To lol at the feminism threads....

[Hannah4banana]

Seriously are people constantly looking out for a way to be offended first world problems!

There we have it Devi. While the sheltered middle class feminists are talking about gym equipment there are women in the middle east with hardly any food or training that are picking up rifles to fight their oppressors

Just had a look at the Fawcett society wrote up of the survey that produced that figure.

Disturbingly, only 67% of people in the U.K. support equality between the sexes

[[http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/2016/01/we-are-a-nation-of-hidden-feminists/ ]]

Yep, and while those women in the Middle East are picking up rifles, disingenuous posters here are calling feminism a "first world problem".

Pick which side you are on, people

miss it is possible, as someone said upthread, to care about both the big and the small issues. They aren't mutually exclusive, so maybe don't make assumptions?

What's worse? Ohhhh my gym equipment how sexist. Or women risk being raped to death if they get captured while fighting their oppressors? Pick one

Surely gym equipment is made to adjust to fit all and I've seen plenty of weights in the gym used by both men and women
Proving the point there! No it isn't made to fit all, it's made to fit most men and therefore if you a petite female it won't fit.
You assume it's made to fit all but you haven't actually checked.
This extends to other things, like female heart attack sufferers being massively underdiagnosed because the diagnostic symptoms are based on how males present with heart attacks.
Default human = man, maybe the examples seem trivial but they add up to at best excluding women from things because equipment is designed for them and at worse causing death.

And how do you know exactly what I have checked? I have a gym membership and I'm well up-to-date on gym equipment. This is my point exactly, an adjustable item to fit all is used to make a mountain out of a molehill. I've just purchased a fitness band for my DH for Christmas, it fits both myself and him on different settings. Why be so black and white and determined to prove me wrong over something I personally believe isn't an issue and then make assumptions I couldn't possibly know what I'm talking about purely because you disagree. It's my perogative to have my own opinion and tbh I don't see why you think because you believe something you have the right to try force that on another woman. Hardly empowering is it!

If I could just say the problem with feminism is not its basic underlying principle (equality between men and women) but its' failure to build a coherent narrative. In sort, it is all over the bloody place: incoherent, divided, obsessed with the minutiae of language over economic factors and, at its worst, very closed minded to any legitimate criticism.

I have read or heard feminists say that ALL men have more power than women - even the ones on the streets; suggest that people can voluntarily reject gender identity like a pair of clothes; suggest that if a few rich corporate women get a pay rise then this will be a victory for equality; defend pornography as a form of sexual expression while ranting about prostitution; rail against patriarchal norms while suggesting it is fine for women to behave in stereotypically feminine ways but not for men to be masculine; suggest patriarchy can be combated by women wetting themselves in public, exposing their nipples, banning mistletoe and going on a slutwalk...and on and on and on..

Not only is all this either contradictory, hypocritical, indulgent or plain manifest bollocks - it achieves absolutely eff all on its own terms. And all the while most fems have disproportionately little to say about poor or working-class women or for that matter poor or working-class men (who they just pretend don't exist..cause, you know, all guys have power - even the ones coughing up their lungs in a rancid bedsit)

Can you criticise any of this? No, because apparently absolutely anything a woman does in the name of feminism is feminist just by virtue of her being a woman and calling it so. Furthermore, if you're man with any questions about all this you're an agent of the patriarchy or a 'mansplainer' (and I wish someone would tell me the difference between mansplaining and a man explaining something). If you're a woman, you're an Uncle Tom.

Unfortunately, most of the people taking a shot at feminism are misogynist, self-pitying MRA wankers - so anyone with any criticism of feminism is immediately bracketed with them.

I've never had a problem with gym equipment either (possibly as I am 5'10), but I'm not here saying that these issues make a mockery of feminism.

I think "feminism' as a brand has a PR problem, it is not aspirational, more of a slightly embarrassing thing go 'admit' to being to many people who by deed actually are quite feminist.

And truly, why is this such an issue, that there are small and big problems? We are all agreed in that, but being confronted by a wall of pink when I try to buy my niece something to wear might irk me just now, and my donation to help educate girls in the developing world is a separate issue somewhere a bit further along a continuum.

I am utterly ignorant of feminism theory, I have only the vaguest of clues what 1st, 2nd and 3rd wave feminists might stand for, but none of that makes me less of a feminist.
Surely feminism is inclusive, not exclusive?
IMO it needs to be, and I, in all my ignorance, feel included.

Oh please. Nobody is saying that they're comparable.

But feminism can care about the little things and the big things. I can't understand why that's difficult to understand? The little things make the culture that allow the big things to happen. If we fix some of the little things, or at least have the conversation about what the little things are, maybe some of the big things are within our grasp to change too.

I'm not going to "pick one", that's ridiculous.

Expressing opinions without evidence?

Feminism in a nutshell

Here's one. Men have male privilege right? So homeless men have more privilege that middle class SAHM women?

I don't understand your comment, Just?

No homeless men have male privilege in comparison to homeless women.

Why are men more likely to be homeless than women then Bratsy?

The misrepresentation of feminism on this thread is quite amazing. Really, it's an achievement to so thoroughly, wilfully and completely misunderstand and take the least charitable interpretation of a political philosophy. It takes some doing.

There's plenty of evidence, just. That you haven;t seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I mean, you wouldn't believe it anyway, would you?

They aren't. Many women who are homeless for a night or two end up in prostitution very quickly. If you had spent 1 night on the streets as a woman, you would know you get men offering to pimp for you, or offering you a place to stay.
And women with kids get housed, because no one wants kids sleeping on the streets. In countries where that does not happen,there are plenty of women with kids on the street.

Ok. I dare you. No double dare you in fact to find a homeless man and a homeless woman and tell the man he has invisible privileges he is unaware of because of the patriarchy

Why dont men do more to help other men?
Women have spent decades raising money for shelters and Rape Crisis. Why dont men do that?

Here's one. Men have male privilege right? So homeless men have more privilege that middle class SAHM women?"

Nope.

And I am sure he would admit that the woman is more likely tobe raped or attacked than he was.

This old chestnut. The white feather campaign. Feminists would shame men for not going to war. Why didn't they push women to go to war?

Sorry to repeat my self but... women in the middle east are at war

Whatever the reasons, there are more men on the streets than women. Vastly more. Fact. 9 out of 10 in fact according to CHAIN figures.

Pooch,

Why is gender a social construct? One day old babies exhibit gendered behaviour based on their sex. It is a real stretch to say it is conditionibg.

Women injected with testosterone exhibit more aggressive behaviour, so why is it assumed that no other behaviour is hormonally driven rather than conditioned?

No actually men are more likely to be violently attacked. Women are more likely to be raped, yes. Not a competition though is it?