Feminism spin-off.

[h4rm0ny]

Because the trans thread has remained on-topic for 22 pages and it would be a shame to derail it, I'm posting my reply to Colonel Klinck here, if they want to debate it. Not trying to back-seat mod, but the trans thread is really important to me so I hope the tangent can respectfully be shifted here.

Really? Yeah this is off topic but you have a strong distaste for feminism? I consider my myself a feminist, why would anyone not be feminist? It is simply about women having equality in society. Perhaps it is some extremist feminism you are referring to? Massive generalisations like that aren't really helpful.

This is off-topic, but the reason is because that last one is no longer true. I finally gave up describing myself as a feminist about three years ago when I had to concede we original feminists had lost control of the term and movement. If someone asks me if I'm a feminist today, I'll reply: "yes, if you mean in the old school Equal Opportunity sense, I'm as feminist as they get. But otherwise, no." Modern feminism isn't about women, it's about power. And I'm quoting Stella Creasey, MP and noted British feminist in that. Hell, the Women's Marches in the USA were organized in cooperation with the Nation of Islam - which teaches women should all be home cooking, cleaning and being pregnant. Again, don't be misled by what an organization calls itself. You still get old school feminists like myself. But other than some of the Rad Fems, we've largely stopped describing ourselves as that. Most Conservative and Right Wing people today believe in Equal Opportunity. If that's the criteria then they're all feminists, by your definition!

That bit is a new year joke right??

(referring to the last sentence but one in my quote).​

No. It's not a joke. Why would it be?​

 

[h4rm0ny]

I don't think many people realise that feminism now a days is all about power and being better/higher in status than men.
It was derailed awhile ago from the equality standpoint.

Because, in the West, it largely won and people who support the original goals of feminism are now called... people. There are still valid feminist issues. Ironically they're often ones modern feminism typically isn't much interested in.

But what really prompted my response was when CK said feminism was about equality of opportunity and I replied that Conservatives and the political Right are strong believers in Equality of Opportunity and does he/she therefore consider them feminists? They asked if I were joking. I'm not. This is the reality and it seems odd to me that someone doesn't see that.

 

[h4rm0ny]

Shouldn't this be discussed in the kitchen so the women can see it ?

If you were a real man, you'd earn enough for her to have a laptop so she could.

Greed/lust. To be fair though men have historically taken advantage of women - well some men have - with no fear of consequence, so the movement started valid now it's just headed toward androdynousness[sic].

Chris's Tarrant. ''We were less respectful of women...'.

https://amp.theguardian.com/tv-and-...BRAB&usg=AOvVaw2Qv2CWXvBerMnU0mgCm0H3&ampcf=1

The movement was valid for that and numerous other reasons - property rights, the right to vote (although working class men also didn't get the vote which should be remembered), divorce and inheritance laws. And some of the same things that were issues back then are issues still today (like sexual assault). But all of these rights are widely supported in the West as human rights. You don't need to be a feminist to support them. You would have been once but that's my point - the modern Feminist movement isn't about those things anymore. They still come up, certainly. But they come up for non-feminists, too. Feminism has become something that is demonstrably no longer about equality. And that's why only a small number of people identify as feminists these days and of those, I'd say a proportion are those who simply think it's still old school Equal Opportunity, Equal Rights feminism.

 

[h4rm0ny]

I'm loving that you created this thread just to keep the other one clean and tidy.

All threads eventually become either Brexit, Feminism or house prices. Just doing my little bit to stave off the inevitable a little longer.

 

[h4rm0ny]

Can I please check I am understanding this: we have an almost exclusively male forum discussing the nature of Femanism, and they are convinced that they know this better than women? Does the expression "Mansplaining" have any resonance? What about old-fashioned irony?

Feminist is not the same as women. You get plenty of male feminists. And plenty of women who don't consider themselves feminist. And if you're adamant that there are no women present (how you would know, I don't know), then you can't really claim anyone is "mansplaining", btw!

 

[h4rm0ny]

Are you dismissing the opinions of almost half the population as less relevant than the other half? Isn't that quite a sexist position to take?

Accurate!

 

[h4rm0ny]

I'm not so sure the shortfall is purely physical. Why are women crap at darts and snooker and similar non-physical activities?

Well, I offer you a combination of (a) the number of women who play darts and snooker is far, far smaller than the number of men who play them. And (b), your perception is in no way backed up by anything resembling evidence.

 

[h4rm0ny]

I’ve never thought of myself as a feminist, but I’ve always believed that women could do just as good a job as a man in virtually everything, although I have reservations about jobs like mining, or humping a huge hod-load of bricks up a ladder, on a construction site.

