Like so many waves eroding the cliffs of the patriarchy (FEMINISM THREAD)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Like so many waves eroding the cliffs of the patriarchy (FEMINISM THREAD)

falcon2424: May 2, 2005

Deified Data posted:

I don't really understand why people use the term "ally" either. To differentiate between varying levels of experience/involvement with the core issue maybe? It's not terribly important to the conversation and shouldn't bother you too much. If anything it's gained a (perhaps undeserved) reputation to mean fair-weather friends so you're better off just doing what you do and forgetting about labels. Feminism is a defined worldview hence the defined label "feminist" as opposed to "feminist ally".

I think you're right that it's about involvement. Feminism is an ideology. But it's also an activist movement.

I'd take "ally" to mean someone who's supportive of the ideology, but not leading any immediate activism themselves.

I kind of like the idea of people defining themselves based on what they're doing, rather than on what they believe. Especially for an ideology as diverse as feminism.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2016 18:42

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 20:23

falcon2424: May 2, 2005

ate poo poo on live tv posted:

Are white people wearing dreadlocks a feminist issue? Because I really hope not, otherwise it sounds like this thread for feminism is more of a tool for social control rather then something worthwhile like believing all people are equal and should be treated equally.

People horrifically misuse the term 'intersectionality', but the idea could apply here.

The core idea is that women don't face a single set of stereotypes and pressures. Soujourner Truth is pointing out that stereotypes like, "Women are Weak" aren't universal. Really, the stereotype was that white women were weak. Black women weren't helped into carriages or expected to faint.

She's pointing out that black woman's experience isn't just "white woman" discrimination plus "black man" discrimination. It can be its own thing.

There's tons of horrible messaging out there about black women's hair. That's as much a feminist issue as the "white women are physically weak" stereotype.

So, it's totally plausible that some messaging about dreadlocks is a feminist thing.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 01:56

falcon2424: May 2, 2005

-Blackadder- posted:

Trying not to lock people into being forced to answer a specific question here, so I'll essentially just ask: what the gently caress? What do people have to say about this?

Not a Trump supporter. Having talked to some, I'd expect that a Trump-supporting woman would argue: (1) A vote for Hillary would still put a rapist into the White House. (2) Trump's was bragging about his fame. He was saying that he 'could' grab women, in the sense that they'd let him. Not in the sense that his lawyer wife would force them to settle the assault case out of court. (3) The country is in such terrible position that the president's policies matter much more than their personal life.

I don't really agree with these. But conservatives work from different facts than I do. The fact that republican women rationalized their support for the republican candidate wasn't a huge surprise.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 02:08

falcon2424: May 2, 2005

Ghost of Reagan Past posted:

I think there are way more interesting and important things than whether men can call themselves feminists and it's not worth getting bogged down in the question. I and a lot of other people happen to think men can be feminists (Feminism is for Everybody, after all), but if someone disagrees I don't think it's worth wringing my hands over--since we're all hopefully after the same things at the end of the day (equality for women and the end of sexism). It turns out that feminism isn't some lock-step ideology; there's widespread disagreement on almost everything among feminists, except for the claim that sexism persists today and that equality is a good thing.

I agree with the bold.

"Feminism" is a principle that unites a bunch of very different ideologies. It's not really an ideology on it's own. Discussions and FAQs would get a lot better if people acknowledged that they were working from a specific branch of the ideology.

Otherwise, discussions amount to a Catholic writing about basic Catholic concepts and labeling it a "Christianity FAQ". It's true that there are Christians who believe in Transubstantiation. And there are Christians who see that it's core to their Christianity. But there are plenty of sincere Christians who hold a a different view.

The problem is that the label will lead to an (extremely boring) fight about definitions. Imprecise labels make it hard for the Catholic who wrote that FAQ to distinguish Methodist critiques (which accept basic Christian assumptions) from Atheist ones (which don't).

So, a "Feminist FAQ" is fine. But it's going to be like 3 bullet points. What we want are FAQs that are coming from a place that's way more specific than "Sexism Exists" and "Equality is Good".

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 21:46

falcon2424: May 2, 2005

OwlFancier posted:

If person B then does not look past the first google result they probably weren't very interested to begin with.

The request then becomes not "tell me what is true" but instead "tell me why I should care"

How is that a problem?

If you accost me in the supermarket and demand, "Tell me why I should care about climate change!" then that's rude and weird. You'd be interrupting my private life.

Marginalized people shouldn't be expected to randomly defend their group, either. People have a right to pick when they want to debate and discuss stuff.

But that seems like a perfectly reasonable question for a thread I posted in a debate and discussion forum.

The question could be off topic if there was an active back-and-forth about some more interesting sub-topic. But absent that back-and-forth, the Climate Change 101 questions aren't really even off-topic.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 22:14

falcon2424: May 2, 2005

OwlFancier posted:

Because the answer to that question, in the context of societal inequality, is quite simple, it is "because group X is suffering because of systemic injustice" and that isn't a thing you really need explaining to you, you're already aware of that idea.

From there, you either accept that and should be motivated to perform basic research, or you do not, in which case you're essentially saying "well, I heard that y'all were being poo poo on by society but I don't think that's true, tell me why it is" which is not a good attitude to approach people with.

