Feminism

[David]

I think you might be misinterpreting Nick's post, TP!

Nick, no doubt there's a lot of insecurity around, but I've never quite understood why "men, don't rape women" is a useful or helpful thing to say.

Men – don't torture small animals, ok?
Men – don't bash old ladies and steal their wallets, ok?

The mode and tone of that address does seem to be implying something about the audience (i.e. that they have a predisposition to commit a crime and need to be told not to), hence the defensive response you get.

Obviously I'm not saying "don't instruct men not to rape because it might hurt their feelings". Obviously that message needs to get across somehow, preferably as early and regularly as possible. But there are more and less effective ways of saying things, and sarcasm is probably a bad place to start.

[pietillidie]

And I get accused for over-complicating things, lol.

For such a simple topic, it does astound me what the debate here is except for interpersonal exchanges with a few nutty folk who have made feminism/taking exception thereto a personal industry.

Look at the corporate and political leadership stats, among other referents, and those tell you women are being excluded from full societal participation for [enter exaggerated single variable here] various reasons.

Those who think biology means nothing are idiots, in the very same way those who think biology ought to exclude folk from taking roles of leadership, influence and power in 2015 are idiots. The days of women being pressured to raise the spawn of Satan for some godforsaken number of years whilst tending to the infantile desires of some Neanderthal idiot pretending to be Homo sapiens are over (as a matter of religion or "the natural order of things", at least!).

Get your daughters thinking careers, leadership and global contribution, not 1950s suburban motherhood. But that also means you've got to fight the BS trapping people in that disfigured, musty old thinking.

It's an anti-idiot train: There's nothing to take exception to! Get on board and, to use a mal-Abbottism, iron this yellowing business shirt out, people. But if it's not reflecting in your political expression, you're a bloody fraud.

[think positive]

Raise the spawns of satan?

Gees there is some twisted thinking on this subject!

The only time I ever really felt gender meant I was cheated was when I worked at Toyota, better qualified and paid less than the guys in an office job, and told yo walk a step behind the maleness in the head office corridor and not talk to them unless spoken too! Funny they always said hello back!

We need to find a line in the middle. Certainly in hard core Muslim society woman need to get more equality. I'm all for the girls getting a good education and a job they like and hopefully gives them a good level of financial stability.

But not everyone an or wants to shoot for the top. And do me one needs to nurture the next generation, or quite frankly, what's the point of living?

[pietillidie]

^The spawn of Satan thing was humour

On your point, sure, but that's the same for men or women; it has no bearing on matters of gender specifically. It belongs in an argument about social diversity and tolerance generally.

I'm more than happy to join you in smashing class barriers

[HAL]

How specific do you want? Has it really?

[David]

[pietillidie]

^It's not really that much of an exciting comment.

Of course the biology of sex means something. It just doesn't mean anything vaguely important as far as democratic life, choice and world participation goes in 2015—except under conditions of force. (Oh Christ, did I use the term "gender" above? Don't worry, I've read the literature and have in fact been taught by the best on the topic ).

[David]

Ah, I see. I thought that was a veiled dig at sociologists.

[Mugwump]

Feminism needed explosives in 1920, an axe in 1965, and it needs a file now. I'd say that the big issues of institutional disadvantage have been cracked, but there are clearly subtle barriers that can be worked on. The only thing wrong with contemporary feminism is that it's co-opted by relatively privileged women to garner victim status, because we are conditioned to grant special rights and privileges to those who genuinely suffer wrongs.

As an aside, the only conscious discrimination I routinely see in major corporations is against middle-ranking white men, in the name of diversity. This arises as corporations try to increase the number of women in senior roles, or create a defensive barrier against the discrimination lawsuits that are a resource for the odd delusional female employee (as well as the occasionally justified case). It's not necessarily ill-intentioned or very gross - more a case of "they're roughly comparable in skills and we need to meet our diversity targets" - but it does happen. It doesn't tend to happen at the top, because the men who are there are not about resign to make way for a similarly-qualified woman. But they will make that gesture at one remove from their own skin.

[pietillidie]

^Occaisionally co-opted, occasionally; like any and every lever of sympathy known to humanity. Again, 99% of all people including women are not in this purported class of chardonnay drinkers which looms so large in yours and Wokko's social imagination. It is a contradiction to be so numerically tiny and some looming menace worthy of special comment all at once.

Mostly, it's about ordinary women trying to express their ambitions and desires without being or feeling socially-punished for it, and hopefully garnering some sincere support in their quest.

