

Just for example, I said this:

sozobe wrote:

I thought [the movie "Mr. Mom"] was kind of funny when I first saw it in 1983. I thought it was profoundly un-funny when I re-watched it recently, and my 11-year-old daughter thought the whole thing was idiotic. She's grown up in a world where it's perfectly normal for men to be taking care of kids and shopping and cleaning the house -- all of which was played for comic effect in the movie.

And this is the response?

failures art wrote:

Some of the assumptions you may have about what is masculine, feminine, or gender neutral are going to be different than mine. The Mr. Mom story you shared about sozlet is a pretty good example of this. Doesn't mean that sozlet needs to be educated on why such a scene should be emasculating or embarrassing.

How on earth could he take from what I've said that I think in any way my daughter "needs to be educated on why such a scene should be emasculating or embarrassing"?

This quote also contains the "assumptions" canard -- the idea that "nurturing is a feminine trait" is something that I just came up with, rather than being an actual traditional feminine trait. (Definition #2.)

Meanwhile, I really should have asked that nurse question earlier, because this is all I have been saying throughout:

failures art wrote:

That there have been more female nurses is because of social pressure,

RIGHT! Social pressure! Social norms. Gender roles. Which are now becoming more porous.

There are more male nurses, there are more men walking around with babies in Snuglis. Both are good developments. Both have a lot to do with feminism.

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@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

I don't know if you saw,

No I didn't. I admit that I skimmed over much of your exchange rather than read it all attentively.

Sozobe wrote:

That's how my clarification becomes pertinent. I accept that definition #1 is a definition of feminine. It is not, however, the way in which I was using it. My argument was not "there is only one meaning of the word 'feminine'," it was "this is the meaning of 'feminine' I am using, which is a valid meaning."

Point taken. Thanks for clarifying! And, I feel your pain about not coming through.

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