Is feminism all about man hating?

[PedanticPanda]

When feminism is brought up around my DP and my other friends they all say the same thing,

I agree with feminists who want equal rights for men and women, but not feminists who hate men and want women to be treated better than men.

Do these feminists actually exist? I assumed that feminism was all about equal rights etc, I thought all the man hating was a stereotype but wasn't actually true, but, most people I know seem to think this is the idea of the majority and it's the minority of feminists who want equal rights.

Fair enough, I just think its a bit unrealistic to expect such a big ruck to leave no trace and felt it a bit unfair to apparently chastise Beachcomber when it did seem a big deal to you as well. However, you're right about it springing up in other threads, apologies OP. I vowed to leave it be but have found the snide references to Dittany and use of rad-fem like its an insult provocative, and I neither know Dittany nor identify as a rad-fem. Backto sitting on my hands.

Is it really Whatmeworry?

Are we going to go any lower?

It's always in the interests of anti feminists to derali constructive discussion.

I'm picking my daughter up tomorrow. She's three and a half and lovely. I'm going to take her out in to the woods and look at bugs, and she's going to ride me around home like a horsey until my knees wear out.

We might make cupcakes.

As you were.

People don't, on the whole, unless they are white supremacist arseholes, whine about ethnic minority activism as being white-hating. Even though there are a percentage of non-white activists who are, well, you know, fucking dubious nasty little bastards; think of the raging anti-semitism of the Nation Of Islam lot. Not to mention their misogyny. Some people seem to confuse justifiable anger, with the class privilege of the dominant group, with hatred of the members of that group. Unfortunately some people in the oppressed group do hate the oppressors to the point of blind bigotry and spite.

Hester, in America at least, there are probably as many people who've heard of Elizabeth Cady Stanton as have heard of Gandhi (and if it wasn't for the film with Ben Kingsley, even fewer would know :))

There's a statue of her, with other "mothers of feminism," Susan B Anthony and Lucretia Mott, in the crypt of the US Congress building.

Although my schooling was way back in the 70's, even then we learnt something about her in history and it's my understanding that feminists involved in the Seneca Falls conference and the Suffragettes have featured more prominently in school history classes in the US in the past couple decades.

But her criticism of the abolitionist movement, her overtly racist comments about the need to extend the vote to "women of good class and education" to counterbalance all the poor, illiterate black men who gained the vote after the Civil War, and her reluctance to admit African American women to the women's rights movement aren't usually mentioned.

Lucretia Mott, her contemporary but almost a generation older, while sharing Stanton's drive for female emancipation was highly critical of her for her racist and classist views. Mott and Sojourner Truth were perhaps some of the earliest examples of feminists with an intersectional perspective. Cool!

However, I have to take issue with your statement, "I also think that culturally we've made greater steps to examine and redress racism in our history whereas sexism is largely written off as 'just the way it was'."

This is the internetz, I don't know you or whether you are a woman of colour or not. But, I'll say from my own perspective, as someone who is visibly white, I don't believe it is for ME to pronounce whether there have been sufficient steps taken to "examine and redress racism in our history" our contemporary society, for that matter. I'm not affected by racism every day, so it's easy peasy for me to say that racism has largely been "sorted," but that would be me speaking from my privilege, not reality.

And, as an observer, I don't believe we've taken nearly enough steps to address institutionalised racism in our society, or sexism or other forms of oppression that maintain what I refer to as kyriarchal hegemony.

(Rummages in cupboard for tee shirt with "Lucretia Mott Rocks" on one side and "Sojourner Truth is my Idol" on the other.) :)

Wasn't derailed by any feminist.

I don't think we've made sufficient steps either, Kritique. I do think, in my culture at any rate, we've made greater steps. The history curriculum was completely rewritten to try and begin to address some of the issues of historical racism as one example. I wasn't presenting it as an either or.

SGB, emboldened by the wearing of my tee shirt and a renewed commitment to not getting into any pointless bunfights . . .

You said, "People don't, on the whole, unless they are white supremacist arseholes, whine about ethnic minority activism as being white-hating."