As an average? No, women are less capable at physical strength jobs (though statistically women do have a higher pain threshold). But the point of equal opportunity is not that there should be equal outcomes (that's the Left's dogma), but that when a woman is stronger than a man or otherwise capable of doing the job, they're not excluded from doing so because of their sex. Sexism isn't saying women are typically less strong than men. Sexism is saying you'll be assessed on your sex rather than your personal capability.

And that we have largely achieved. And it's that which modern feminism is largely departing from as it's become a Leftist / Progressive dogma focused on equality of outcome, rather than equality of opportunity.

 

[h4rm0ny]

See, now this is the sort of feminist issue I can get alongside:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/profits-from-trapped-women-are-covered-up-d2gb8dhs9

Except it's something that everyone is concerned about and doesn't need to call themselves a feminist to do so. Meanwhile self-described feminists in the USA - organizers of the Women's March and prominent feminists like Linda Sarsour, no less - are working with the Nation of Islam, an organization that publicly says the same sorts of things as Skorpian above but unlike Skorpian (hopefully), they do so without a sense of humour. A Tunisian and Algerian woman protested an Islamic conference near Paris a couple of years ago where people were discussing how to "subjugate your wives". I.e. what level of beating was appropriate. The women were then dragged out and kicked by the men assembled. Where was mainstream feminism in criticising that? Nowhere.

Again, this thread span off because someone thought I was joking when I said the Conservative Right supported equal opportunity. I'll add that the Right are more critical of things like the above than modern Western Feminism which has become (with the exception of some RadFems), an entirely Progressive, Left-Wing ideology.

 

[h4rm0ny]

Didn't they cancel the Women's March in the US because there were too many white women attending?

Yes. It was one specific Women's March in California and they couldn't get enough non-White people to agree to come so they cancelled it. If there were some element of that being motivated by actual solidarity with non-White women in the world who are suffering (India, Pakistan, the ME, Africa) then I'd see some merit in it at least (though it would still be counter-productive). But really it's just another head of the Identity Politics hydra that wants to present itself as representing people it's not.

 

[h4rm0ny]

Why would feminists align themselves with Islam, which (generally) is one of the most patriarchal religions.

Use critical thinking.

You're failing to distinguish between feminism as the notion of equal opportunity and rights, and Feminism as in the modern movement in the West. The latter very much aligns itself with Islam because it has become a Progressive (capital P), Left-Wing ideology and is part of that general movement now. Look at how the Progressive Left co-opts all sorts of movements into an unwieldy alliance. As an illustration, look at it's brief and disastrous flirtation with militant atheism - Richard Dawkins, et al. There was a short period where the Atheists were courted and praised because they were seen as potentially useful against the predominantly Christian Right Wing in the USA. Then they were rapidly dropped like a hot rock when it was realised that whilst they were heavily critical of Christianity, they were equally vocal in condemning Islam. In short, they couldn't be co-opted and their value as an ally was far less than that of Islam.

I mean you can type in capitals all you want, but the list of examples of the modern Feminist movement aligning itself with Islam is long whether the reality matches your internal head-theorising or not.

 

[h4rm0ny]

I think this threads just turning Ingo a place to **** off women by broken men now.
Not what it was intended for?

No, not what it was intended for. I made it just to try and provide an overflow from the trans thread. Unfortunately, whilst I feel modern Feminism has lost it's way, threads like these always attract a few who don't seem to understand the difference between Feminism and Woman and just want to vent some bitterness towards women in general.

 

[h4rm0ny]

When people say "Feminists align themselves with Islam", what do you actually mean?

What examples do you have?

You could just actually read the examples given, you know? Women's March organizers in collaboration with the Nation of Islam has already been given as an example, the deafening silence by mainstream feminists when it comes to treatment of women in Islamic communities, the lack of support for women who were beaten up at an Islamic conference where open talks were held on how to beat your wives into submission, articles by mainstream feminists arguing how muslims are the true face of Islam, the huge overlap between modern feminists members and those of every other head of the Progressive hydra.

You could just go to some feminist meetings or spend a little time following modern feminists online and see this for yourself. But you wont. You're not interested.

Do you mean they defend muslims against racist people?

No, we don't.

 

[h4rm0ny]

Most of the replies to this I thought would be quite funny if they were lines from a comedy show but are actually quite scary when people think out loud like that. I mean wage equality for women "has communist undertones to it" WTF.

It does. Because we're not talking about same pay for the same job. That's already the law. Current arguments about the "pay gap" are in fact about an "earnings gap". Observations of different average earnings between men and women are not observations of different earnings in the same job. But the former is used to pretend the latter. The communist undertones come from people doing this to push for equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. Equality of Outcome is very much a communist approach to society.

