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Original poster

Rebutting the Straw Men/Owning up when "it's a fair cop, guv.

259 replies

LurcioAgain · 14/06/2015 14:26

BertrandRussell has started an interesting thread in Chat asking women who consciously reject the label "feminist" why they do so. One thing that strikes me is a lot of the reasons being given are in fact "straw men", and that maybe a rebutting the straw men thread would be nice.

Aim of the game (of course I can't control the direction the conversation takes, but I hope people will be on board with this) - keep the conversation couched in reasonably accessible terms, keep the posts short enough not to be overwhelming (so probably only one straw man per post!)

OP posts:
BriarRainbowshimmer · 14/06/2015 17:15

Some women think it's more suitable for men who support women's rights to call themselves pro-feminist or allies, than feminists.

Yops · 14/06/2015 17:02

Here is one that I don't know the answer to - men can't be feminists. Is that a straw man?

PuffinsAreFictitious · 14/06/2015 16:41

There's no need for feminism anymore, women have equality already

  1. What utter bollocks.

Just that really.

ezinma · 14/06/2015 15:53

A close relation of 'Feminists hate men':

Feminists are fat hairy lesbians

1 Many are not.
2 I am. So what?
3 Feminism is a political project, not an identity. Reading Delusions of gender won't make you fat or gay, or prevent you from shaving, any more than reading Das Kapital would make you grow a bushy beard and speak with a German accent.
4 It's just a threat, isn't it? If you ask for equality, you can't expect to benefit from any of the enormous opportunities for patronage that men can confer under patriarchy. Like, um, the male gaze...

thatstoast · 14/06/2015 15:05

I haven't read that particular thread so not 100% sure if this has come up.

Feminists hate men

Softer version would include "I'm an equalist because I want to improve things for both men and women". The implication being that feminists don't care about men.

I don't hate men. I have an irrational dislike of Christian Slater but otherwise I have no problem with men as individuals. I want to improve the lives of men and women. One of the ways we could improve things is by having equality between the sexes. That's feminism, isnt it?

Original poster
LurcioAgain · 14/06/2015 15:03

Good point, Almonds - maybe a thread about a thread is slightly bad form. But on the other hand, since Bertrand expressly set up that thread as a kind of "safe space" where people could say why they didn't self-identify as feminists, we can't take up the points on the thread. And also I see this partly as an exercise in learning how to up my game - learn by listening to people and try to develop ways of saying stuff in a form which won't alienate people.

And yes, "women don't do manual work" is a great example.

OP posts:
almondcakes · 14/06/2015 14:58

I think it is a bit dodgy to ask people to express their views on one thread, on the basis that people will not argue against them, and then create a whole other thread to argue against them.

Most of the points on that thread are not strawmen. Those things do happen in feminism; lots of feminists do hold the attitudes being complained about.

But there are straw men there. The most offensive straw man (to me) is both racist and sexist. The idea that women don't do manual work. I'll argue against that:

  1. Huge numbers of women all over the world do manual work. Some of the worst manual work is only done by women - sewage removal in various parts of India for example. Women do most of the world's work and the Western style of living depends on workers elsewhere.
  1. Denying who does the work leaves communities vulnerable to starvation and the world vulnerable to environmental disaster because women are not given the power to make decisions about their own work, as people erase the fact they are even the ones doing it.
  1. Most men in the UK do not have manual jobs. They sit at desks. Looking after children and cleaning is manual work in comparison.
  1. People see work as more or less manual based on who does it. This leads to lower pay for women. Birmingham example where they were found to have underpaid women. The public perceived cleaners as less manual than refuse collectors, yet council cleaners clear houses where tenants have died, where there is excrement, drugs paraphenelia with an infection risk and so on.
BriarRainbowshimmer · 14/06/2015 14:50

Good initiative, OP.
I was surprised how many on that thread thought that feminists believed that.

I want to add that it has also been discussed that it's seen as "standard sex" even though most women orgasm from direct clitorical stimulation only, and as OP said it puts women at risk of pregnancy. Also, something women are expected to do even if we aren't feeling like it always. So PIV is fine but should not be assumed to be the standard.

Original poster
LurcioAgain · 14/06/2015 14:36

I'll go first:

All PIV is rape

First off, Dworkin never said that (her view is much more complex). Second, most of the heterosexual feminists I've ever talked to, including ones who self-identify as radical feminists, say that on a personal basis they like PIV.

Okay, so quick primer as to why, despite the fact that it's extremely enjoyable (at least I think so), PIV has its problems.

  1. It leads to pregnancy. Pregnancy only happens to women, and may be much wanted or very much unwanted, but takes a toll on your body physically, and birth carries risks up to and including death! These risks can be mostly avoided by using contraception and being lucky enough to live in a western country with good medical care. But some women can't access contraception, and some women find hormonal contraceptives don't agree with them. So there may be legitimate reasons why, even though it's great, an individual woman may want to get their sexual jollies another way - but we live in a society which places PIV at the centre of heterosexual sex - so it's very difficult for a woman to say no to it if she wants to without coming across as some sort of weirdo.

  2. PIV is an activity where its morality or otherwise depends entirely on both people wanting to do it! If both want to it can be fabulous. If one party (statistically usually the woman) doesn't it's rape. (NB note for the pedants: under UK law only men can commit rape, but I'm including a woman having sex with an unwilling man under this heading for the purposes of this argument - rare, but it does happen). And because of the possibility of rape, there's a strong element of the "eroticisation of rape" in our culture, both by those who stand to benefit from this (rapists) and those who might be on the receiving end, as a kind of psychological defence mechanism.

There are more points that could be made, but in a nutshell: PIV, bloody brilliant if both want to do it, but carries certain implications for women which it doesn't for men, and this makes it a feminist issue.

(Possibly failed the "keep posts succinct" rule I set Grin)

OP posts:
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