Not quite a TAAT (I hope) but a follow on from the Are You a Feminist thread....

[BertrandRussell]

If you said no, could you say why? And if possible, could you give examples- I know a couple of people have said that they think feminism has gone too far, and feminists think all men are rapists that sort of thing. If you think that, could you say why? What have you read, or listened to that brought you to that belief? No “tearing to shreds” I promise!

This started out a really interesting thread Bertrand, thank you.

Datun, I understand the issues and I can see you're coming from a good place.

But do you really think that's the spirit in which those two comments are made? The first is ambiguous but the second is very clearly 'fuck off, we can't be bothered engaging with you'. And to be honest I'm inclined to interpret the first in light of the second.

I recognise it's a 'balancing of rights' situation, and I get why some women are concerned about the meaning of 'woman' being eroded. But that's not the conversation that happens over there, is it? it's all about painting TMs as nutters and perverts. It a hostile place that strays into phobic language and discourse far too often.

This question has been asked so many times. The answers are pretty much always the same.

I do call myself a feminist but I don't see the point in asking this question, or similar ones as regularly as the OP does. You just get the same lot of answers all over again and no one changes their mind.

Well, the OP contains a possible answer within itself. ‘No tearing to shreds, I promise’
To have to add a disclaimer like that to a post about feminism is an indication that there are concerns.

Dear God, will you all just take a look at yourselves. This thread started out so well.

“Well, the OP contains a possible answer within itself. ‘No tearing to shreds, I promise’
To have to add a disclaimer like that to a post about feminism is an indication that there are concerns.”

No- I put that in because a poster on the other thread had declined to expand on her views because of a fear of being “torn to shreds”. I don’t think for a moment she would have been, but I thought I should acknowledge her concern. Incidentally, if *anyone^ has been “torn to shreds” on this thread...........

God you are so passive aggressive it’s infuriating

With your ...

So why ask the question? There is a large cohort of women leading independent, confident lives and making their own choices who don’t identify as feminist. Does the label matter more, or do their actions? Must they be part of a group, set, club, cult in order to be valued?

I'm all for equal rights but I don't want to align myself with rad feminists and I don't think that mainstream feminism will actually achieve gender equality. I also think that some popular femenist policies are stupid and counterproductive.

A lot of extremist feminists actually seem quite misogynistic to me. Lots of talk about how women making the decision be SAHP or change their name when they get married being brainwashed by the patriarchy and betraying the sisterhood. The same old 'women aren't intelligent enough to make their own decisions' shit by another name. Definitely not something that I would be willing to identify with.

As for equality. It won't be achieved by furthering women's rights only. Firstly because women need support from men. In order to get this support they cannot go about the whole rad fem men's rights don't matter because they are all rapists shit because men simply won't be on board. But also because men need support themselves in order to be able support women sometimes. For example, in order to more fairly share parenting, fathers need more legal protections and more social acceptance of they decide to take time away from work to take care of their children. Secondly, men are actually disadvantaged in some ways and that is not right-if you truly believe in gender equality then you wouldn't stand for this. An obvious example is the bias against father's in the courts relating to custody.

Then of course you have the let's think up incredibly stupid, unequal and patronising ideas femenist crowd. A brilliant example of this that has been widely adopted is positive discrimination. Reserving positions for only women applicants is obviously unequal as is discriminates against men-check. It's patronising because it suggests that women aren't capable of getting jobs fair and square-check. And it is stupid because it misidentifies the problem and is counterproductive to finding a real solution. The rational behind positive doscrimayion is that the problem is that there aren't enough women ceos/judges/politicians hence the obvious solution is to ban men from competing for positions giving women a chance. But this isn't the problem. The problem is that women aren't being selected for these positions. The problem is that there aren't enough female applicants and that the ones who do apply aren't good enough to compete against men. This leads to identifying more problems from misogyny existing within some industries, the societal expectation that women will prioritise family over career, substandard education for women (in particular the emphasis that girls schools place on academic attainment over being well rounded) and so on. Identifying the causes of under representation and eliminating them is much harder than just covering them up through positive discrimination but it is the only way to achieve true equality. Positive discrimination prevents this by making inequality less visible. It's a token gesture to make women with real concerns about the role of women in society to shut up and to make feminists feel good about themselves as if they have achieved something to help their sex instead of setting us back.

