Feminism has set the ground rules years ago and framed any discussion about the movement in a way beneficial to the premise they want to push. As the successors to those feminists, you are framing the discussion in the same way, merging a movement who deals with petty nuances, such as mansplaining, manspreading, and whether or not we have too many scantily clad women appearing in commercials, when having any sort of discussion and asserting that somehow this has anything to do with women rights and not just feminists trying to control what women and men can or cannot do in society with their own bodies.
You cannot fundamentally separate feminist from women. Feminists are women, and many of them associate themselves with that label to varying degrees.
This is not how it works, feminism needs to prove on a continuous basis that what they advocate for and what is being discussed in the movement is for women rights and the equity between the genders. I have yet to see a feminist actually debate the topic from this stance and instead rely on an age-old perception that feminism equals women while actively working to make women miserable.
Not many associate themselves with the label as they don’t see the merit in it. The last statistic I saw indicates that only 5th of the women in the US and 7% of the women in the UK associate themselves with the label unless you go to the HuffingtonPost survey, which indicates that their reader base is over 80% feminist.
If most people believe in equal rights for the sexes, then they are feminists, as that is literally the definition
If you want to know what are the facts, go look at the encyclopedia, not the dictionary. The dictionary only describes the terms in the most politically and socially acceptable way. Even so, the actions of the movement and the ideas it promotes are far more relevant than a random definition.
By the way feminists frame the topic, I cannot be proud unless I’m gay. This is a ridiculous assertion as ideas like egalitarianism fit more naturally with equal rights and equal opportunities. Far more than feminism. Especially when they advocate against the rights of groups they disagree with.
But whether or not you accept the label is irrelevant
There is nothing more relevant. This is the orthodoxy of much of the left and certain parts of the right. Asserting that “the people in group X are morally good. If you are not in group X then you are an awful person who hates the people in group X.” In actuality, telling people what they are and forcefully applying labels they don’t agree with, is morally wrong.
If you (general you) support equal rights and equal opportunities for the sexes, you are a feminist.
Feminism does not advocate equal rights or equal opportunities. It advocates equal outcomes through the concept of ‘equality.’
It’s a term that has been vilified, as part of the patriarchy you deny exists, in order to discredit women’s voices and attempts to acheive the goal of equal rights.
It is vilified by feminists when they behave like overgrown toddlers, shout and moan about nonsensical slights that have nothing to do with women or men rights. The Patriarchy, something you still don’t want to discuss as you have no idea what it means, is the accusation and nothing but the accusation that men somehow “run the world,” while being denied most privileges and opportunities and where the value of a woman far suppresses that of a man.
I have yet to see a distinct, clear, and not open to interpretation definition of this idea, with most feminist resort to “most CEO’s are men” or “Most of the people in government are men.” Feminists also fail to explain why would men, or “The Patriarchy,” want to discredit women.
Unfortunately, there are women who buy into that because they don’t want to be seen as “man-haters.”
So you’re saying that women are inherently stupid and easily influenced? That does sound very much like a feminist dogma. Women and men are intelligent, mostly well-adjusted individuals, who don’t buy into the 50-years-old propaganda. Certainly not when most of the mainstream media, social media, and Hollywood keep forcing the idea that feminism is awesome.
You need to show me an instance where feminists are not advocating against men for me to believe that feminism is not, in its essence, man-hating.
My discussion of personal experience doesn’t mean that an individual experience validates something (although it’s interesting how you preface your statement on feminism with “in my experience” therefore, according to your argument, being flawed as it relies only on your limited experience, as opposed to my experience, which is very different. Which is more valid? Taken individually, neither.)
