I was going to post a new thread for this, but it seemed a waste of space. So yeah, I've been thinking about this and I wanted to go through and debunk a couple of the things I've seen on this thread, and then propose an alternative.
1) Feminists want women to rule the world.
No. Mary Daly wants women to rule the world. Mary Daly is not all feminists everywhere.
What feminists have generally noted is that men do rule the world, that they overwhelmingly dominate the upper echelons of all social institutions and hierarchies, from the business world to government, and that this is generally showing little sign of changing.
Yet this generates no shock and surprise, there's is no mass reaction to this fact.
Since you (as in the general population) consistently elect more men than women into government, since you promote men more frequently, since you expect women to bear you babies at the cost of their careers, am I to assume that you all think there's some natural superiority which men have in terms of decision making which makes them better suited to positions of power?
You may not want men to rule the world, but you don't have to.. They already do to a fairly convincing degree. Do you support men in running the world? Take a long hard look at everything you do and everything you unconsciously accept before you say 'no'.
2) Can't we just do away with the gendered bits and focus on improving humans everywhere?
A very good point.
Feminism has been and still is to a large extent a form of identity politics. It has been used as a platform to speak for the rights of 'women' as a collective group.
However, we still live in what is (arguably) a fairly androcentric society. Men are already the public face of humanity as a whole. They already speak for humanity as a whole, and the experience and position of women is often fairly marginal within that configuration.
Sure, 'feminism' is a loaded word, but it is far less loaded than talking about 'humanity' or 'all people'. We already privilege the male voice and male experience when speaking about humanity, largely because it tends to be the voice we hear in the public sphere (as opposed to the home and domestic sphere).
In some distant future time when there are no social differences between genders at all and the experiences of women are given equal weight, then we can talk about 'humans' as a category. As it is, it's worth looking at the position of women because it gives a good example of how gender operates. That doesn't as men we can't use that understanding to try and 'improve' or 'liberate' our own position (far from it, as I'm going to argue) but masculinity by virtue of being much more integrated into 'normal' public life is actually harder to pick out as a distinct phenomenon, and it's very difficult to talk about how masculinity is gendered without looking at how femininity is separated from it.
3) We're all equal now so what's the point in feminism?
It depends very much on your definition of equality, and whether you think equality is even obtainable and/or important.
Legal equality exists.. technically. We can have a whine about rape legislation and things, but I think we generally accept that there's a liberal principle that men and women are equal before the law which exists in most of our countries.
But legal equality isn't equality. The personal is political. Equality is about the actual structural differences between people's lives, both positive and negative. It's not about who is better off or worse off, it's about why differences exist at all and what the effects of those differences are. Which brings me onto..
4) But men have it really hard!
Yes, they do.
Generally speaking, 'normative' men are more likely to be taken seriously, their social status will be determined by more than the size of their tits, they will not have to behave submissively to women in order to achieve social approval. They have far more power to have sex with whomever they want and suffer far less social judgement in doing so. They are allowed to move in an unrestricted fashion and wear non-restrictive clothing. They are generally regarded as stronger, more independent and more capable in non-domestic, non-feminized tasks. Almost all 'male problems' can actually be traced back to a simple failure to be manly enough. This doesn't mean that being manly, being able to act manly and make yourself be seen as manly does not bring social advantages.
But saying 'men have privilege' is not the same thing as saying 'men don't have any problems'. This is why the word 'patriachy' went out of fashion because it implies that all men always share in the power and privilege of being men simply by existing. As every gay man knows, that's bullshit, men are only powerful when they adhere to dominant forms of masculinity. What modern feminists generally have a problem with is that women generally can't enact dominant masculinity in a socially acceptable fashion, they'll never be seen as being as dominant or as masculine as their male peers.
Thus, there is still room to reorganize society, not just to bring women up to the level of men, but to allow men to escape some of the negative connotations of masculinity. The problem is that that's pretty fucking hard. Men generally don't want to abandon masculinity, they'll happily ***** about having to work harder or being seen as sexual predators, but they've consistently failed to relegate themselves to the domestic sphere or to abandon sexual agency and be passive and 'feminine' in their sex lives. Fundamentally, most men don't see themselves as having a gender, or don't see gender issues as very important to their lives. That's a problem, as it has in the past completely shut them out of the debate.
There are no easy answers, but there is serious discussion and feminism is the major forum in which that discussion is happening. It's an arena which in my opinion would benefit massively from more male input. But you won't get anywhere by sitting on a forum peddling the same tired crap about how evil angry lesbians want to cut off your penis. Do some research, get to understand the many and varied ideas you're slagging off and you might start to realize (I certainly did) that some of the work being done has an amazing potential to transform social relations for the better.
