Feminism deconstructed by a strong, intelligent woman.

[David]

But the idea that that's my specific role and not hers is something I oppose, and it's something she would probably be uncomfortable with as well.

I mean, this doesn't mean that people in equal relationships don't take on certain roles. For instance, I'm much more diplomatic than she is, so if there's an argument with a housemate I'll often be called in to resolve it. But when it comes to conventional 'male' roles, I'm not particularly strong or physically imposing, so there's little benefit to me taking the role of protector in danger situations. Indeed, it could be that she'd be more aggressive in a scenario where our physical safety was threatened.

[David]

Just read this piece in a journal put out by my university course:

https://medium.com/cardigan-street/words-for-the-wise-5100f07c1222

See, I don't get this. The author seems to be intelligent, articulate and well-read, so why is this piece such an illogical mess? I mean, misinterpreting an internet meme mocking sleazy men (the point is that the sloth looks like a creepy male) as an instance of "rape culture" is a pretty elementary mistake. But this is the problem with many of these claims: if you're going to start passing cultural critique on satire and humour (and the effect they have on social mores), you need a far more sophisticated analysis than "rape jokes normalise rape".

As for the rest, it's just a grab-bag of feminist talking points that actually have little to do with rape: pornography, advertising, gender roles, legal restrictions on abortion and men staring at your breasts. The only actual statistics about rape cited in the piece are global, which means that we're no longer talking about Australian or even Western culture per se.

So, it's a bad article, you might reply. So what? Well, the issue for me is that it's representative of a lot of pop feminist writing nowadays, particularly on websites like The Guardian and The Age (Clementine Ford, who gets a mention in this piece, is a major culprit). Perhaps this kind of muddled reasoning is just one of the inherent drawbacks of unqualified op ed columns; but this kind of stuff is very popular right now, and it's certainly having an influence on cultural discourse (particularly in left progressive areas).

[Wokko]

I don't even know where to start on that piece David except to say that is the exact thing that I'm talking about. That right there is modern day feminism in all its confused, addled, ranting glory. This is tumblr, The Age, Facebook all rolled into one article.

My head hurts just reading it, and as usual with these pieces there is no scope to comment and comments that disagree are inevitably moderated anyway (in this case however it appears I could write a whole article in response, but I think I'll decline).

Saying that this doesn't represent 'real' feminism isn't the case because both inside and outside academia this is becoming the norm. If the author wants to see a real 'rape culture' I suggest she tries looking abroad (maybe start with that feminist utopia Sweden).

[pietillidie]

[David]

Well said, PTID. These are my thoughts exactly.

I wonder what became of poststructuralist feminism? I expect it still holds sway in academic circles, but it's as rare as hen's teeth in the blogosphere (or perhaps I'm just not looking in the right places). Perhaps this is where 'intersectionality' discourse originated?

[pietillidie]

^Anger > angry expression > angry reaction > content > search results!

If that's what the OP is reacting to, it's the old silly Hegelian hypothesis > antithesis I keep complaining about.

A time budget means there's no choice but to apply discretion when consuming content. Not so much that you miss new ideas, of course, but some writers are simply more informed about both the world and their own psychiatries than others, and thus produce more useful material.

One reason I stick to mostly to academic material is because you can skim the abstracts and then drill down if the abstract catches your eye. Then you can read the article quickly and discard it quickly if need be. Academics also reference other materials more thoroughly, so there's plenty of informed divergence if you want it. The lack of discipline in other genres really is a huge time waster. Even the blogs of academics are much more compact and well-referenced; e.g., even if you were to totally disagree with Paul Krugman, his references are always very topical and respectable.

I use a blog aggregator for other topics I'm interested in such as the IT business, but that really does rely on news from the field.

But random opinion on social topics or quasi-academic social theory? Unless it's satire, no thanks. Pages of narcissistic fluff lacking in discipline and accountability is the norm for the genre. And to think I get accused of that on Nick's despite trying to bring accountable research to bear on otherwise arbitrary hot air

[David]

[Tannin]

I don't understand. Men never stare at my breasts.

[Tannin]

Q: Since when was the Guardian a serious newspaper? Well, OK, it used to be good (stand fast a couple of weird quirks, notably their habitual smattering of ill-thought undergraduate-level feminist screeds that score an A+ for schoolgirl enthusiasm, D- for logic, and F for evidence). But since it went tabloid, it's hopeless. Never in my life before have I seen a supposedly professional web design bad enough to make afl.com.au look good, and slow enough to bring even my fasst, modern computers to their knees.

[HAL]

Can you give me a more specific reference? The name of the paper and the date, please.

[David]

Agree re: the web design. Not sure what prompted the shift from the much cleaner and more aesthetically pleasurable white background.

[Tannin]

^ What prompted it? Teenage morons with iPads, David. The new website is designed for the small-screen touch interface from the ground up, and designed for the minimal attention span and inability to grasp the big picture that the iPad Generation is notorious for, and designed by the current generation of young high-tech morons who are, apparently, equally unable to grasp the lean, elegant simplicity and power of modern CSS3 / HTML5, the network-crippling wastefulness and inherent bugginess of vast piles of overlapping Javascript, or the fact that large numbers of Guardian readers use real computers with big screens and hate being treated to the insane fonts and giant print of their dreadful new telephone-only design. (Any competent web designer has long since mastered the simple art of writing flexible CSS which adapts itself to your screen. The technique is called "responsive design" and it's been around for a full decade. Ten years ago it was complicated and surprisingly difficult to learn; standard modern CSS 3 and HTML 5, however has made it a breeze. We are talking Web Design 101 stuff these days.

Try a simple VIEW -> SOURCE on any Guardian page. See if you can calculate the ratio of content to presentational code. (Hint: it's something like 1 to 3 at very best, more like 1 to 8 on short articles. Even the first number is appalling. Compare with a well-designed page for similar (mainly textual) content, where the content / overhead ratio is likely to be in the vicinity of 4 to 1. (That's 4 to 1 - i.e., 80% content, not a Guardianesque 1 to 4, or 20% content.)

This is why it's so horribly slow to load now, and all the idiotic Javascript is why opening three or four tabs worth of Guardian pages will bring your computer to its knees.

FMD, what were they thinking?

[stui magpie]