so if you ever wanted to know why someone wouldn't feel comfortable calling themselves a feminist...

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

Having a tumblr and making hashtags about gender equality doesn't do shit. There are very few people willing to put their money where their mouth is. They'd rather put it in to whatever handbag the current pop-culture feminist icon is currently hawking.

I just want to point out that THIS is currently a huge issue. People need to understand discussing these things online is still not as important than volunteering to answer hotlines, volunteer to help raise funds to keep shelters open, to provide safe houses for people who are in immediate danger, and to provide aid to those in need. Posting online is easy, making a real difference in people's lives is much more difficult and what is needed to actually change these things. Donating time and money is where help is needed most. Shelters are insanely overcrowded and underfunded, there simply are not enough resources being allocated to handle the amount of people who are in need of help and that is the first thing someone can do to actually help.

http://www.feminist.org/911/crisis.html
and that very first number on that list is for both men and women:
http://www.thehotline.org/2014/07/men-can-be-victims-of-abuse-too/

So yea, if people want to actually make a difference sign up to help and donate to these organizations that ARE helping.

 

[Level 7 Dragon]

Having a tumblr and making hashtags about gender equality doesn't do shit. There are very few people willing to put their money where their mouth is. They'd rather put it in to whatever handbag the current pop-culture feminist icon is currently hawking.

I just want to point out that THIS is currently a huge issue. People need to understand discussing these things online is still not as important than volunteering to answer hotlines, volunteer to help raise funds to keep shelters open, to provide safe houses for people who are in immediate danger, and to provide aid to those in need. Posting online is easy, making a real difference in people's lives is much more difficult and what is needed to actually change these things. Donating time and money is where help is needed most. Shelters are insanely overcrowded and underfunded, there simply are not enough resources being allocated to handle the amount of people who are in need of help and that is the first thing someone can do to actually help.

http://www.feminist.org/911/crisis.html
and that very first number on that list is for both men and women:
http://www.thehotline.org/2014/07/men-can-be-victims-of-abuse-too/

So yea, if people want to actually make a difference sign up to help and donate to these organizations that ARE helping.

Bless you. We need more activists and less ideologues.

 

[Erttheking]

Having a tumblr and making hashtags about gender equality doesn't do shit. There are very few people willing to put their money where their mouth is. They'd rather put it in to whatever handbag the current pop-culture feminist icon is currently hawking.

I just want to point out that THIS is currently a huge issue. People need to understand discussing these things online is still not as important than volunteering to answer hotlines, volunteer to help raise funds to keep shelters open, to provide safe houses for people who are in immediate danger, and to provide aid to those in need. Posting online is easy, making a real difference in people's lives is much more difficult and what is needed to actually change these things. Donating time and money is where help is needed most. Shelters are insanely overcrowded and underfunded, there simply are not enough resources being allocated to handle the amount of people who are in need of help and that is the first thing someone can do to actually help.

http://www.feminist.org/911/crisis.html
and that very first number on that list is for both men and women:
http://www.thehotline.org/2014/07/men-can-be-victims-of-abuse-too/

So yea, if people want to actually make a difference sign up to help and donate to these organizations that ARE helping.

Thanks for pointing that out to me, just donated to both of them.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Quite honestly, and while admittedly this isn't the most helpful mindset but more of a personal indulgence, if finding some idiot on the internet who identifies as a feminist is enough to make you uncomfortable with the notion of identifying as part of a centuries-long intellectual and philosophical tradition of advocating for gender equality, good. As intellectually vapid as it is to apply guilt by association to such a thing based off some idiot you found on the internet, I, on a personal level, don't want to have anything in common with someone so desperate to not identify as a feminist.

Meanwhile, we'll have numerous excuses for why this utterly moronic standard of judging an international political, academic, intellectual, and moral framework and movement isn't applied to literally everything else from gamers to the French to Buddhists to book readers to Escapists. Or worse, we'll get some edgy teenage cynicism explaining that the standard should apply to all of them because all of humanity is dark like my sharp soul.