In many cases out there the struggle is real enough, with conservative pressures to assume a motherly caretaking role still pervasive. I work with women who are trying to resolve the contradictions and pressures long before they make it to the rarefied air of global business; the same set of problems and challenges repeat over and over again for very good reason.

The ability to get places *does not mean* there is a culture of getting getting places, or a well-worn path and approach for doing so as there is with established norms.

[Mugwump]

^indeed, about 50% of the workplace and media noise is caused by about 1% of people who manipulate good causes to serve their egoism.

Congratulations if you've done things to help women succeed at work. Despite your sniping about "sincerity" (how you love to use that word passive aggressively!) , I suspect that might be true of both of us.

[pietillidie]

^To fill you in on the broader context, I use the word "sincere" a lot now based on the central Confucian tenet of "sincerity", used widely in Asian culture, and heavily in Korea. It is often translated as "true mind" or "deep mind" by non-native English speakers, and gets to a genuine emotional will that is sincere because it is an essential, apolitical truth about a person's character, rather than a perfunctory, face-saving expression.

As such, it is one of the most important and central ideas in human thought on the planet today, and has a particular pertinence (and often poignance) in the age of PR and detached Internet debate.

A lot of pop-level debate about these topics is insincere in the sense that there is no will to connect at a deeper level with people's problems, but rather an effort to minimise or deny them, or to react to someone else's strained claims of hardship. (Indeed, the need to express or deny hardship is almost an Olympic event). Such reactionary exchange constitutes the hot air of that 1% you refer to.

IMO your comment on contemporary feminism was not necessary and also extremely partial in any case; much feminist work is devoted to providing support for practical transformative efforts in both theory and social action, while much of it is hardly well-financed, yet contributes generously to causes such as the rights of the gay and transgender communities, single mothers, and the poor and marginalised generally.

[I don't doubt your essential goodness or Wokko's, Mugwump, and have no trouble at all imagining you being one of the sincere people in the office! I do think you both waste time fighting blog demons, though.]

[David]

^ PTID, as much as I admire your insistence on expert opinion and research, I think we ignore "blog demons" at our own peril. At the end of the day, unqualified commentary on news sites, personal blogs, at the dinner table and around the water cooler plays a significant role in shaping public opinion and trends. When you look at social movements like feminism, or the American civil rights movement, or gay rights, or even the emergence of groups like One Nation, I'd say the push (and the movement's continuing momentum) came far less from peer-reviewed journals than it did from exchanges between ordinary people at the pub or on TV. All of this is not just background noise; this is, in a manner of speaking, 'it'.

That being so, how can we afford not to engage with the blogosphere, or with the columnists of the Guardian or Herald Sun, or with the bloke next door who thinks Australia is about to be invaded by Indonesia? If you want to know where the cultural zeitgeist is at, I think you'll get a much more accurate reading by trawling through Tumblr blogs than by reading an APA-accredited journal. Likewise, when we discuss "feminism" (that is, the feminism that currently exists), I think it's much more represented by the blogosphere than by the academy.

[Wokko]

I would add that small, fanatical movements are indeed capable of exerting power. How many Bolsheviks did it take to create the Soviet Union? How many Nazis where meeting in Bavarian beer halls in the 20s?

The radical feminists of the 70s-90s (proudly and admittedly) moved into juniour education, academia and the media.

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/06/20/eight-nobel-scientists-condemn-feminist-lynch-mob-against-tim-hunt/

Many academics are now terrified of the feminist movement in universities because they end up fired for not toeing the line on the current insanity of identity politics. Shrill fantasies about college rape epidemics and white, middle class female oppression permeate academia and the scary blog world of Tumblr has leaked into mainstream press.

I also think you all give far too much credit to the feminist movement for changes that were happening organically in western society anyway. The feminist movement nagged and then took credit for changes that were happening anyway. My grandmother worked because she chose to, so did the rest of the women in my family going back to my Great, great grandmother (a widow in the 1920s, she lived until the early 1990s). Now women who want to CHOOSE to stay home and look after children find themselves belittled and insulted by feminists because it was never about choice at all.

[David]

^ I think that last bit in particular is nonsense, and displays a pretty jaundiced view of history.

http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/simone_de_beauvoir_explains_why_im_a_feminist_in_a_rare_tv_interview_1975.html

Do you really think women would have just "got" the vote without the suffragettes, or workplaces would have transformed from male-dominated places full of sexual harassment without second-wave feminism?

Things don't just happen. Attitudes change, sure, but you need an activist movement to bring about radical social change. Feminism was that movement, and most of what it achieved has made society a better place for women and men.