 

[h4rm0ny]

Got a source for this? All I could find (ironically) was one about feminists interrupting speeches.

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2015/...s-who-do-should-be-praised-for-their-bravery/

Yes, those are the ones. You'd think two women who protested a conference where the announced topic was how much force to use in subjugating your wife, who were then beaten up by the attendees, would have provoked a little but more of an outcry amongst Feminists. But it did not. It quickly got buried because it conflicts with the general courting of Islam. Is there any reason that source isn't good enough for you? I mean, you asked, I gave you a bunch of answers and you picked one out, found it was actually a real thing, and then tried to spin it as not supporting my point. I clearly described the problem being the lack of support for these women, which your article is actually about. You do a very good impression of someone who just asks a bunch of rhetorical questions which are just thinly disguised attacks.

That doesn't even make sense to me.

I mistyped. "True face of feminism" is what it should read.

 

[h4rm0ny]

An interesting article on my work internal intranet yesterday. It was inviting people to put forward female graduates to apply to the companies graduate scheme. Clearly not looking for the best candidate. Just women. Not asking for men. This is one of the largest companies in the country.

Not uncommon. Google was (is?) heavily invested in this approach, hence James Damore's memo which he was then fired for.

 

[h4rm0ny]

It's really started to have a negative affect now too. Several of us have said it's no longer worth our time putting in extra effort to get something finished on time or answering a work call on holiday, because we simply aren't going to affect our promotion prospects because of it. We're not going to get a promotion or pay rise so why bother doing more than is necessary to keep the job?

I do occasionally see old-fashioned anti-women sexism, but very rarely. And it's been exclusively in the field of marketing. I think you still get it in the City, in investments, et al. Marketing doesn't surprise me - it's the field of choice for people who are aggressive but not very academically inclined / book-learned. It's also a field that is very cliquey and network-y. So it doesn't surprise it's one of the last main bastions of that sort of sexism in the West. But most of the sexism in the West these days is of the kind you describe and institutional.

I realize having typed that, how many times I typed "in the West". Modern Feminism's lack of interest in the Middle East and Africa is staggering given the purported goals of Feminism.

 

[h4rm0ny]

I've seen this posted a few times in similar format. What on earth are people expecting feminists to do about the middle East and Africa? The combined world of do-gooders has done nothing but make it worse in these places for decades.

Campaign, apply political pressure, fund groups that support women in these countries. If the number of people who marched in the "Women's March" which was an anti-Trump rally, had directed that message against funding or trading with countries with endemic mistreatment of women, they'd have achieved far, far more for women as a class. Saudi Arabia has just taken the step of now requiring by law husbands to notify their wives if they've been divorced by text message. And Saudi Arabia is dependent on the West so we have huge potential to influence it's domestic policies. In several African nations, FGM is routine in many areas. As it is in Pakistan. Pakistan receives huge amounts of foreign aid from the West. If the Women's March had demanded pressure on Pakistan to stamp out FGM if it wanted to continue receiving aid that would have accomplished far more. The amount of funding into such things would achieve far, far more in protective measures such as women's toilets in Africa which are proven to decrease sexual assault and increase school attendance for young girls in Africa (who frequently feel unable to go to school during their period and thus miss classes every month because of having to share toilets with men). I've put my own money towards that, btw. Feminist groups seem more interested in funding feel-good anti-Trump demonstrations, though.

I could go on for much longer about the things "Feminists" in the West could do about helping women in other countries but no amount of examples can convince those who don't want to be convinced. Case in point:

I was wondering the same.

Do you expect a UK feminist to go to Africa or something?

If your imagination is so limited that you can't think of ways Feminists in the West could help women who face actual sex discrimination and misogyny elsewhere, then I pity you. But fact is, you never even tried. You'd rather just a strawman or making an attack thinly disguised as a question.

 

[h4rm0ny]

They could petition those governments directly. They could raise funds here for donation to womens organisations within those countries. They could offer services either in this country or go there to help organise events there. They could demonstrate in those countries, or if unsafe to do so, outside of their embassies in safe countries to cause embarrassment. There is plenty they could do.

What Hades said.

 

[h4rm0ny]

As someone who works in Marketing, I’ve only ever seen or heard of old-fashioned anti-women sexism from Sales people, usually directed at female Marketing Managers.

If anything, I've found the Marketing sector to be more progressive than most when it comes to 'feminist issues' such as flexi-time for childcare etc (that actually applies to both men and women). I also see a lot of women in top Marketing positions, and I have work with plenty of mild-mannered, non-cliquey and well-educated people who hate networking… So unless you’re combining ‘Sales and Marketing’ as the same group, everything you just said about Marketing people (based on my own experience) is completely wrong.

I meant Sales.