I think what might be the most annoying (at least, at the moment) thing about people who are desperate to find excuses not to identify as feminists but still act like they're wholly supportive of gender equality is the reasoning that revolves around feminists daring to be concerned about their own damn society instead of venturing forth and just solving Saudi Arabia. I mean, how could they claim to care about gender equality when they don't care about real issues that only exist in some foreign land where you wouldn't have to hear about them? What kind of person is concerned with something as insignificant and petty as the culture their birthplace is steeped in? Clearly it's the sort of person you don't want to ever be even remotely associated with.

Like, I could sort of get it if we were talking about TERFs or something like that that had resulted in a negative experience that put you a bit off feminism as a movement, but I don't consider watching some idiot's youtube video about some idiot spouting shit in a car to be comparable to that.

Add to that fact the "I'm a humanist/egalitarian, not a feminist" do just as little, if somehow even less than the people they're shoveling garbage onto for being feminist. Are the "i'm not feminist, I'm humanist" venturing forth and bringing down the Saudi's like they demand feminists do? Are they doing ANYTHING other than simply proclaiming how shit feminism is?

They could be like MRA OG Paul Elam and claim that THAT is enough of a contribution...

 

[Just Ebola]

Philip Defranco

Whoops, first sentence and I already want to stop reading. I'm really hesitant to give that slack-jawed vulture even one additional view for him to cash in. He's basically lower than a maggot sucking on the eye socket of a dead crow.

I've been watching him for like a month straight. What are you seeing in him that I don't?

To be fair, it's not just him, but all of his ilk that pollute youtube with their rubbish. Scarce, Drama Alert and Philip himself, the equivalent of youtube tabloids, except they somehow do even less research and deal almost exclusively in fake scandals, imaginary rivalries and artificial controversies.

I don't like anyone who intentionally stirs shit and capitalizes on the basest impulses of the dumb internet masses to line their own pockets with money. All the responsibility of a journalist, none of the integrity, look at how these people behave on twitter and speak to their critics with all the grace and dignity of a pissy 12 year old.

DeFranco might not be the worst of the bunch, but in my book he's still a parasite lapping up all the fame and profit he can get his grubby talons on by highlighting the negative and often embellished or flat out wrong, and championing the spread of all this internet drama garbage.

It turns my stomach, and I sincerely wish he would have to choke on every ill-gotten dime he makes throughout the course of his slanderous career.

 

[axlryder]

Dude... really?

We're still on this "look, a woman acted badly! EXPLAIN THAT, FEMINISM" thing?

Like, do you legitimately think that's a good argument?

Oh yeah, a woman acted badly, let's forget the whole "women and men being treated equally" thing. Let's just pack it in, The Escapist dudes think it's not a good idea!

Spoiler: Once again

To play devil's advocate here, I think the video in the OP is more meant to be taken as representative of the sort of behavior that might cause one to distance themselves from feminism.

As far as I can tell, we're seeing this sort of thing cropping up more and more lately, but I think that's just the nature of social media to expose things like this at an increasing rate. I want to say we're seeing it more with MOST movements, groups, etc.

That said, when you combine the above with the fact that intersectional feminism seems less associated with the very necessary idea that a combination of race/culture/socio-economic status/gender can create compounding and unique issues and more seen as feminism absorbing all civil rights issues into itself, one might be inclined to believe there's a degree of hypocrisy permeating the feminist "movement", and somewhat reasonably conflate those that utilize civil rights buzzwords with feminists.

This is especially true when you consider that there is a journalist wing of feminism that has morphed into a full blown industry, an industry that profits off of these inter-sectional topics and benefits from absorbing other social-justice movements into itself to generate new material. Perhaps at this point you might just call it the "civil rights" industry, but it started with feminism so I think that's perceived to be the heart of it.

That's further complicated by the fact that feminism isn't really a movement in the traditional sense when you consider just how many schools of thought there are and how many different levels it exists on. Some of those schools even draw different conclusions about the same general topics (*cough* TERF *cough*). You also have different people with different motivations and different philosophies all parading under the banner of feminism. Despite this, as of right now there's no practical way to divorce the core definition of feminism with all of the movements, individuals and ideologies that constitute all of feminism. Its the same reason why the risk of being called "sexist" for even disagreeing with/opposing an idea/person/thing that has been purported as "feminist" or "representing women rights" is such a potent deterrent. Just look at the whole Hillary Clinton/Bernie Sanders debacle.

