Not all men

[AskBasil]

Interesting article here

I personally will bow out for now, because, actually, I find a lot of posts hard to follow. I have a suspicion that a lot of you are brighter than I am!

White people are racist.
White people benefit from racism.

Both those statements are true. It's a question of privilege. Until people of colour have the same level of privilege as white people they will always be true. Many white people do their best not to be racist but inevitably their higher status of privilege and their social conditioning will kick in on occasion.

Same with men over women. These are the things that feminists would like to discuss without having to explain why. Every. Single. Time.

kim, I am well aware that Christian groups, along with many other bigoted groups, harm LGBT people.

You ignored my question, didn't you?

It has to be possible to talk about men as a class. Men as a class oppress women. Individual men may not oppress individual women, but they benefit, whether they like it or not from a system which has the patriarchy front and centre.

I think it's a useful discipline to think about and qualify our terms, though. In some cases we really definitely mean "all men", in some cases "the overwhelming majority of men", in some cases "a majority of men", in some cases "a vocal minority of men", or any number of other qualifiers. And in many cases "with the tacit acceptance/approval of the majority of the rest" needs to be appended. I think that lumping all of those together under sweeping "Men..." statements muddies the waters - at least, if we actually want to change anything rather than just sounding off (there's a place for sounding off, too, though).

Did you mean to suggest that those of us who disagree with you are simply not thinking?

There is a very strong reason for engaging in class analysis, and using the terminology of class analysis. Put simply, for a lot of women, it can be absolutely amazing suddenly to realize, through this language, how simple and fundamental oppression is.

To equate that with failure to 'think about and qualify terms' is to miss the point.

I think it's also extremely disingenuous to claim that feminism would make more changes if it gave up on class analysis. How? We'd lose the main political strength of feminism by doing that.

Yy to both LRD and Buffy. Class analysis is important. And there seems to be this mythical reward (that is not evidence based) that if women (or feminists) were just reasonable and just did things in a certain a way they'd garner far more support.

Women were reasonable for centuries. Fat lot of good they did them. This just smacks of not wanting women to get into and discuss the root of our oppression. It smacks of controlling women and it smacks of feminism done men's way.

Its just getting us to jump through yet more bloody hoops to see if we are worthy enough for equality.

I'm finding it hard to believe what is being advocated here is careful and considered use of language, though.

What I am seeing is the argument that we should use terms that either make class analysis impossible ('some men'), or blunt its effectiveness with constant qualifications, as if to suggest class analysis is inherently extremely limited ('men - as a class, that is -').

I think that is not considered or careful. I think it erases the reality of many women who read and heard statements like 'men oppress women' and felt an enormous weight lifting because they understood it's a systematic oppression, and it's not just them. I really think we are underestimating how much this matters. This is something literally hundreds of women I've read or talked to have said and I'm fairly sure, given book sales and so on, that it's actually something millions of us have felt. And yet, we're supposed to give that up because 'well, we might alienate some people (=men) who are hurt'?

Why?

How many are they?

Were they ever really in need of feminism, and were they ever really committed to it?

'Its just getting us to jump through yet more bloody hoops to see if we are worthy enough for equality.'

YY, exactly.

So is it just MRAs that you [meaning feminists] are appealing too.
Because you could appeal to them with whatever language you like, for a hundred years, and only a minority of them would likely change their behaviour.

Wouldn't it be wiser to appeal to the men [and women?] who are being a bit twattish?

Do you want millions to be swayed by feminism or hundreds of women?

Who is your target audience?
[perhaps it is only me who doesnt know this?]

"Who is your target audience?" Jesus.

kins, I don't follow you at all.

Do you know what feminism is?

We're not a political party or anything.

It's a bit rude to come up with questions like 'wouldn't it be wiser' when you haven't sorted the basics.

I doubt it's only you who doesn't know this, so I don't mean to come down hard, but seriously ... just do a quick google. Wiki will tell you a bit about feminism, then you can read from there.

Btw - 'MRA' means 'men's rights activists'. It's a name they give themselves - most femininsts would just call them convinced misogynists I think. But you've definitely got the wrong end of the stick if you think feminism is trying to appeal to those people, because they are more or less diametrically the opposite of feminism.

I wasnt sure whether scallops really meant Jesus or not!

I'm just gobsmacked.

There is someone, in 2014, who doesn't know feminism has attracted tens of millions of women.

So if it is not appealing to anyone, what is it doing?
Had better google I suppose.