Entries tagged with feminism

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“This series of essays aims to reconstruct and reintroduce the radical feminist framework that its misbegotten inheritors seem determined to forget and in doing so boldly makes the claim that transfeminism, far from being antagonistic to radical feminism, is in fact its direct descendant. It shows how a comprehensive social theory of transsexual oppression flows almost naturally from radical feminist precepts and dares to declare that a materialist, radical transfeminism is the way forward to seize the foundations of patriarchy at the root.”

This is headed nowhere good, and it’s headed there fast.

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The more I read Sisi Jiang, the more I dislike the phrase “white feminism.” It gestures at a real phenomenon, but thinking of it as “white” misses that plenty of people like Jiang who aren’t white also engage in it.

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feminism

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There’s a certain kind of guy who, as far as I can tell, is being genuine about not understanding feminist fiction. He doesn’t get why the characters behave the way they do, and why they don’t just [X] where [X] is some thing that’s socially or even physically dangerous to do when dealing with sexists. He thinks the plots are implausible even when they seem to be based on the author’s life.

I’ve seen more than one guy like this, and I’m not sure what their deal is. I could say they lack experience, but I’ve understood a few feminist stories related to things I haven’t experienced, like catcalling. So I’m not sure what they’re missing or how to provide it.

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Well maybe you’ll never be a “real woman” either. Maybe the concept of a “real woman” has been so mythologized and marketed that it has nothing to do with its component words. I mean, a woman with wrinkles may be a woman who is real, but is she marketable as a “real woman”?

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Still thinking about that poster who said the category of “woman” is set up to exclude lesbians. I actually have think she’s got the wrong gender there. Patriarchy already has a way to fit lesbians into its categories, and it’s called “corrective rape.” But you could definitely argue that gay men aren’t considered ”real” men.

(Reminds me of something I heard about segregation. If you’ve got a men’s bathroom and a colored bathroom, then you’re saying the guys in the colored bathroom ain’t really men.)

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I'm making some reposts from Tumblr

Written in response to this post about feminism.

My mother thinks Hillary Clinton is a bad person for not leaving Bill after he cheated on her. She said women whose husbands cheat on them feel powerless to leave because not even Hillary Clinton left. My brother was angry at the idea that one person, even such a public-facing person, should be expected to be a role model at the expense of the ability to make whatever choice is right for her personally.

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I got linked to an old Slate Star Codex post

I want to take this one section out of context: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/

“The feminists who constantly argue about whether you can be a real feminist or not without believing in X, Y and Z and wanting to empower women in some very specific way, and who demand everybody support controversial policies like affirmative action or affirmative consent laws (bailey). Then when someone says they don’t really like feminism very much, they object “But feminism is just the belief that women are people!” (motte) Then once the person hastily retreats and promises he definitely didn’t mean women aren’t people, the feminists get back to demanding everyone support affirmative action because feminism, or arguing about whether you can be a feminist and wear lipstick..”

On the one hand, this is a very, very good way of expressing what bugs me about “feminism” as a concept. On the other, I think the author is slightly misdiagnosing the issue. The arguer doesn’t change between two separate definitions of feminism. They think some specific feminist idea, say, equal pay, is not just a logical outcome of believing in women’s equality, but such an obvious throughline from women’s equality that you couldn’t possibly be obtuse enough to believe in women’s equality and not see how that includes equal pay. Therefore, if you don’t believe in equal pay, you must be lying when you say you believe in equality.

A good point of comparison here is those libertarians who think there’s a specific set of principles by which you can conclude that open debate is a good thing. They think all of those principles also prove that libertarians are correct, and the proof is so simple and obvious that denying it is obtuse. Therefore, by choosing to openly debate them, you’re revealing that you’re a libertarian who just doesn’t want to admit it.

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bigotry,
feminism

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As much as feminists mock anti-feminists for talking about “misandry,” anti-feminists seem strangely uninterested in how and why women might hate men. I’ve seen them talk about why women might fear men, why women might envy men, and why women might hate the world in general, but when they talk about women specifically hating men, it’s treated as something that just happens for no explainable reason. Accordingly, they never consider what might be done to prevent women from hating men, only to prevent women who hate men from having the power to do anything about it.

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In response to that “colonial garrison” post everyone hated

For me, a good point of judgment on whether a feminist argument makes any sense is “would my mother agree with the basic grievance here?” She’s not versed in feminist theory, but she’s open-minded and aware, and she doesn’t blame herself for other people’s bigotry. When she’s treated poorly because of her sex, she notices.

A LOT of the feminist arguments that provoke responses about “scrupulosity” are things where my mother wouldn’t agree with the initial grievance. So if feminism is driving you into a depressive tailspin, you have my mother’s indirect endorsement to not worry so much.

(I wasn’t even offended by that post, but hoo boy did it dredge up a lot of anger. I’m not linking it because it’s caused enough wank already.)

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The World You Need

I used to say that people create the Jesus they need most, imagining their personal Jesus as a reflection of themselves with all their flaws reframed and justified as virtues. I’d like to take it a step farther–people create the world they need most, even if it takes them their whole lifetimes.

Take John C. Wright, a very smart, very arrogant writer who thinks the only possible reason you could disagree with him is that you haven’t read as many books as him. He used to be a strident atheist, and while this gave him plenty of opportunities to be smug, it still felt like he had the capacity to see and understand things about the world that weren’t exactly how he wanted them to be. Then he had a stroke, started hearing the “voice of Jesus” in his head, and redoubled his fervency as a Catholic. He’s found new life and vigor in ranting about how gay people and feminists are ruining the world by going against the will of God, because he now has the ultimate authority to appeal to and the ultimate book to point to when he wants to claim he’s more learned than you. I’m not saying Catholicism is bad, but it was both bad for and necessary to Wright, because it gave him free reign to be what his worst impulses always inclined him towards being.

Or take Tatsuya Ishida, who used to be an offensive but empathetic chronicler of society’s dropouts. His comic Sinfest always carried the feeling that there was something fundamentally wrong with society, and a strong implication that this wrongness related to sex, hedonism, and selfishness. However, he was never able to clearly label the problem, so he was never able to blame or ostracize anyone for it. His characters remained lovable even at their lowest points, and they were beginning to form support networks and develop into decent people. Then he discovered feminism, and suddenly his entire comic was about ways in which men dehumanize women. Every issue was reframed in terms of men’s sexism and selfishness, and any attempt at nuance was rejected as a trick to undermine and manipulate women. Feminism let Ishida believe in a world that had an understandable, fixable problem, and if that single problem was too simple to cover the whole world, then the world could simply shrink to fit his understanding. Again, I’m not saying feminism is bad, but it was bad for Ishida, because it gave him what he’d always wanted.

This post was inspired by an article about past-life regression, written by an author who didn’t believe but clearly wanted to. She talked at length about her personal anxieties that could be quelled by the belief in lives before and after this one, and she almost made it sound compelling to set aside the world you know and embrace the world you need. But I can’t help but wonder, if she chose to see what she wanted, are there things she would then become unable to see? And what would that mean for the people around her, if in some way they were part of the unseen?