Why are there so few posts on the feminism board? (Part 2)

[Jackieharris]

Since the last one filled up I though I'd start a new one as the conversation seemed to be mid flow.

I seem to baffle you quite a lot Hak and sometimes I think it just best to leave you baffled - life is too short. The morning is lovely and I am off for a run, a more profitable use of time.

I identify as a feminist and don't post on FWR. I would echo pp's concerns on page 1-2 (?) regarding 2nd wave radical feminism focus, transphobia/sex essentialism and a lack of intersectionality. I am an academic feminist and would surely fit right in, but I think there's a generational divide between feminists too (e.g. Julie Bindel in the Guardian, who imo is a very hateful person but very mainstream, versus Roxane Gay, very much of the new Women of Color school).

I don't avoid FWR because I don't want to be challenged per se, I do browse there and agree with some things/disagree with others, but I prefer to hang out in other feminist spaces with people who can teach me more about the issues I focus on. Twitter is good but I need breaks from a stream of depressing stories or studies. Reddit can be terrifying and a lot of men's rights trolls hang around and invade women's spaces. Tumblr can be a massive echo chamber which gets facts wrong a lot. Everywhere has downsides!

A fact- I will explain and Hak will come back telling me why I am wrong. Life is too short. I had a short 15 min run and it was lovely.
I shall just stay off. Everyone will be much happier. I can't see why that is spiteful.

Meh that's why I don't care if you or anyone else doesn't post there. you're not the first person to complain about FWR with spiteful posts and you won't be the last.

To the poster upthread who asked me why I don't post to disagree with the idea of The Patriarchy as a thing. It's because if I did that, most of the time I'd just come across as a bit of a dick.

Imagine someone's started a thread about something they've experienced, and they've come to FWR to discuss it from a feminist perspective and The Patriarchy gets mentioned as a way of shedding light on that experience. Then I turn up and say 'er, yes, well, I don't think The Patriarchy is a thing' and want to debate the analytical tool rather than the OP's experience. I would get rightly rounded on for derailing the discussion because I am, in fact, derailing the discussion.

I think this imaginary interaction actually summarises something that happens a lot on FWR, and might shed some light on why it has a reputation for being a bit bitey. Also why the people accused of biteyness (is that a word?) feel the accusation is unjust.

Cos what happens next is that I shuffle off feeling aggrieved and complain that there is no room in FWR for my sort of feminism. And the people who rounded on me sit there on their thread feeling exasperated at the way it's impossible to get any kind of solid feminist analysis going, because it always gets derailed by someone picking away at the premises and why should it be incumbent on them to down tools and 'educate' anyone who turns up to derail a thread?

Rinse and repeat this interaction enough times, and inevitably the rebuttals get more and more brusque and accusations of cliqueyness start to fly around. Arguably neither side is wrong. But as Buffy touched on elsewhere, it's difficult to have a cogent debate unless some basic premises are agreed and I think a lot of the basic premises of feminism are, rightly or wrongly, still the subject of debate. Not all of them - as she said, it's impossible to have a debate if one side just doesn't think women are oppressed. But if everything other than that is still up for discussion it's still difficult to get very far. So a consensus emerges about causes, effects, and what should be done about it and people are understandably protective of the consensus as it supports more granular discussion. Only it shuts out people who might see things from another angle. Not really sure what's to be done about that

Majoras I also find your post spiteful and ageist.

I occasionally dip my toes in to read, but I don't post. Partly because I don't feel like anyone is bothered about what I think (because I'd be repeating) partly because I don't feel clever enough.

I get fed up enough with the injustices everywhere else to want to spend my MB time getting enraged. Because I do get enraged! I need to find some way to channel it really.

(Will read the full thread at lunch as don't have time now)

Buffy I've mulled this over and I don't think I have a simple answer. I'm off to catch a plane so won't try and speculate in a hurry but I'll see if I can come back with some thoughts later.

Just quickly though - I think talking about a patriarchy can be a useful hermeneutic tool, and a shorthand for a whole nexus of pressures and assumptions. But even though there are misogynists out there, and I've met my share of them, overall I don't think The Patriarchy is an intentional, calculated, deliberate and malicious thing. I get a bit twitchy when it's described as such.

The main thrust of my post though wasn't really about that but musing about the impact of an emerging consensus within a topic that's heavily contested even at the level of basic premises. Which is I think part of the issue. Not that realising that helps things really.

I agree Manatee. You have put into words what I couldn't. I can't see the solution either, other than to keep off.

The find me an example only counts if you argue against the rads. If you enter something like, well, men are obviously bad people and haven't been brought up properly, you don't have to provide examples.

I do think that patriarchy is deliberate, but it's born out of the fact that mankind is, at least in part, a predator. The problem is that our predatory functions probably peaked during the middle ages. Since then we've invented a range of devices which make running about the place, hitting your enemies over the head with a club, far less of a viable proposition. The only real problem with power (or wealth), is that when you have it, the only way to share it is to volunteer to give some of it to people who don't have any. Quite why we in the west, (and the Romans and Egyptians) did that, I don't know. The Greeks didn't. So, in short, yes. I do agree with the rads that the patriarchy is a conspiracy (even if there was once an element of survival in it) what I disagree with them about is what to do about it.