I think the seeming contradictions/double standards along with increased visibility of the horrible people associated with the feminist "tag" is making a lot of people want to wash their hands of it. Some people just don't want to cling to the kernel idea of feminism while adamantly ignoring the entire entity mutate and warp into a massive amalgamation of ideas and philosophies, like a shitty, bloated OS that constantly installs new updates that only seem to make it worse. Obviously that's not truly representative of what feminism IS, but it's also very hard to nail down feminism, despite so many people adamantly proclaiming otherwise, and that's also part of the problem. People don't like to call themselves something when, in a way, they're really not sure what they're agreeing to. You could call that laziness, but I think when you're dealing with something as bloated and quickly evolving as this, it might just be an issue of practicality for some. For others, they themselves might understand, but be aware that others don't, and aren't going to be able to properly convey their positions in whatever brief window they have upon identifying as feminists.

Of course, there are obviously a LOT of people who are waayyyyy too eager to jump on the bandwagon of "feminism is rotten to the core, we should abandon it", feigning that they every really identified as feminists to begin with. I personally don't agree that feminism should be abandoned. I think a lot of this IS a perception issue, and there is definitely spin/bias associated with those who might peddle the ideas stated above, inflating both the severity of the problems and their occurrence rates. I also don't think the public perception of feminism has been soured enough (preexisting biases aside) to really require explanation of one's position beyond "feminist". While the same might not be true online, you can much more easily clarify your position online, so that also becomes a non-issue.

That said, I do think feminism is in a state of flux, and it's messy and there ARE problems associated with it, but that's true of many philosophies/civil rights movements. I think people just need to try to sit down and reconcile these things, rather than just flinging hate around.

Mostly though, I think think feminist click-bait sites, like MRA click-bait youtubers, are fucking poison, and twitter is the devil.

 

[Schadrach]

This guy sounds just as bad as she does. He is attempting to claim that her being a snot somehow represents "feminists" and negate the work that actual feminists do.

I agree, there are far better examples if you want to point to feminists being, dare I say...problematic. It's not hard to find a multitude of examples of people who are or were noteworthy due to feminism or who built careers out of feminist activism or teaching who have said and done some awful things, shooting Andy Warhol not withstanding.

This one is just a whiny <insert insult that makes anything I say for the rest of this post just misogyny because cis-het-white-male> being awful over nothing important (we can argue about the percentage of such running around but you'll just disown them as "not a monolith" in exactly the same way other ideologies aren't allowed to do with their own nutters, and in some cases with other groups' nutters).

It's worth noting that she did get the driver in question fired until this video became public, though. She did actual harm to someone because she decided a hula doll on his dash was offensive and he should be punished as a result.

If people want to know about feminism, they go here:

http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/12/male-rape-epidemic/

Myth 4 is certainly a myth (or very nearly so) if you use the same definitions as the folks who gather stats on rape and sexual assault. Of course, they're using the broader "rape is sex without consent or when consent is legally impossible" that gets used in cases like this, while there's a tendency to switch to definitions that all but prevent women from being rapists when the goal is to emphasize how men are the problem or how male victims don't need resources available.

It's likewise noteworthy that the same woman (Mary P. Koss) who coined the terms "date rape" and "acquaintance rape" and devised the "1-in-4" statistic and the methods used to measure rates of rape and sexual assault also stated "It is inappropriate to consider as a rape victim a man who engages in unwanted sexual intercourse with a woman" and that a case where a woman had sex with a drugged man was not even sexual assault but rather "unwanted contact." This is a tendency in the stats, to minimize cases of male victimization, especially when it happens at the hands of women. If you can't do it by designing the data collection method to give what you want, you can always massage the definitions or the numbers, and if that doesn't work you can simply dismiss or ignore them in your conclusions and summaries which are what most people are going to report on or make decisions based upon.

But these days it all gets conflated into this big singular entity, to the point where issues relating to transgender people and blacks will for some reason be tied to feminism.

Isn't that the literal point of "intersectional feminism", to make race and trans issues "about feminism"? Kind of like how Atheism+ was an attempt to make atheism "about feminism" rather than merely about lack of faith in a divinity of any description.

It is like claiming Jeffrey Dahmer is representative of all men because he says he is a man.