I don't want to call myself a femenist because I don't think it, as it currently stands, is conducive to achieving gender equality and, in some instances, harms women. I will gladly support feminist groups/policies that I agree with. But I would never put my name to something I don't completely agree with and I wouldn't let someone else do it. I don't let people call me a Muslim or a tory or a labours support etc. For the same reason. I am not a feminist until femenism changes.

Like atheists who live a life of virtue, generosity and uphold humanist principles. But Christians still want to save them and bring them into the folfpd.

Coughing whilst typing = spelling fail.

So why ask the question? There is a large cohort of women leading independent, confident lives and making their own choices who don’t identify as feminist. Does the label matter more, or do their actions? Must they be part of a group, set, club, cult in order to be valued?

I obviously can’t speak for the OP but I personally have an interest in this thread because it’s alien to me that a women wouldn’t indentify as a feminist - I just can’t understand why not. I honestly do my best to be inclusive, I don’t think that my brand of feminism is the one that everyone should adopt and I definitely to not make only feminist-approved decisions in my life. But it’s just so clear to me that women are disadvantaged in so many areas that it makes sense, to me, to look at the reasons why that is.

So I’m always interested to hear why others feel differently, although I do get annoyed to hear ‘they’re all man haters’ or ‘maybe if they looked at men’s issues too’ or ‘I believe in EQUALITY not feminism’ because they’re just cliched answers trotted out with little thought.

I’ve asked several times on this thread what ‘equality’ looks like to non-feminists and I haven’t had an answer yet. I’d honestly love to know.

God how many women think other women are shit? It’s insane. The vast majority of laws and customs have been made by men, for men. That’s why there are more men in positions of power and why they replace themselves with more men like them - it’s all set up for them. If men don’t like how things are it will be other men that are the ones with the power to change it. I doubt there’s enough women in parliament to get a bill through without the support of any men. Not all men have the power to change to law, but the ones with the power to change laws are mainly men. Plenty of incompetent men get very high up too, Donald Trump is an easy target - could no woman be better than him?

I asked on the other thread.

What definition of feminism are we using here? Can someone please tell me.

Ah, Pumper, you may call yourself a feminist but do other feminists call you a feminist? This is something I've come across whereby refusing to be called a feminist is actually a backlash against exclusionary feminism specifically.

Datun
How is it that on the one hand, feminists take great pains to say that they are not a single collective hive mind like the Borg. Which is why he President of the Women's Conference of the NUS doesn't speak for you wih her request for Feminist Jazz Hands... yet you also make statements like

Feminists are analysts. Not bigots

So does that mean you DO speak for ALL feminists everywhere?

Bluedoglead

I don’t think there is one standard definition that everyone uses. To me it means ‘appropriate rights, opportunities and fair treatment for women’ but that won’t suit everyone. How do you define feminism?

I have to agree that I've seen the OP post things like this time and time again. Asking the same things and answering questions with questions like a patronising teacher. Hardly an advertisement for feminism.

@HandbagKrabby what does Donald trump's incompetence have to do with his sex? A lot of men would do better too. As it stands he mostly stood against men in the race to be the republican candidate-apparently the republicans wanted some one like him. Arguably the democrats also made a poor choice and their choice was a woman. Perhaps if they had chosen a better candidate trump wouldn't be president.

I don’t know pumper. That’s why I’m asking. So I can look at my own stance and make a determination.

@Bluedoglead I though that we were using the standard "advocating for more wimen's rights on the grounds of gender equality" definition.

Well I don’t know.

Is that the definition Bertrand uses? Because I’ve looked and can’t see where she has said that (on phone. I may have missed it)

“I have to agree that I've seen the OP post things like this time and time again. Asking the same things and answering questions with questions like a patronising teacher. Hardly an advertisement for feminism.”

I’m not a recruiting Sargent. You have a perfect right to think i
I’m an arsehole but it would be the worst sort of self inflicted injury to decide not to be a feminist because of that!

Ah, Pumper, you may call yourself a feminist but do other feminists call you a feminist? This is something I've come across whereby refusing to be called a feminist is actually a backlash against exclusionary feminism specifically.

I don’t really understand this question Rat. I think other feminists would call me a feminist yes, but I would also be interested in why someone would think I wasn’t one. Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean.

I haven’t given my definition. I thought the point of the thread was for people to self define as feminist or not.