You can't just opt out though, because things aren't 'just fine the way they are'. If you have a problem with feminism, offer a viable alternative.
1) Feminists want women to rule the world.
No. Mary Daly wants women to rule the world. Mary Daly is not all feminists everywhere.
What feminists have generally noted is that men do rule the world, that they overwhelmingly dominate the upper echelons of all social institutions and hierarchies, from the business world to government, and that this is generally showing little sign of changing.
Yet this generates no shock and surprise, there's is no mass reaction to this fact.
Since you (as in the general population) consistently elect more men than women into government, since you promote men more frequently, since you expect women to bear you babies at the cost of their careers, am I to assume that you all think there's some natural superiority which men have in terms of decision making which makes them better suited to positions of power?
You may not want men to rule the world, but you don't have to.. They already do to a fairly convincing degree. Do you support men in running the world? Take a long hard look at everything you do and everything you unconsciously accept before you say 'no'.
2) Can't we just do away with the gendered bits and focus on improving humans everywhere?
A very good point.
Feminism has been and still is to a large extent a form of identity politics. It has been used as a platform to speak for the rights of 'women' as a collective group.
However, we still live in what is (arguably) a fairly androcentric society. Men are already the public face of humanity as a whole. They already speak for humanity as a whole, and the experience and position of women is often fairly marginal within that configuration.
Sure, 'feminism' is a loaded word, but it is far less loaded than talking about 'humanity' or 'all people'. We already privilege the male voice and male experience when speaking about humanity, largely because it tends to be the voice we hear in the public sphere (as opposed to the home and domestic sphere).
In some distant future time when there are no social differences between genders at all and the experiences of women are given equal weight, then we can talk about 'humans' as a category. As it is, it's worth looking at the position of women because it gives a good example of how gender operates. That doesn't as men we can't use that understanding to try and 'improve' or 'liberate' our own position (far from it, as I'm going to argue) but masculinity by virtue of being much more integrated into 'normal' public life is actually harder to pick out as a distinct phenomenon, and it's very difficult to talk about how masculinity is gendered without looking at how femininity is separated from it.
3) We're all equal now so what's the point in feminism?
It depends very much on your definition of equality, and whether you think equality is even obtainable and/or important.
Legal equality exists.. technically. We can have a whine about rape legislation and things, but I think we generally accept that there's a liberal principle that men and women are equal before the law which exists in most of our countries.
But legal equality isn't equality. The personal is political. Equality is about the actual structural differences between people's lives, both positive and negative. It's not about who is better off or worse off, it's about why differences exist at all and what the effects of those differences are. Which brings me onto..
4) But men have it really hard!
Yes, they do.
Generally speaking, 'normative' men are more likely to be taken seriously, their social status will be determined by more than the size of their tits, they will not have to behave submissively to women in order to achieve social approval. They have far more power to have sex with whomever they want and suffer far less social judgement in doing so. They are allowed to move in an unrestricted fashion and wear non-restrictive clothing. They are generally regarded as stronger, more independent and more capable in non-domestic, non-feminized tasks. Almost all 'male problems' can actually be traced back to a simple failure to be manly enough. This doesn't mean that being manly, being able to act manly and make yourself be seen as manly does not bring social advantages.
But saying 'men have privilege' is not the same thing as saying 'men don't have any problems'. This is why the word 'patriachy' went out of fashion because it implies that all men always share in the power and privilege of being men simply by existing. As every gay man knows, that's bullshit, men are only powerful when they adhere to dominant forms of masculinity. What modern feminists generally have a problem with is that women generally can't enact dominant masculinity in a socially acceptable fashion, they'll never be seen as being as dominant or as masculine as their male peers.
Thus, there is still room to reorganize society, not just to bring women up to the level of men, but to allow men to escape some of the negative connotations of masculinity. The problem is that that's pretty fucking hard. Men generally don't want to abandon masculinity, they'll happily ***** about having to work harder or being seen as sexual predators, but they've consistently failed to relegate themselves to the domestic sphere or to abandon sexual agency and be passive and 'feminine' in their sex lives. Fundamentally, most men don't see themselves as having a gender, or don't see gender issues as very important to their lives. That's a problem, as it has in the past completely shut them out of the debate.
There are no easy answers, but there is serious discussion and feminism is the major forum in which that discussion is happening. It's an arena which in my opinion would benefit massively from more male input. But you won't get anywhere by sitting on a forum peddling the same tired crap about how evil angry lesbians want to cut off your penis. Do some research, get to understand the many and varied ideas you're slagging off and you might start to realize (I certainly did) that some of the work being done has an amazing potential to transform social relations for the better.
You can't just opt out though, because things aren't 'just fine the way they are'. If you have a problem with feminism, offer a viable alternative.
Freedom does not equal chronic backache.