Feminism

[slightreturn]

Please feel free to express your views honestly re; Feninism.
What to men really think about it?

For my part, I am staying out of the misandry notion. I have met many, many women who would have good cause to 'hate men', individually and as a collective. and this hasn't happened as yet. Hurt, v. badly damaged and deeply abused. But IME the perspective has never been lost to the extent of what misandry indicates.

missed - will wander back.

got it.

Do like the notion that it 'had to be invented' as we need an opposite to misogyny, as a scientific balancer. And naturally as a weapon. The point about male misandrists is made nice and clear as well.

thank you.

Might sound weird but I'm yet to meet any man IRL who "gets" these issues as much as you do Pan, so - thanks :)

not a matter of thanks, is it? But I think I know what you mean.. Personal history and working in this and associated fields for a loong time. And its really refreshing and educative to revisit theory whichI haven't done for ages after working on practical stuff around this.

So thank you!

Can someone post that link to the misandry debunking site again please? I missed it

ISWYM Snorbs, have never wrestled with the difference between mysogyny and sexism before. Mysogyny is the stronger version, based in hatred while sexism is just a manifestation of possibly hatred but equally possibly, thoughtlessness as a result of growing up in a mysogynistic / sexist culture and not having thought too much about it...

Vesuvia German's great isn't it? Says in one word what you need 7 English words to say...

you just couldn't help yourself, could you?

You also missed out on the "how to be a humourless feminist" module Dittany I LOLed at that...

You missed out on the "dandies in leather trousers are not lustworthy" module IIRC.

Pan, that makes sense. As you say we as men don't hold personal responsibility for the actions of some other men; we're not them and we don't do what they do. But we do have a responsibility to speak out against those reprehensible acts and to encourage others not to mimic them. In some situations having a man speak out may carry more weight than a woman saying the same thing - which in itself emphasises the need to speak out, of course.

It seems to me that we have that responsibility not because we're men though but because we're moral humans. As I said earlier I do tend to approach feminism / anti-sexism (can I lump those two ideas together?) in much the same way as I approach anti-racism and anti-homophobia. I was a teenager in the '80s when Political Correctness was really making a difference in the media and I still believe that the rise of PC was, on the whole, a damn good thing.

For all the troubles we have now, I'm still glad my children aren't growing up in a time when it was seen as normal for Andy Capp to be beating up his wife in the newspaper comic strips every day.

That's certainly how it seems to me, anyway, HerBeatitude. Another example could be that a common-or-garden sexist following a woman down a dark street wouldn't realise, or if he did he wouldn't care, that his presence could be making the woman uneasy.

A misogynist might speed up and make a nasty comment to make sure she was feeling downright scared.

That's why I strongly object to being called a misogynist. By my terms of reference for the word, it's a very ugly insult.

Is Pan a man? If so, he's good at this feminism lark.

HB, thanks for your reply to my question. YOU've explained it perfectly.
I'm seeing a lot of it all over the place. The "you think you've got it bad, look at them , you selfish women"

What these people don't realise is that the women's movement is for all women, so liberation for even one woman benefits all women.

Lots of denial and emotional distancing going on, definitely (see the porn threads)

Also, and this is a little more sinister, I think the media thesedays is purposely focusing on "other" women to take women's eye off the ball. I get the feeling we are in the midst of a "backlash" against feminism, judging by the 36 planned Hooters breastaraunts to open etc. The last thing the patriarchy wants right now is for a third wave of feminism to take off in the UK/US.

Sorry, clarify my "liberation for one woman" comment.
It seems to me that it's only women who have no experience of feminism, especially radical feminism, who get it into their heads that feminism is about middle-class white women.
That's a myth made up by the patriarchy, in the main (although there have been branches of this i.e choice feminism).
But the best theorists and radical feminists have always had disenfranchised women, women of colour/ low economic status etc, at the forefront of their minds and they've always seen all women's suffering as part of their own. I can't see why a feminist would not identify with all women. So the only conclusion I can reach is that people who think feminism is about middle class white women is that they don't know much about feminism; though it's true that that particular group of women is more powerful than other women, and they should use that power wisely.

Sakura,

Are you suggesting that the media is consciously part of a movement to undermine feminism?

I would be grateful if Dittany or others would define what is meant by patriarchy, how one recognises it, whether it is something that its adherents consciously or unconcsiously engage in, and whether it is a unified worldwide phenomenon, or whether it is something that in some areas might not exist at all.

In case I seem to be interloping, I should add that I posted earlier on this thread (indeed, it seems to have kicked off after my first post) but due to RL I have not been able to contribute regularly. I have been following it as time has allowed. My (rather limited) contribution has been to say that to say that feminism merely seeks equality rather understates the movement's essence.