That's an interesting interpretation, Dora, though I should confess to a sort of distrust about anything which does evolutionary psych (or maybe historical pych - is that a thing) to sort of naturalise contemporary conditions.

But wrt power, I'm not convinced by that idea that basically to redistribute power, people have to be willing to give it away. What about the power of consensus? A person or small group can't withstand the basic power of consensus against them. Power imbalances take a lot of enforcing, through institutions, community structures, discursive networks and practices. If the people constituting those structures achieve a consensus against them, the power structures they support suddenly become very vulnerable. Power differentials are maintained by consent; we may feel ourselves to disagree with them but when we cooperate with them, we are consenting. Individual dissenters are vulnerable, sure, but if you achieve consensus then you can take control of the structures of power.

I think the fwr board is more purposeful than other places. You can post about parking etc in aibu or chat, child related matters on many boards but I reckon fwr has to be more narrow so it will get less posts.
I often think on how my daughters and I are, and will continue to be, at a disadvantage due to our sex, our colour and for me, my religion. It is incredibly depressing at times. Whilst fwr seems a good starting point for some of the issues I experience, I wonder if other posters would understand or give the same importance to the fact that it is MUCH harder for certain women in western society than it is for others. I recall a poster on the women of colour thread saying something along the lines of being told "you don't have time to find yourself, that's a white person's privilege" (perhaps worded v differently my memory is not amazing! ) and this sums it up in a way.
I have to tell my daughters this in one way or another. That they cannot dress the same as their white friends that they cannot study the same things that they cannot behave the same way. Doing so will put them at even bigger disadvantage.

So. I guess I feel like I have far bigger fish to fry fighting several forms of oppression that I feel nobody else understands or can be bothered to understand. ..why? Because in this scenario white women are not the oppressed. Maybe this could give you insight into why men won't change the status quo for women as a whole, why should they? They're benefiting as a whole, as are you compared to people of colour.

Ouch, Snugnbug, that was a quite painful home truth to hear. You are right, I'm very lilylivered about tackling the issues that WoC face, for no real reason other than how uncomfortable I feel. The shocking thing, the indicting thing about that is that the discomfort I have about it is all about embarrassing myself or accidentally being really offensive, or somehow being even more of a problem with my mouth open than I am when I just go around quietly oppressing people with my silence. As you and PP have pointed out I really need to position myself as part of the solution rather than as part of the huge silent and silencing problem

"I have to tell my daughters this in one way or another. That they cannot dress the same as their white friends that they cannot study the same things that they cannot behave the same way. Doing so will put them at even bigger disadvantage… I feel nobody else understands or can be bothered to understand. ..why?"

Do you have many conversations with other WoC? I'm new to MN so not had a chance to ignore threads on this in the past. My friends who are WoC are all "well-fed and privileged" as the PP you refer to put it when talking about white women worrying about taking their husband's surname etc…. so I don't understand what your daughters are going through but I genuinely can be bothered to try - please explain what it is that your daughters are having to do differently dress wise/education wise etc. so as not be at a (greater) disadvantage to their white friends (either here or start a thread on the feminism board - I really would like to understand where you're coming from).

What I mean to acknowledge, sorry, is how self serving my embarrassment is.

or maybe historical pych - is that a thing
Psych history is (or was at one point; I don't know what the current fashion for it is.) They do stuff like analyse Hitler to see why he was the way he was. I 'd rather spend my time looking at the rise of industrialisation or something.

I can see the argument for fratriarchy rather than patriarchy, but whatever it's called, it's there - and I think the fact it's systemic rather than deliberate makes it harder to counter. A lot of men I know genuinely don't see (and have never really thought about) why there may be few women in IT, for example - if they do think about it, they seem to assume women have all the same choices and just choose not to do it and never get as far as thinking about how free those choices are and what might shape them - and more pertinently, what they could do to change things. It's just the way things are. Whereas if there were more overt discrimination, it's easier to see - and tends to look more personal (e.g. harassment against an individual) than it being the whole system.

You agree with the rads that patriarchy is a conspiracy Dora? I know some bloggers who say this, but it has always been a very small section of radical feminists who say this.

I'm a radical feminist, both self identified and according to the quiz, and I don't think the patriarchy is a conspiracy.

Yes, I think I'm a rad fem but I don't think the patriarchy has been consciously designed. It's like a conspiracy with no conspirators. Wouldn't it be much easier if it was just that people had secret meetings in which they explicitly organised it? We could just get a hold of the minutes and thrash it out with them. I'm assuming there would be women at those meetings happily going along with it because lots of women do support the patriarchy and lots of women participate in gender policing and lots of women think that it is the natural order of things.

Also wondering which roles require men to remove noticeable facial hair but not women...

Army - No Beards
RAF - No Beards
Navy - No Moustaches

IKnow… I was at an army event last year for work. 60 men and 5 women. They were being given instructions about their expected behaviour for the week… "clean shaved please, including the girls".