You miss the point. Neither of our experiences is worth much. They are personal and limited and cannot indicate anything that corresponds to reality. “Listen to women experience” usually means: “shut up. A woman is talking” and don’t serve as a conversation opener, but a conversation ender. In no time have I closed a discussion and asserted that further debate will be of no use.
but when the majority of women in the world, and many in the US, are expressing similar experiences
No. Not the majority. Only the loud minority that shut down any conversation they deem to be ‘hateful.’
being catcalled, raped, harassed, kept from moving ahead in both school and the business world, being talked down to, and treated like sexual objects instead of people
…Being in an elevator with a man, a man asking a question, expecting that a woman will be qualified based on the same standards that a man is, etc.
Catcalling shows immaturity but is also not a crime against humanity as feminists portray it out to be. Both men and women are being harassed. This is not a gendered issue.
As for rape, the study you cite indicates the there is a parity between male and female rape victims.
The rest of your examples are idiotic nuances that have no ground in reality, with most of the people who talk about being “kept from moving ahead,” are usually women who took gender studies in college who write endless blog posts about how awful it is that women choose to highlight their sexuality.
All you have is a narrative that doesn’t portray reality but your skewed perspective on human interaction.
Rape culture means that rape convictions are extremely rare, women who speak out about their experiences are vilified and castigated
Next time you bring a citation — bring a citation. Referring me to a site that misrepresents the actual data is not a citation.
Rape convictions are extremely rare due to lack of physical evidence. Most rely on “he said. She said.” The women who speak up are generally idolized and believe immediately. You live in a fantasy if you think otherwise unless you expect the common man to immediately believe you because you are a woman.
even with more than 52 women accusing a man of rape, he gets off in a mistrial. Those are facts.
What? didn’t the jury know he is a man and therefore guilty for existing? Did the evidence and the testimonies showed him to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt or was the trial a witch-hunt? Why it was declared a mistrial? I personally don’t know, as I don’t know what is the particular case you are referring to. Reason dictates that one instance of miscarriage of justice does not reflect on the rest of the cases.
Of course, this does not indicate any sort of Rape Culture. like the rest of the feminists, you use a weak concept that does not rely on data and continually shape it to mean whatever you want it to mean. I’m not that surprised.
Your understanding of women’s history is fundamentally flawed if you think that they were in any way equal to a man throughout most of human history up until the 20th century.
Not an argument. It’s a weak representation of the reality of the past, projecting current culture understanding and morality to the past, without taking into consideration their psychology, family life, public life, and other aspects of existing in a specific time period that does not lean on current day feminism.
But hey. Women didn’t run businesses or served as head of governments and therefore misogyny! For too long feminists had a free reign in shaping reality to their convenience.
Women were literally a man’s property, passed from father (or brother) to husband then to son.
They were not ‘literally’ a man’s property. Learn what ‘literally’ means. They were also not figuratively a man’s property, as there is a dynamic you gleefully ignore and a set of responsibilities that both men and women had to fulfill in any relationship. Stop ignoring the context that doesn’t fit into your narrative.
The fact that others might also have lacked rights does not diminish the inequality women have faced and continue to face.
But let’s ignore the rights that were stolen from man and the responsibilities not bound to women because it hurts the feminist narrative?
Women didn’t have the same “responsibilities”, not by choice but by force.
Like the selective service that men are bound to and that the Suffragettes opted out of when they got the vote? Are they the ones who took that responsibility by force?
In many cases, it took multiple women (or when that wasn’t enough, the word of a man) to give any validity to an accusation in court. To list only a few examples off-hand.
That’s not few and certainly not an example. Where and when was this the law of the land and for how long? Did the feminists fight against that law or was it contested by other movements and individuals?
I’m not contesting that bad laws and bad behaviors didn’t exist. No one does. I contest your fallacious notion that women were slaves before feminism.
There is not wage equality.
Thank you for debunking the wage-gap:
Why does a gender pay gap still persist? In our 2013 survey, women were more likely to say they had taken breaks from their careers to care for their family. These types of interruptions can have an impact on long-term earnings. Roughly four-in-ten mothers said that at some point in their work life they had taken a significant amount of time off (39%) or reduced their work hours (42%) to care for a child or other family member. Roughly a quarter (27%) said they had quit work altogether to take care of these familial responsibilities. Fewer men said the same. For example, just 24% of fathers said they had taken a significant amount of time off to care for a child or other family member.
but again, even pure numbers can be skewed one way or another, so how we interpret them is key.