I have to disagree with that. My God, if I had a quid for every time I've overheard or been part of a conversation where someone has dropped the, "I have friends who are black," or "So and so is Asian, but he's alright," or some other lame comment showing that they see "good" Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people as the exception and not the rule, well, I'd be able to upgrade my car at least.

And, I could probably fill it with petrol for a year with a pound for every time I've heard a white person slating a person of colour who speaks out about racism, let alone is seen as an activist or part of a campaign. At best, they have chips on shoulders and are jealous of whites. At worst, they want to turn the tables and put white people under their black thumbs.

Deja vu anyone?

Hester, I think there have also been examples of shifts in the depiction of historical sexism in the school curriculum - not far enough in my view, but you'd have hardly seen women mentioned at all in books 40 years ago, unless they did something "exceptional" like Queen Victoria or Amy Johnson or Nancy Astor, maybe.

I believe presentations of people who've been largely "hidden" in the official versions of history (e.g. people of colour, women, Lesbians, bisexuals and gay men, working class people, disabled people, etc.) are really important for young people who share those identities so they can recognise that people "like them" have made important contributions to our political, social, economic and cultural lives. It's also important for those children who are more privileged by virtue of their sex, class, ethnicity, etc. to see that everything important wasn't achieved only by "people like them."

But, I think I was extending the point more broadly to other changes within society, not just the presentation of historical events now.

(I'm breaking in a new keyboard, so that's my excuse for the frequent and verbose posts tonight - and seeing if I can keep my resolve to Keep Calm and Carry On, ignoring all bunfights!)

I just popped back in here after a nice calm few days away to see what was left after the dust settled from that appalling shitstorm.

To those of you still fighting the good fight, I salute you!

To those of you still niggling and stirring .... the horrible thing is that I think you'll win in the end. You've just about driven me off, I've so little energy left for this stuff.

And to the OP: the last time I was accused of being anti-men it was in a conversation that went like this:

Former Schoolmate : Well, why are you a feminist, women are equal in England so who needs that stuff now?
Me: [quotes pay differential, 1 in 4 women sexually abused, 2 women killed a week by DV, rape conviction statistics, in a mild tone]
Former Schoolmate : well now you just sound unhinged and anti-men!

So it seems that if you ever point out the ways that women are damaged by the Patriarchy (or even if you suggest that the patriarchy exists, that the suppression of women's rights is systematic and deliberate and has been around for thousands of years) - you are 'anti-men and unhinged.'

The fact that he said this in response to facts - hard numerical facts - about how men treat women as if they hate them - beating and raping and killing them to a shocking extent in England alone ... in response to me telling him about male treatment of women, he said I was anti-men.

So it seems the facts are anti-men.

And here's the thing, if your lovely DP gets all defensive about 'well I'm not like that' - he's feeling the pinch of his male privilege.

I had a super flatmate a few years ago who was black. She told me about her black father trying to get in to law school in the seventies in the USA and the ways that 'hidden discrimination' kept him out. And it made me really uncomfortable. I kept wanting to blurt out "well I'm not like that" or "well I wasn't even born" or "Well I'm not American!" ... because the fact is, I'm white and as such I have White privilege, I am never going to be discriminated against because of my race... but it hurts to admit that. I want to believe that I am a happy succesful person because I am so fab, not because I've won the lottery of life... but it's true.

Having your prvilege pointed out to you does tend to make you defensive. But you, personally, are not being attacked. The system that puts you on top - THAT is being criticised. And rightly so. Hard to learn how to deal with it, but it's something we HAVE to learn how to deal with, if we want a more equitable society.
The Male Privilege Checklist is a really great introduction to the idea of Male Privilege, and if your DP is a gamer (or ever was) then this article will probably grab his imagination - Lowest Difficulty Setting I really like this one, it puts it in simple brilliant language and you don't end up forgetting half of it, which I sometimes do with longer/denser stuff.