I could quote all manner of notable feminists saying all manner of awful things. None of them individually represent all feminists (let alone all women, as the two are not synonymous), but when enough of them pile up, you have to wonder why we're supposed to pretend they're all just random nutters of no significance. Random nutters with long careers in academia or media, random nutters with gender-related administrative positions in universities, random nutters with best-selling books or books that are required reading in gender studies. That sort of thing.

My personal favorite was Adele Mercier, a professor of feminist philosophy at Queens who once argued that underage boys in juvenile detention facilities who had sex with female staff were consenting to it and thus weren't victims of sexual assault. Let's be clear here -- she claimed that underage boys who were prisoners could meaningfully consent to sex with female staff at the facility in which they were imprisoned. Talk about a fucking power imbalance.

Or the whole "women are the primary victims of war" because the men in their families die violently in the conflict bit from our likely next POTUS.

I could invoke Catherine Comins, assistant dean of student life at Vassar talking about how male students could benefit from being falsely accused of rape because it might make them think about if that's a thing that they could potentially have done.

I mentioned Mary P. Koss above, as well.

That's without going too far back. The Clinton example was the oldest one, being from the 90s.

There are so many examples it's mind boggling. I'm half tempted to start a "horrible things said by feminists" thread over on Wild West just to see how many people can come up with.

Gender equality=feminism. The reason it isn't enough for some people is because many claim to believe in gender equality that actually don't, both male and female. They often do not understand what equality actually is. It isn't "I like apple pie so you have to eat apple pie too so it is equal". That isn't equal at all. It is like this: Say Apple is my favorite pie and cherry is yours. I get a piece of apple pie and you get a piece of cherry pie and it is equal because we both get a piece of our favorite pie.

You mean like how the Affordable Care Act explicitly requires programs to cover at least one example of every category of contraceptive recognized by the FDA without cost so long as they get a prescription, including barrier methods and sterilization, but only if the contraceptive in question is for women? Literally the only reason this hasn't gone to a court case over equal protection is that most insurance covers vasectomy (but aren't required to because that's sterilizing a man rather than a woman) and vasalgel is apparently the second hardest thing to get through the FDA for no reasonable reasons (the moment it hits the market in the US and insurance refuses to cover it, Obamacare will have an equal protection lawsuit).

Or to put it in your analogy, "You like apple pie and I like cherry. Therefore, the law should be that I should pay for all of my cherry pie unless someone is willing to help, and everyone collectively should be required to pay for your apple pie."

Or maybe I should point out that women outnumber men in college, to a degree that was used to justify special resources for women when it was the other way around in the 70s.

Feminists focus on both male and female issues of equality, like providing rape hotlines and counseling for male rape victims.

...and like lobbying for federal domestic violence law that explicitly permits discrimination with respect to actual or perceived sex or gender while simultaneously requiring all funded programs serve women and law enforcement training under such to be built around "saying but not saying" that you should always arrest whatever man is involved (to the point that there was a case where a woman called the cops on her mother and the cops arrived and beat her father to death, and that isn't seen as a significant problem).

Earl Silverman tried to run what was the only shelter for male victims in Canada at the time, he couldn't receive any kind of government funding for it because it wasn't a program for women and eventually hung himself when he could no longer afford to operate it. The ManKind Initiative, one of only a few charities in the UK to help male victims receives no government funding despite similar groups providing services for women being funded, and operates entirely under private funding.

"Feminists" do much more than just focus on female issues, as true equality will allow men and women to be able to do things it was previously considered "socially unacceptable" to do in a male designed society.

Name something that men or women are "unable" to do. I can name things that aren't looked as well upon, but "other people don't support me as much if I do $X" is a far cry from not being able to do something.

At least you didn't invoke "equal rights" for women...

 

[sageoftruth]

This sort of thing has been on my mind for awhile. As some of you have mentioned, big open inclusive groups are almost inevitably going to have black sheep in them, and the bigger the group is, the more black sheep there will be.
Then, we have people judging those groups based off of the actions of black sheep, and it seems to be a common practice.

So, what do we do? We can't monitor the behavior of every single person whom we identify with, and we can't stop them from representing us in the eyes of others, so what is there to do?