I suppose the other option is that you accept that the injustice is present and just don't give a poo poo in which case you're a knobhead.

In both cases, I'd assume that the person is really asking, "why should I care as much as you want me to care?" or "explain to me why you think these effects are going to be big?"

And, again, those questions seem perfectly fair.

Donald Trump won 42% of the women's vote. That's millions of women. Those women aren't ignorant of sexism. They just have different ideas about how it should be prioritized.

It should be perfectly acceptable for a female Trump supporter to ask a question (in a debate and discussion forum) like, "When I'm voting, why should I prioritize anti-sexism above the other things I'd care about?"

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 22:33

falcon2424: May 2, 2005

OwlFancier posted:

That is a rather more specific question than just "why should I care", it's quite specifically asking for priorities between two choices and touches on a good few subjects, such as presumably anything that the questioner thinks is more important than the sexist tendencies of the presidential candidate.

It is also a bit different if say, a woman asks that question because she will likely have more experience with the effects of sexism than a man will and is thus probably asking it from a position of at least some personal experience.

The details invite empathy. But the question core question is still, "Why should I care?"

That phrasing might not be the one that an educated, upper-middle class person would use. But activism and debate aren't there to convince the converted.

Basically, I agree with this: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/01/29/i-dont-know-what-to-do-you-guys/

Freddie deBoer posted:

So, to state the obvious: Jon Chait is a jerk who somehow manages to be both condescending and wounded in his piece on political correctness. He gets the basic nature of language policing wrong, and his solutions are wrong, and he�s a centrist Democrat scold who is just as eager to shut people out of the debate as the people he criticizes. That�s true.

Here are some things that are also true.

I have seen, with my own two eyes, a 19 year old white woman � smart, well-meaning, passionate � literally run crying from a classroom because she was so ruthlessly brow-beaten for using the word �disabled.� Not repeatedly. Not with malice. Not because of privilege. She used the word once and was excoriated for it. She never came back. I watched that happen.

I have seen, with my own two eyes, a 20 year old black man, a track athlete who tried to fit organizing meetings around classes and his ridiculous practice schedule (for which he received a scholarship worth a quarter of tuition), be told not to return to those meetings because he said he thought there were such a thing as innate gender differences. He wasn�t a homophobe, or transphobic, or a misogynist. It turns out that 20 year olds from rural South Carolina aren�t born with an innate understanding of the intersectionality playbook. But those were the terms deployed against him, those and worse. So that was it; he was gone.

I have seen, with my own two eyes, a 33 year old Hispanic man, an Iraq war veteran who had served three tours and had become an outspoken critic of our presence there, be lectured about patriarchy by an affluent 22 year old white liberal arts college student, because he had said that other vets have to �man up� and speak out about the war. Because apparently we have to pretend that we don�t know how metaphorical language works or else we�re bad people. I watched his eyes glaze over as this woman with $300 shoes berated him. I saw that. Myself.

These things aren�t hypothetical. This isn�t some thought experiment. This is where I live, where I have lived. These and many, many more depressing stories of good people pushed out and marginalized in left-wing circles because they didn�t use the proper set of social and class signals to satisfy the world of intersectional politics. So you�ll forgive me when I roll my eyes at the army of media liberals, stuffed into their narrow enclaves, responding to Chait by insisting that there is no problem here and that anyone who says there is should be considered the enemy.

If your standard would lead to 'activists' telling off people as eminently convertible as Trump-supporting women, then it seems like a poor form of activism.

Again, the "it's not my job to educate you!" standard is excellent everywhere else. Outside of activism and debate forums, that's really not people's job. Inside them, it totally could be.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 22:58

falcon2424: May 2, 2005

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Oh hey look it's a case study in everything I was talking about. "Why should I care about women p.s. I know more than feminists do about how they should be feminists."

I didn't take OwlFancier's post as anti-feminist at all. It's a conversation between people who agree with each other about the fundamentals of what we're discussing. Sexism is real. It should be fought. Our core disagreement is totally within that.

Please don't worry that I'm offended here. I'm perfectly able to keep up. No need to panic and hit the brakes on my behalf

Though, I'll agree that my "Feminism should be intersectional and reach out across class" position is pretty 101. If you have a topic that will invite a higher-level back-and-forth, I'd love to read it.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 23:10

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 20:23

falcon2424: May 2, 2005

OwlFancier posted:

TB basically put it better than I likely would. "Why should I care about women" is a loving appalling question and people who need to ask that question need to look at themselves and do some serious thinking, because you should not find that an appropriate question to ask.

I'm not sure where we disagree.

"Why should I care" could be read as, "I'm about to vote. Why should I care about this more than X?" or it could be read as "Why should I care about women at all?"

We seem to agree that the former is legitimate. And it's something that I'd really like people to find an answer to. Trump shouldn't get a second term.

We also agree that the latter is totally illegitimate and has no place in a thread that assumes sexism is real.

Is the debate just about how we're parsing "Why should I care?" on average? If so, that's an english-use question where I don't have enough of an opinion to mount a defense.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 23:15

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Like so many waves eroding the cliffs of the patriarchy (FEMINISM THREAD)