Sigh. I've been deleted and blocked by yet another feminist page on Facebook....

[AnnieLobeseder]

...for daring to disagree with them on something they've posted.

Are they really so bloody-minded that they can't handle debate on their philosophies? I realise they get a lot of nasty trolling spam, but there's a world of difference between MRA nastiness and another feminist wanting to debate feminism!!

Is it just me?

of women, obviously

Exactly - I think we're expected not to disagree because we're so good at emotional communication and compromise.

What about Jeremy Irons talking about gay marriage?

I don't think so! He's been married IIRC. No, I meant, lots of people seemed to think he had a point, which I find bizarre.

But then I suppose gay marriage is different as I do know people who object to marriage as a patriarchial construction and therefore don't want gay marriage for that reason. It's not that unusual to find gay people who're anti gay marriage, though, I kept seeing comments about it after he made that speech.

The republican party in America has many black people as members but they would not support the "affirmative action" model, even though they or their family could benefit from it.

Unions have fought and gained many battles workers rights, that does not stop people being anti union even though the they themselves would not give up the benefits that they enjoy.

I understand class descriptions as descriptions that define a class. When someone tells me black boys underachieve at school I know they mean the average black boy, not every black boy but a good number of them. Saying men rape strongly implies a lot of men rape when in fact we know very few men in civilised societies rape.

I would also dispute that that men and women are identical except for the penis. Ask yourselves, if women were to suddenly find themselves with fully functional penises, do you think some minority would go out and rape? I don't think so. You might then say, ah, but women have been conditioned to behave differently. So then imagine these women also inherited the patriarchy and were encouraged to be violent and abuse the lesser men folk - would women then become the rapists? Again, I think not.

I agree that it is fine to disagree and debate.
And I agree that women are held to a higher standard of agreeableness which is why people get all jowl-flobbly over feminists disagreeing.

I hate to say it, but it could be an internally logical position to be a woman who is anti-what-feminism-is-trying-to-do-now, but pro-what-it-has-already-done. I mean: voting is fine, but it is true that ladies have to be pretty and it is wrong and unseemly to combat this. or something.

I don't actually think this is what is happening though. I think they subconsciously recognise that the patriarchy still holds all the power, the greatest material mileage is in sucking up to them, not feminists; plus, if feminists do actually manage to achieve anything, the benefits cannot reasonably be withheld from unfeminist women, so it's win-win

An anti-gay-marriage gay person is presumably unlikely to get married, but arguably still benefits from the mainstreaming of homosexuality and the reduced hassle in day to day life that is related to the legal acceptance of gay marriage. (s)he may not like this and may feel an awful hypocrite and attempt to demand homophobic treatment in line with his or her moral position ;)

I hate to say it, but it could be an internally logical position to be a woman who is anti-what-feminism-is-trying-to-do-now, but pro-what-it-has-already-done. I mean: voting is fine, but it is true that ladies have to be pretty and it is wrong and unseemly to combat this. or something.

YY, I think that is true.

Just catching up on this - PQW, I agree that Red and I were making the same point, just from different angles. Thank you.

To me, the most essential factor in the 'rape generalisation' is that rapists are responsible for rape, no-one else. Not a gender, not clothing, not alcohol, not locations ... just rapists. I make this point whenever anybody attempts the discussion which leads Red to make the 'potential rape' point, from either perspective. Being male no more implies potential rape than being human implies potential murder.

Oh, I do agree that "not a feminist" women are basically opting to stick with the winners - that is, be part of the patriarchy (and, necessarily, to play the part it requires of women) rather than sticking their heads above the feminist parapet. Same applies to gay, black, working-class, and so on. Taking that as a given, I still think feminism alienates more people than necessary by using lazy/generalised/prejudicial language. This certainly happened with Black Power: most of Malcolm X's rhetoric was rock-solid, for example, but he put off a lot of potential supporters & beneficiaries by tarring all whites with the same brush and wanting to set fire to them.

Since I'm currently suffering a great deal of vicious prejudice (scrounger with invisible disabilities,) I'm frequently revisiting the Just World fallacy. It totally explains why women abjure feminism, while still appreciating its benefits. I do, though, think feminists-as-a-class could do more to bring them into the fold. Individually, we do! I think Mumsnet is a pretty strong force for good in this respect, as it goes :)

Is feminism is somehow held to a different standard than other political movements?Like there are centre right Tories and right wing Tories or whatever, that's accepted but less so with feminism?

I don't see how you'd get to that from here, Doc. I have to suck up a linguistic tic that strikes me as prejudicial, because I want to discuss feminism. Many others choose not to engage in the discussions because they find this tic offensive. I choose not to engage with extreme left or right political pundits for comparable reasons, but there's plenty of space in the middle where I won't be vilified for not liking a particular turn of phrase. This option doesn't seem available within feminism.

Apologies for garbledom above! I've had a small accident and am in small shock. (I shall treat it with beer, which won't help my clarity much ... )

I think the union point is valid and shows the difference to feminism. I believe the unions did a valuable job in the early years, but went too far in the seventies and beyond, and I do not support them now. Feminism hasn't yet got to that point and there is still much to do.

On whether women would rape, they do take part in genital mutilation in parts of the world, and there are also violent women who abuse their partners and I could easily believe they could rape them if it was an option. There are several examples of lesbian 'rape' around

Some posters on this board think the world will be better when women are in charge caroldecker.

I've never seen that either, but BFG might be joking?

Would love to see evidence that feminists even think women should be 'in charge' BFG. A lot of feminists, especially towards the radical end want to remove hierarchy as it creates oppression.

I've just gone back to that female privilege thread to see the last few posts. I'm not sure if I've overinterpreted them in my memory. But it seems like one poster does say that the world would be better. But may well be a minority opinion of one .

So, to pick up on scallopsrgreat's comment. I'm not sure what is meant by remove hierarchy as it creates oppression. I feel this to be true but this refers to all sorts of hierarchy obviously with the patriarchy being the top of the list. But doesn't this veer towards a model of communism? - great in theory, lousy in practice? Just airing some thoughts - I've been trying think what goal is behind 'removing the patriarchy' what kind of society will be created and whether people will be happier. Off topic majorly, so...as you were.

Not read that thread, TBH, but I feel as if I should say ... when I post 'come the revolution', I don't mean it literally!

I think it's hard to know what society would be like if we didn't have the patriarchy. It's valid to worry about it because it certainly could be frightening to see an attempt to replace patriarchy fail, in the way communism failed.

However (being feministy and all, sorry, because it is a glib answer): I could argue communism failed, not because the theory was good and the practice bad, but because it aimed to replace capitalism instead of striking at the root cause of harm, ie., patriarchy.