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

snip

The issues of funding for women and children's domestic abuse shelters vs men and children's domestic abuse shelters is a matter of whether or not it makes it worth doing due to there being far less men with children than there are women with children that are actually in need of shelters. It is a matter of demand. Due to current women's and children's domestic violence shelters being so overwhelmed with the numbers of women needing them they have to turn down numerous women in danger every day and this is resulting in many of those women being harmed further or even killed. I think much of the concern is reducing their current resources further by trying to supply additional facilities when they do not even have anywhere remotely near the amount of men even asking to be sheltered. Most men with children in domestic violence situations can actually afford to stay at a hotel and such because they do not usually have the same issues in regards to being restricted from having money.

In Most of the cases with women, they cannot get out of the situation due to not being allowed to have access to money at all. Women are often prevented from working or even leaving the house. They are being kept captive in the home, often prevented from leaving the house at all. Men on the other hand, usually have access to money. Women need the shelters not just because they cannot find a place to stay, but also they do not have an income, savings, or ability to pay for anywhere to stay. Of course there are exceptions to this among men, but the numbers are no where even remotely comparable. That however, is what determines whether or not they are put up in shelters. The first thing shelter volunteers ask people looking to be sheltered is " can you find anyone, a friend, relative or even an acquaintance. that you can stay with?" due to trying to get someone new into a shelter means you are putting someone that is already in the shelter out on the street. Yes, ALL beds are taken, people are sleeping in the halls at night illegally on bags of laundry and in order for someone new to come in, someone else will be sleeping on the streets.

At the domestic violence shelter here, you are turned down even if you have children. You are turned down even if you have been beaten but the perpetrator is not an immediate danger. You are turned down if you do not have visible sign of injury. Most of the people actually admitted to the shelter come straight from the hospital and their lives and the lives of their children are in immediate danger. The shelter is surrounded by barbed wire and electric fence, and yet they still have managed to harm the women in there. They have gone as far to pay women to get into the shelter to try and draw their victims out so they could get them. The shelters here are so overcrowded, that they can only make room for someone who will be killed by their spouse if they do not.

I can understand why some may feel they have to take care of the many people being turned away first before they can expand their services offered. right now they are turning down women and children who may be murdered if they leave because they simply do not have the room or resources to take them in. That is the actual reality of the present situation and it is dire. It is a matter of sheer numbers that are the issue. In regards to certain types of behavior such as holding someone against their will, women are still very much in danger of this, especially in abusive relationships, where men being held captive by women is still extremely rare.

In regards to things that are "not socially accepted". It is still not socially acceptable for a boy to ask his Dad for a Barbie doll, fairy princess dress up outfit or a makeup and hairstyling Doll head to play with. Boys are still ridiculed being called " sissies" and "fags" if they play with girl toys and girls that play with boys toys are still called "Tom boy" or "Butch"as an insult and often attacked by both girls and boys for being seen as " weird". Men are thought to be wusses if they talk about their feelings and insulted or even attacked if they wear make-up or are seen as feminine and women are being called " *****", "bossy" " dike" and "Butch" and also attacked if they appear assertive. There is still very much work that needs to be done socially to even this out.
Depending on where you live, there are different levels of risk in what you can and cannot get away with in society without actually risking your safety due to how threatened society appears to be by these actions.

Some of what has to change is how people interact in society:
A few of the issues that should be addressed:
http://bilerico.lgbtqnation.com/2014/08/boy_who_played_with_dolls_tortured_to_death_by_cou.php
http://www.medicaldaily.com/men-react-violently-social-anxiety-while-women-try-avoid-conflict-241431
http://www.workplacebullying.org/2014-gender/
http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/15/boys-who-bully-may-be-more-likely-to-become-abusive-men/
http://www.wgac.colostate.edu/stalking-statistics
http://www.workplacesrespond.org/learn/the-facts/the-facts-on-the-workplace-and-domestic-violence
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/u-tennessee-athletes-beat-temmate-sex-assault-case-article-1.2526638
http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2013/06/girls_shouldnt_play_tackle_foo.html
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/07/01/should-character-matter-in-pro-sports/athletes-get-off-easy-when-they-are-violent
http://theantimedia.org/rich-powerful-child-rapists-prove-to-be-above-the-law/
http://thescienceexplorer.com/humanity/tinder-study-men-feel-entitled-use-women-they-see-fit-if-date-less-attractive-person

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

Actually feminists organizations have been putting pressures on courts to completely reform the absurdly broken system.

http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/05/punitive-justice-alternatives/
http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/04/prision-injustice-feminism/
http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/05/restorative-justice-for-abuse/

The current Justice system helps no one and harms everyone. That needs to change is the issue. harsher prison for either men or women is a horrible idea. It only makes it worse, not better.

