Help me learn about feminism!

[MoominKoalaAndMiniMoom]

I'm ashamed to say I'm pretty clueless about feminism. Part of this new emerging generation where few would consider themselves feminist, and even fewer would be vocal about it. I'm not sure where I stand - obviously I'm aware that there are still gaping holes in women's rights, and that sexism can come from all angles - I've experienced it from other women as well as from men - but I've never gone so far as to do things like write 'womyn', nor do I subscribe to the 'all men are potential rapists' (only because IMO by that notion, all humans are potential thieves, all humans are potential murderers - it isn't something that really needs to be said).

Apart from that (and even then, I may have gotten it all wrong), I don't really know much about feminism, but I really want to learn. I've got a baby DD and I want to raise her to not feel like she has to conform to a stereotype based on the fact that she is female. But there are some things where I don't know if I'm causing more harm than good - she wears a lot of pink, but that's just because I like pink. She also has plenty of clothes in all colours. Does that make it ok to dress her in pink, or should I stop dressing her like that because it's encouraging shops to only stock pink for girls, blue for boys? I do hate the fact that if I dress her in blue or any colour other than pink, people mistake her for a boy - I'm not annoyed that people mistake her for a boy, more that people insist that I should be dressing her in pink all the time.

So I was hoping people could maybe answer my questions about feminism. If any of these are using the wrong terminology, or seem offensive, I wholeheartedly apologise - as I say, I'm pretty clueless really. These are all out of curiosity and a desire to know more.

1. Do most/any feminists hate men, just for the simple fact of being born male?
   
2. I've done a bit of reading around about the issues with feminism and transactivism, but a lot of it is going over my head. Does anyone have a layman's terms explanation?
   
3. What is the definition of male privilege? Does female privilege exist? Does every man have male privilege, and does this make him a bad person?
   
4. In an ideal world, what would men do with regards to feminism? Do most feminists want them to campaign for female rights alongside them? Or is this seen as condescending/male privilege again?
   
5. Is the anger towards men who exist by the gender stereotypes, or towards a society that has created the gender stereotypes? Who can solve this?
   
   Thanks, I'm sorry there's so many questions, it's just something that really interests me. My parents always just had a catch-all policy of treating others as I'd want to be treated (but giving as good as I get if someone mistreats me), but I want to know more about feminism and what it is, and how I can raise my daughter to still treat people as she'd want to be treated, but to not feel bound by gender stereotypes.

[quertber]

whoops that's not what I meant.

Replace above post with this one:

There's a reason why so few women/girls these days want anything to do with feminism.

[CrotchMaven]

I wasn't meaning to come across as dismissive by referring you to past threads, btw. Just pointing you to reams of interesting stuff

[PetulaGordino]

i used to lurk when dittany was on here. i miss her posts too, they had an enormous effect on me

[MoominKoalaAndMiniMoom]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Another example of the sexism I encountered was people assuming I wouldn't be back for third year of uni, after having DD in April at the end of 2nd year. My OH is a student in the year below me and yet no-one expected him to drop out - the onus was on me.

(As it stands, we're both continuing at uni with no time off, but it stung that people assumed I had to be the one to drop everything, while OH continues and has a career. It really opened my eyes to the inherent sexism that I didn't pick up on at first, but only later I really saw the unfairness of it)

[BertieBotts]

I think when we have children is one of the biggest eye openers there is because that's when it becomes overt. People feel that it's justified to have different expectations of mothers and fathers, for some reason that doesn't register as sexism to some people even though the same people wouldn't dream of making assumptions about men or women based on their sex.

[CaptChaos]

quertber There's a reason why so few women/girls these days want anything to do with feminism.

Oh! Do please tell us what that is. This is what we need around here, a man, to splain stuff to us in a way that our silly little woman brains can understand....

[MontyGlee]

^^
In answer to Question One: some have an ingrained resentment that means the answer has to be 'yes'. It's kind of understandable though.

[LurcioAgain]

This has been linked to many times before, but is a really great analogy for male privilege (written by a man who really gets it).

[MontyGlee]

Q3: a lot in life is luck: where you were born, who your parents born etc. In terms of sex, you've been luckier if you're a man because you face less challenges and dangers. This obviously doesn't really work any further than in very general terms as, rather obviously, if you're born into a nice middle class family in Surrey, you're so much better off than someone in a mud hut in Helmand Province that it makes it meaningless. For me 'privilege' is kind of like the level pass you wear for society. White, male, heterosexual, able-bodied, highly-educated and rich is kind of the access-all-areas one, although this ignores the special schemes that exist only for those of other designations (all-women shortlists etc).

