Feminists have a victim mentality.

[ReallyFuckingFedUp]

I keep seeing this and wondering what the fuck it means.

Women are victims at the hand of men constantly. Admitting to that does not make women victims. Men make women victims, not the other way around.

Feminist effect change. They protest, organize, discuss, and change consciousness. It's exactly the opposite of sitting on your ass and saying "woe is me" like an MRA . Women who claim that men will be bastards and rape and pillage and you can't stop it you can only wear a longer skirt have a victim mentality.

I agree.

What people mean when they say this is "I am uncomfortable that you are pointing out that men victimise women a lot"

It means, 'You have something wrong with the way you think. Therefore, you are not normal, and I can exclude you from debate without engaging with your ideas.'

There is a phenomenal amount of crossover between stigmatizing mental illness (mental disfunction?) and dismissing feminism. I'm really noticing it at the moment. It's that classic idea that if you can 'other' a victim or a perpetrator, you exclude them from normal society and place them beyond the reach of sympathy or blame or explanation. It's a neat way of perpetuating the status quo.

It's that classic idea that if you can 'other' a victim or a perpetrator, you exclude them from normal society and place them beyond the reach of sympathy or blame or explanation.

Is that like when people when referring to a criminal say "a real man wouldn't do that".

I hate that. Yes a real man would rape a child. real men do it all the time.

YY, exactly.

Yes, and this othering now extends to "being gloomy". If you have a less than cheerful, go-getting, look-at-all-the-progress-we've-made attitude towards gender relations, you forfeit your voice in the debate. The 'new feminism' is for people with a positive mindset, focused on solutions. If you believe oppression is structurally ingrained and won't be eradicated without complex and long-term systematic change, you can't help. You are being gloomy.

I hate the inevitable accusations of hysteria and 'shrillness'. Because we must, above all, be nice when complaining about structural inequality or calling out misogyny.

ezinma spot on. Not just have you to cultivate that cheerful "look how well we are doing" attitude, but you must forget that women achieved these gains, instead believe that somehow these changes occur without struggle. This is why oppression continues despite progress. Its now all about individuals. This is liberalism, its not just part of the problem, it is the problem.

Agree.

One of the 7 habits of highly effective people, apparently, is to look for the win-win. (I haven't read the book. I don't know how I picked this up. I assume one of the other 6 is "sitting on mn all day")

I get this in business. If you go into a negotiation thinking "I WILL CRUSH YOU" you get a one-time deal. If you go in thinking "How can we both benefit from this deal?" you get a long term relationship which you can use to your advantage.

but that is a very specific set up between roughly equal autonomous beings with agency AND it is in a business set up.

I feel like we are having perky businessy mind set foisted on every aspect of us all the time. I feel like something like our own personal bodily autonomy shouldn't be something we enter into a negotiation over, looking for the win-win. We should demand it, and if that puts those who would have enjoyed raping us at a relative disadvantage compared to the status quo, than who cares, fuck that noise.

but no, we have to say things like "patriarchy hurts men too!" really? How much? [tiny violin]

If you read about the suffragists, they were not mild reasonable women. They broke windows, were strident and much more radical than most feminists today. No liberation movement achieves anything by being nice and placating all the time.

They do it by naming the issue, male oppression of women and by being focussed on changing things despite the insults they get thrown at them.