Equality is women having a say in the design of the actual system, not agree with a horrible broken system and make the situation even worse.
In addition, why would it be a "massive issue" for men to want women to have harsher punishments rather than redesign the terribly broken system to actually improve the lives of both men and women and solve these issues long term? Seems like that would be more beneficial to everyone involved wouldn't you think?

Let's start with:
1) None of those links even address the issue I said, the first is especially bad as it doesn't go to the gender differences in punishments.
2) I could understand if they wanted in those links to have a more "european" system but it advocates a balls out insane new system that will never be implemented.

Really the links and your earlier comment solidifies it, feminism is so dead in it goals it now starts to leech off minorities for actual struggle, but really, I can say the same on the black rights movements who also started delving into culture and turned police brutality and poverty into a "black only problems" since they have nothing to stand for anymoe.... that and a whole lot of racism (pro tip, if you have a black president for 8 years, any idae of a racist majority or claiming the system is rigged against black people falls flat).

Feminism is not " leeching off" minorities, to even suggest such is pretty absurd considering feminist = equality and minorities are feminists too. Claiming that feminism is " leeching " off of anyone means you do not even remotely understand what feminism is.

Yes, the links do address the issue, you were acting like harsher incarceration for women is actually a massive concern. IT IS NOT is the actual reality. The massive concern is the failing judicial system and changing that to be beneficial to society and not be the mess it is. They actually have suggested much of what some European nations are already doing, they are just adding to that.

Having a black president has nothing to do with whether or not institutional racism is still an issue, the world is not that simple. The two are not even remotely related. The president does not have any authority over the local police, those are determined at the city, county and state level and have nothing to do with the federal government. Judges and sheriffs here are elected at the county level, not appointed by the president. LOL

Electing a black president ONCE is a start. but far from meaning racism is over, if anything over the last few years it has gotten worse.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/juvenile/bench/race.html
http://prospect.org/article/rising-tide-anti-black-racism
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/24/us/racism-problem-cnn-kff-poll/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/1/9/1356766/-Racism-in-America-The-Resurgence-since-Obama-s-Election

 

[Michel Henzel]

God you gotta love the fact that this lyft driver psycho lady actually thought that posting this online was in any way a good idea, which is the same that can be said for the Hugh mungus psycho fucktard.

But atleast they gave us all something point and laugh at, so that's something.

 

[Gengisgame]

Why is TheEscapist forum so obsessed with this? I don't see it to this crazy extent on any other forum.

Criticizing SJW'ism is common on reddit.

But let's not beat around the bush, your post was a standard shaming tactic.

Poster posts an example of something that highlights the problems with feminism's petty grievances and you call the poster obsessive for a simple post, not because you believe there truly obsessive, you simply don't like them criticizing feminism.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Dude... really?

We're still on this "look, a woman acted badly! EXPLAIN THAT, FEMINISM" thing?

Like, do you legitimately think that's a good argument?

Oh yeah, a woman acted badly, let's forget the whole "women and men being treated equally" thing. Let's just pack it in, The Escapist dudes think it's not a good idea!

Spoiler: Once again

Did I say that Phasmal or did I say it was why I'm not comfortable with that label? Cause I'm pretty sure it's the latter, and I explained in depth a few more posts.

Or are you seriously going to tell me I shouldn't see that video, feel the kind of anger I felt, and then make a post about it?

Yeah it's the minority. It's still not right what this person, and people need to see it so they don't become that person. I don't like living in a world where were all just meeting that one bad egg away from being fired and our life broadcasted on social media in like George Orwell 15 minutes kind of way.

If I'm being unreasonable, call me on it. Yeah I've done stuff in the past where I kick the hornets nest just for fun, this isn't one of those times.

EDIT: What do you want, Phas? A MRA being an asshole at 3 AM cause he couldn't get a chicken sandwich at McDonalds?