This is why no one is contesting the earnings-gap. It exists for many and various reasons. This is what PEW explains.
That’s why listening to women’s experiences — again, not necessarily as individuals but as a majority whole — plays a big role.
I’ll just refer you one paragraph up in your response about the unconscious bias.
It’s more complicated than the numbers in a salary; for instance, it requires taking into account how many women aren’t hired for a role, or are skipped over for a promotion, or actually earn less money for doing the same exact job.
You assert all those things without any evidence that backs them up. The reasons for the disparity are much more nuanced than “men hate women” as feminists assert.
the distribution of the responsibilities in child rearing.
I wasn’t aware we were having this discussion in the mid-west of the 1950’s. I think you’ll find that western-cultures are much more open to the idea of a father the dominant figure in the children upbringing than in many other cultures.
This is also a convoluted way of saying “sharing parenthood responsibilities.”
women have faced the unequal burden of housekeeping and the raising of children
Sure, if you completely disregard the role of a father and a mother, the understanding of each parent responsibilities, and social and economic situation that both partners understood. Still, we live in the new millennium. The vast majority of people don’t really consider that a woman role to raise the children or even a man responsibility to bring the money. Even in communities where that is the case, it’s not something that shuns those who live by those standards and certainly not something that leads to a divorce.
It’s getting better, but men are still lauded for “helping” in raising their own children
Usually, the person with the more demanding work, the person whose work brings the most money, and the one that was elected to invest more time in that work is the one relegated to ‘helping.’ It’s not a man/woman thing but an economical thing.
But when a large group of women that you dismiss because they call themselves feminists all experience similar things, and there are statistics to back them up, it might be worth listening to
Speak to me like an equal and I’ll listen. To most feminists what I suggested is akin to heresy. Also, what you supplied are not statistics but a review based on various other sources. It’s a way to hide the actual data without citing a specific method of collection of said data.
The reason the author, for instance, did not get to use legal recourse (and that the workplace recourse failed) is because it simply doesn’t work. When women go to authority, they are often not believed.
Like “Mattress Girl” who defamed a man for her personal gain. If I’m not mistaken, she is 2016 NOW women of the year.
In this case, you didn’t even bother with an actual data, hidden or shown, but just brought feminist bias into the discussion. Again, narrative without reason or data behind it. This is why I refrain from arguments that require data — it’s hard to find ones that are not grounded in the group bias and few of those with no bias are not open to interpretation.
All in all, this has turned into exactly what I was trying to avoid. Me wasting time trying to convince you of something you’ve already made your mind up about (or “married” yourself to, to borrow your phrase).
This is your assumption that you are correct and I am wrong. For a moment I actually started thinking you are a rational person who can discuss the issues you so ardently defended, but alas, that was only a phase.
We all waste our time. For the majority of the writers on Medium, commenting does not constitute working and we are not getting paid for our efforts. It would have been a “waste of time” regardless of who you were speaking with.
I can argue til I’m blue in the face, fill every word with a link to historical evidence or statistics or women’s testimonies (which, again, you seem to dismiss as unreliable evidence).
When you say ‘women’ you mean ‘feminists.’ Because I do consider the experiences and testimonies of women like Svetlana Voreskova, Jhagi Bhai, Trudy W. Schuett, and many others. Many of the feminists I’ve encountered here usually disregard their experiences and try and reduce them to some sort of traitors to their gender.
I have no idea if they’ll even agree with what I’ve written but I’m fairly certain I won’t be labeled a misogynist or stupid for what I’ve written. There could actually be a discussion without labels being thrown around.
I’m glad we were able to keep it civil, however, as that is not often the case on the internet, so thank you.
I tend to be civil when I talk with civil people being civil. Less so when I’m being labeled and pushed into a box, not of my own choosing.