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Feminism deconstructed by a strong, intelligent woman.

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Wokko Pisces

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Joined: 04 Oct 2005


PostPosted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 8:05 pm
Post subject: Feminism deconstructed by a strong, intelligent woman.Reply with quote

I saw this video from "Girl Writes What" aka Karen Straughn, some time ago and thought there are a few here who would appreciate it and her other commentary, even if they don't agree with her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp8tToFv-bA&list=UUcmnLu5cGUGeLy744WS-fsg

She's made a LOT of videos but there are some gems in there, so have a look through her channel too. (This isn't click bait or anything, I have no connection to Karen in any way).
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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 9:39 pm
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Some good ideas in there, especially the focus on the downsides of the male role in what is an anthropological system. It's interesting to watch people get into these things, especially as they're reading their own work and hit upon their own emotionally-salient ideas.

But this is not really the "feminism" I learned back in the 1990s (and I was taught by one formidable feminist intellectual for a while there). I guess I'm now a generation behind on this, but in the 1990s the feminists I was reading had already dealt with that problem by employing a poststructuralist notion of "power"; i.e., power which operates "always and everywhere", including on "disposable men" every bit as much as oppressed women.

So that comment in the link above just doesn't resonate with what I understand serious feminism to be concerned with.

I mean, why do you think serious feminism focuses so much on queer theory, ambiguous gender, ambiguous humanity (e.g., cyborgs), and so on? It's not trying to beat men up; rather, it's trying to create "spaces of possibility" by exploring the ambiguities and contradictions of real lives being lived "on the margins", "in the cleavages", and even "in the imagination".

How that project is expressed politically no doubt varies as dramatically as the lives of those involved, but a male-directed anger is about individual psychiatry, not the general project of feminism itself as I have always understood it.

Note the speaker does lose the plot at about 14:50 when she slips into apocalyptic rhetoric and declares society is about to collapse due to everyone "bending over backwards" to "give women everything they want" (or something like that). Really? She has just spent x minutes looking back on the brutishness of human history, and then seriously thinks things are on the verge of "toppling" now due to modest efforts to grant women economic independence and the choice that affords. Single mothers of Sunshine West you vicious tyrants, you!

Increased women's rights plainly correlate with a general human betterment, including betterment for the vast majority of men and children; what planet is she living on? There has already been a meaningful (though incomplete) gender re-balance which has worked to the favour of most men even as it has addressed constraints on women. So, there's some contrarianism in the speaker's thinking which detracts from the other useful claims.

As Foucault taught, all discourses carry within themselves the seeds of their own demise; that is, their stability is much more a product of their brutish enforcement than some irresistable logic. And that critique has no specific political direction or fixed form.

E.g., if you critique "business" as many on the left do, as soon as you get close enough to "business" you quickly find that running a company is a bloody nightmarish and difficult thing to do, and thus your critique of "business" according to the definition you had collapses.

All discourses are like that because every entity of focus, whether be "business" or "women" or "marriage" or "the Chinese" or "Muslims" is ridiculously complex and difficult to define on close examination. Get the magnifying glass out and all such dumb terms collapse, much like Newtonian physics at the quantum scale collapses.

The New Atheist attack on religion is a classic case in point. The New Atheist definition of "religion" has always looked like a straw man to me because for a very long time now I've analysed "religion" from a cognitive biological-cum-psychiatric-cum-psychological-cum-anthropological view, not as a musty 19th-century system of anti-Enlightenment apologetics. This is a plainly dismissive and inadequate conceptualisation of a major individual and social phenomenon.

And feminists have been onto this for decades now I would have thought, hence the disconnect with the speaker's claims.

Anyhow, chalk the speaker's exaggerated thesis up as one plausible response to "feminism", whatever that is. My guess is some people spend too much time mixing in narrow "issue circles", eventually defining themselves in relationship to those narrow circles, losing sight of the broader demographics beyond. Wink

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Wokko Pisces

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Joined: 04 Oct 2005


PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 10:52 am
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I like when you post like this, but it's a lot to take in and respond to. I might just take it as a comment Razz


I'll make a few points however.