KRITIQ - an example of what you say is going on right now, in the UK,(you are in the US, I think?), and specifically in Manchester re Alan Turing who is acknowledged as the 'daddy of computer science', produced the first algorythms (whatever they are) and provided a foundation to artificial intelligence. I DO know that he did break- through work in what are the criteria for what is 'human' and what is 'robotic'.

He was gay,and a 'son of Manchester' but outside of Manchester and the world of 'geeks' he was unknown. We have come to celebrate him here, and the highway I cycle along to work is called "Alan Turing Way".
The point is, yes, until people are seeing iconic stuff being done by 'other people' and their total identity is pointed to, then the acceptance is that all developments are achieved by the 'dominant' demograph.

We're a bit proud of Alan. And he could probably have helped with that keyboard thing as well.

as a ps, Alan Turing was sentenced to prison ( which he didn;t serve) for a homosexual act (1950's) despite doing work on the Enigma Machine in the 2nd World War. You can help save the nation, but if you are gay we will lock you up..

Hi Blackcurrents - whom I think is British but living in America (I'm the other way round, just to keep up the confusion! :) ) The story of how hearing of your flatmate's father's experience of racial discrimination made you feel really struck a chord. It isn't a barrel of monkeys to hear that someone has been abused, excluded or suffered in some way because they don't have characteristics that you just take for granted.

We tend only to see them as privileges when someone points out that they aren't entitled to the same things because they don't share some aspect of your identity (e.g. race, sex, class, etc.) But it can hurt like hell (as you say) to hear that stuff, so some folks respond in a very classic way - you know the drill!

Minimise - (Oh, it can't have been/be quite as bad as you say. Surely you're exaggerating. It can't affect that many people/can't happen that often.)

Deny - (I don't believe you. Where is your evidence? Actually I read that the problem is actually WORSE for people like me than it is for people like you because everything has gone too far the other way.)

Blame - (If people like you didn't kick up a fuss, you wouldn't get treated like that. Okay, people like you have a tough time, but people like you are also responsible for that bad thing that's happening over there, that much bigger and more important thing for which I have no evidence but I'll keep thinking up things somehow to divert attention and make you look like the guilty party.

The Pan, yes I read something about Alan Turing recently. I think it's definitely positive that some folks who were marginalised or "written out" of history because of their identities are being recognised later on. When I trained as a nurse over 20 years ago, we heard all about what Florence Nightingale did, but nowt about Mary Seacole, but that's changed since then, too.

Alan Turing was chemically castrated for being gay and killed himself two years later. He has yet to be given a pardon despite an ongoing campaign. Just shows how far we have left to go.

hmmm..some recent doubt about the suicide thing. Popular at the time, but less convincing now it seems. IT would have been popular as it fitted in with gay people being unhinged, wrong, and irresponsible as well as ashamed. AT showed no evidence of any of those things.

Do you mean Copeland's impression of Turing's death? I'm less than convinced.

Turing ingested cyanide, and was known - his friends clearly stated - to have been traumatised and ashamed by his conviction, and never recovered from having to abandon his work. The incident for which he was convicted came to light only through blackmail.

He was treated appallingly.

That's a bit offtrack - my real point was that Turing's punishment was more severe than a prison sentence that he just didn't serve. That most people don't know whitewashes (IMO) how gay and lesbian people have been treated. That they won't pardon him continues this treatment.

Anyway, it's very irritating when people leave and then come back so I'll leave it at that. I just thought it was important.

Well, no VG - the evidence I had read recently was that he 'rose above' the sentence, and female hormone treatment, and was getting on with plans for other work. Hated it but it didn't stop him.
But yes, avoidance of the punishment of prison was still severe.

has someone left and come back VG? not sure what you mean.

blackcurrants I think it 's a great shame (and a loss for these boards) that you rae feeling driven away by a minority who make it their business to needle, whine and delight in derailing threads

Morning. Would just like to echo OliviaMN's posts last night.

And add that we'd would be most grateful if folks could cool it with the personal attacks.

We don't think the rehashing of what did/didn't happen last week is tremendously helpful.