There you go. Someone from the opposite political spectrum being an asshole. Fucking asshole behavior deserves to be called out on, and I'm not gonna feel like a dick for doing that.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

...Or she's just an asshole and has nothing to do with feminism as a whole? I mean, shit, you can be a feminist and still be a dickhead, that doesn't automatically throw the entire 100+ year old movement in the trash. God damn.

 

[Zenja]

"Dudeist, you believe in gender equality, you're a feminist"

I don't get why this isn't enough for some people. They HAVE to have you fly some banner of political association. I disagree with many of the "good feminists" and stress I am not a feminist even though I believe in gender equality. I dont like them trying to appropriate me into their group because of a vague blanket statement like gender equality when I know I don't align with their side.

Gender equality=feminism. The reason it isn't enough for some people is because many claim to believe in gender equality that actually don't, both male and female. They often do not understand what equality actually is.

No gender equality is gender equality. Many "good feminists" push slanted ideologies. The wage gap argument for example ignores a LOT of cultural context and misrepresents some facts by doing an blanket average. Many arguments they make are impractical in the name of being fair. Sometimes practicality IS the better choice, not what is "fair" because this person wants a turn. That doesn't make them lesser, it just makes the decision practical. In my experience most feminists will quickly forego practicality over "whats fair" in every situation and I think that is foolish. If equality is on the table, you should hear out all the arguments for both sexes, not just one.

I would argue that many feminists don't understand that gender equality doesn't make the world a "fair" environment.

A man/woman can still not get a job because the environment is better suited for a man/woman because it lessens lawsuits and a man/woman has more potential in that job.

In a gender equal society that statement holds true just circle the gender it applies to. However, someone just failed to get a job due to their gender because it is more practical.

 

[Barbas]

Criticizing SJW'ism is common on reddit.

But let's not beat around the bush, your post was a standard shaming tactic.

Poster posts an example of something that highlights the problems with feminism's petty grievances and you call the poster obsessive for a simple post, not because you believe there truly obsessive, you simply don't like them criticizing feminism.

Not necessarily. Feminism and gender-related threads really do tend to make the rounds on this site.

OT: OP, you appear to be pretty much preaching to the choir here with your feeling about that person's behaviour. There doesn't appear to be anything more to your opening post than a video of someone followed by a denunciation, which doesn't total much of a thread. Is there some unspoken issue here that she makes you personally feel uncomfortable calling yourself a feminist? If so, why should that be the case? That at least is something to talk about - it's something we can do something with.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Just dropping in with a link: https://www.facebook.com/allfeministsunited/photos/a.409705669074966.87095.400327940012739/1157679690944223/?type=3&theater

You don't need the story the OP posted to understand why people aren't so keen to call themselves feminists these days. That link leads to a Facebook group with over 200,000 followers, and they're dead serious. It's not a fringe group. It's not some random nutcase or an asshole or a case of "not real" feminism. It's thousands upon thousands of people agreeing that being called "different than most girls" is now something to be offended about. Not only is it stupid, pointless and bastardization of language, it's borderline dehumanizing: should I now consider all women a single organism, where no individual differs from the next? "Proudly female being"? As in, you're proud of the fact that you were born with a vagina, is that what you're saying? You're not proud of your personal accomplishments, your skills, your knowledge, or even your history?

Other wonders on the page include a HuffPost article with the tagline "Justin Trudeau says poverty is sexist, remains top woke bae" (merely typing that made me want to puke). I'm sure the 80-90% male homeless population of the world will appreciate Trudeau's words. And there's also tons of stuff about oppression of black and trans people, cultural appropriation and all that stuff intersectionality has blessed us with. And it's all written from a strictly US perspective. Assuming that some ***** complaining about cultural appropriation in a taxi is a feminist is no longer just jumping to conclusions. It's an educated guess, bordering on reasoned conclusion.

The whole feminism debate is a fucking nightmare.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

....I'm failing to see what's so utterly terrible about that post you linked. It's pointing out hat it's kind of offensive to make one woman feel good by putting the rest of the gender down. It's...pretty simple. Proudly female being? Uh. Proud to be a woman. That's what it means.

I just...what's the problem here? I only skimmed your post at first and was expecting a link to "Kill All Men," initially. Needless to say this feels like a bit of an overreaction.