I'd add that when making a piece like this, the author (assuming it's a prepared monologue and not off the cuff) has to write for her audience. There's no point giving a university level, academic speech in a YouTube video. This mean simplifying your general hypothesis and proofs down to a level easily understood by the layman, not for a social science or gender studies professor. I personally try and do this as much as possible because giving an academically rigorous response tends to lose the vast majority of your audience.

Also you state that womens rights has created better living conditions, but this may be something of a 'chicken or the egg' concept. I would posit that better, safer, living conditions certainly correlate with a society granting womens rights, but I think the better conditions for women are caused by those better conditions and not necessarily the other way around.

I also agree that people who have a narrow focus tend to colour the world with that focus. Karen Straughn has certainly made a niche for herself with this issue (as you would see from the 150 or so videos she's done). Having a narrow focus can allow someone to gain quite a level of expertise, so not sure if a dilettente is better than a specialist to get information from.
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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:26 am
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^Agreed on the limits of the genre and its suitability for certain contexts; the format she is using is also a far harder task than writing, especially if she does it regularly (though she does seem to be reading from a screen anyhow!).

On your chicken-egg point, I actually hold that economic independence precedes individual independence and therefore improved life facility, though that doesn't affect my central criticism either way. The lives of men have improved regardless of whether the simultaneous improvement in the lives of women is a causal or a dependent factor. And overlooking that uncontroversial set of socio-economic facts is no trivial oversight in the context of what she's claiming.

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David Libra

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Joined: 27 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:36 am
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Thanks for the video, Wokko. A few comments:

She provides an explanation for patriarchy that I have to admit I hadn't considered before—that it was, essentially, a means of protecting women from physical harm and thus ensuring the tribe/village/civilisation's reproductive future. That certainly seems a lot more compelling to me than, for instance, the radical feminist idea that men historically subjugated women just to perpetuate their own power base.

But I can totally understand why women would want to fight back against that dichotomy, because of course, as we know, being placed on that pedestal caused terrible limitations on their ability to participate in society. And, yes, there is something essentially dehumanising about that dynamic. In that respect, the feminist movements of the twentieth century have achieved real progress, and there is still progress to be made.

Regarding women being saved from burning buidings, any feminist worth their salt would agree that the concept of "women and children first" is essentially sexist and backward. That this mentality persists is not so much evidence of feminism wanting to have its cake and eat it too, but simply a demonstration that our society has not yet fully embraced feminist ideals. Same goes for attitudes of "boys don't cry".

(Circumcision is a bad example, though—that's just a function of a) the differing intentions and characteristics of male and female circumcision; and b) Western cultural/religious tradition.)

And of course, you occasionally see these old sexist ideas (i.e. men should look after women) slipping into cultural discourse on issues such as domestic violence and rape. And some of the less intelligent feminist writing falls into this trap. But what can you do? Society is always in flux. The more feminist our society becomes, the weaker these discourses will be.

She's spot on with the "men do/women are" dynamic—and good points on how this can be more harmful to men than women—but once again, it's something that many serious feminist writers have critiqued.

She's right that the feminist movement has been primarily concerned with women's disadvantage. I mean, that's the name of the game. That's why, in my opinion, there's room for a progressive men's movement that is compatible with feminism, and that's why I wrote this:

http://davidheslin.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/towards-a-progressive-mens-movement/

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Last edited by David on Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:42 am; edited 1 time in total
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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:42 am
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^Yes, but on the first bit, who are the in-group men protecting women from? Tupperware salespeople? "Needing to be protected" is merely a euphemism for "being dominated", so that's more sleight-of-hand than insight, isn't it?
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HAL 

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:45 am
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I think Needing to be protected is more than that.
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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:51 am
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Well, continuing her 'Titanic' metaphor, it's everything from natural disaster to dangerous employment to homelessness to, of course, violence committed by other males (the history of human warfare and conquest, of course, going hand in hand with mass rape, assault and murder of women). As she points out, these dangers are increasingly rare in the modern world, so protection is no longer necessary.

I don't think any of that is controversial. Where I think she's wrong is that she thinks feminism is working to maintain that state of affairs; whereas I would argue that there's a very conscious movement in modern feminism to sacrifice the 'safety' of domination for greater freedom and opportunity.

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Last edited by David on Wed Nov 26, 2014 12:06 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Wokko Pisces

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Joined: 04 Oct 2005


PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 11:59 am
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I think you're confusing somewhat 'academic' feminism with online activist and mainstream feminist ideas. It's a broad movement true, but there is a distinctly 'anti male' section that is at the very least a very vocal minority. Also, while I don't think a feminist would say they want to keep the protective aspects of 'patriarchy' while maintaining freedoms I think the practice shows something else.

Feminist commentary will often blame a male dominated society for male problems but fail to show how deconstructing a patriarchal society would help to relieve them. I don't see women falling over each other to take up the burdens and dangers of construction, defence or mining jobs. There is a reason that 90%+ of workplace deaths are men.
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David Libra

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Joined: 27 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 12:16 pm
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Wokko wrote:
I think you're confusing somewhat 'academic' feminism with online activist and mainstream feminist ideas. It's a broad movement true, but there is a distinctly 'anti male' section that is at the very least a very vocal minority.


I think so too, but it's such a nebulous movement that I'm not sure you can make such a neat distinction between 'academic' and 'pop' feminism (keeping in mind that much of the latter is informed by academic writing). And then, of course, you get the different 'schools' of feminism (radical, marxist, liberal, sex-positive), some of which are in direct opposition to each other. Perhaps it's like anything—the smart, switched-on writers will be thinking critically about all these issues, whereas the dumb ones will just repeat dogma and prejudice.

Rather than try to define this movement as one single thing and oppose/support it, it's best just to take what we like and reject the rest. People are way too hung up on labels. So long as you're basing your opinions on scientific fact, you have a bit of compassion and empathy for others and you're working to make our world a better place, you're on the right team as far as I'm concerned.

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Last edited by David on Wed Nov 26, 2014 12:35 pm; edited 2 times in total
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pietillidie 



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PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 12:17 pm
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Wokko wrote:
I think you're confusing somewhat 'academic' feminism with online activist and mainstream feminist ideas. It's a broad movement true, but there is a distinctly 'anti male' section that is at the very least a very vocal minority.

I still think you're being generous: It's almost mainstream support versus a very tiny minority.

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pietillidie 



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PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 12:20 pm
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David wrote:
...so long as you're basing your opinions on scientific fact...

"Scientific fact" is probably the wrong term, but in this case ignoring the profound improvement in the lives of men over the last century is not even close to being respectable, let alone scientific. That's the biggest flaw by a margin in her view.

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 12:22 pm
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Yes, as you're basing your opinions on scientific fact seems very long to me too.
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David Libra

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 12:39 pm
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pietillidie wrote:
David wrote:
...so long as you're basing your opinions on scientific fact...

"Scientific fact" is probably the wrong term, but in this case ignoring the profound improvement in the lives of men over the last century is not even close to being respectable, let alone scientific. That's the biggest flaw by a margin in her view.


Well, I'm in your camp on this—I think the progress achieved by the first-wave and second-wave feminist movements have been of significant benefit to both women and men. Of course, some might see any improvement in men's lives as unrelated, but they're probably wrong. Being a gay male, for instance, is a lot easier in a society with less fixed gender roles.

Personally, I'm very thankful I can be in a relationship of equals, not one in which I have to fulfil a role as owner or protector. The historic—and, to an extent, current—feminist movement is one of the main reasons I'm able to do that.

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Wokko Pisces

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 12:52 pm
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David wrote:
.. not one in which I have to fulfil a role as owner or protector. The historic—and, to an extent, current—feminist movement is one of the main reasons I'm able to do that.


Tell her you wont go and see what that noise is when you're in bed because it might be an intruder and see how much you're not the protector. Laughing
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