[MontyGlee]

He certainly 'gets' the definition Lurcio, but the definition isn't quite right is it? The lowest difficult setting, actually, is 'poor' because most of those 'level up' things? It's money that makes the biggest difference. It's a complete nonsense to suggest that middle class women with degrees and wealthy parents' help will face more barriers than a boy from a Mancunian sink-estate.

[bigmouthstrikesagain]

Feminist theory and activism today seems more sectional than it did to me 20+ years ago when I was a politics student (and did a Feminist theory course taught by a male lecturer) - I did my diss on Mary Wollstonecraft a famous Georgian liberal feminist (and mother of Mary Shelley writer of Frankenstein). For me then - Feminism was about identifying the rights of women to enjoy equal staus to men in their personal life and in their choice of a career and challenging lazy male assumptions. For us students it was writing essays on misrepresentations of women in the work place, home and on film and TV, while negotiating the emerging 'Ladette' culture, celebrating Riot Girrl and hoping that Blair's 'Babes' (bleurgh) would hail a new era of equality in Government that Thatcher as a PM had spectatcularly failed to do! - and breath...


Looking at the current issues as listed comprehensively below by more active feminists - there is one missing element - the need to engage with social media. There has been plenty of news coverage of the harassment and abuse of women on Twitter etc. Feminists, female public figures like Mary Beard. The impact of instant messaging via the net in enabling vicious attacks on women daring to voice their opinion in public is something that disturbs me greatly. I know my primary school age daughters are already interested in the way the internet enables and encourages communication (my son on the other hand could not be less interested in this - he just wants to play his games without being hacked and to watch other people play minecraft on you tube).

[bigmouthstrikesagain]

Then of course no one has yet mentioned Intersectional feminism

Reni Eddo-Lodge makes a good case here

[LurcioAgain]

I suggest you read the follow up articles, Monty, where he addresses this directly - in sum his position is that (a) no-one's denying that there are various intersecting things that play a role and that (b) there is room for debate about whether wealth goes in (in game-playing terms) the "intrinsic characteristics bin" or the "stats bin". He argues for the latter, but concedes that it's possible to make an argument for the former - what he then says is that it's fine to make this argument, except when used as a tactic to deny that sex/race/sexuality matter (NB, I don't think you're trying to do this). I think what he says is so nicely done that it's actually worth quoting:

"The second major sticking point is the chunk of folks who really very truly believe that I should have put class/wealth into the difficulty setting in addition to or instead of race/gender/sexuality. Again, I’ve already explained why I designed the analogy as I did, and while I think it’s fine that people disagree, I haven’t been sufficiently convinced by their arguments that I was wrong in the manner in which I designed it. I think some people are suggesting that I don’t think wealth and class matter in a significant way; they need to reread the entry. It’s not about whether it makes a difference. It does. It’s about where it’s properly placed in the analogy. Some have commented this is set-up that really is specific to the US, not other places in the Western world; I’m not wholly convinced of this, but then I live in the US, not other places in the Western world.

"Also, let me be blunt about this: I think there’s a relatively small but non-trivial number of people arguing the wealth/class thing who believe that if they can only and simply make this all about wealth and class, then they can flat-out deny (or at least hugely mitigate) the idea that the US in particular still has issues with race, sexuality and gender, and that directly related to that, they have unearned advantages as straight white males. Well, that’s just stupid, and I’m not in the least inclined to indulge these folks in their particular fantasy."

Now, interestingly, I am probably closer to your position than his - my mum made a career of teaching those very boys in Mancunian sink estates that you mention (Wythenshawe back in the 1970s and 80s, at the height of problems with the "Inter-City firms" and race riots). So I think there's an extent to which Scalzi (in common with a lot of American liberals who I think over-estimate the class mobility of their own society) thinks it's easier to change one's "wealth stats" than in fact it is.

Having said that, it doesn't mean that one should set up a dismissive dichotomy of white middle class feminist going "woe is me" when there are white working class boys who really have it hard. The point is that take any given class stratum - the women in general (not as an immutable rule) have it harder than the men. Some of my mother's male pupils were facing incarceration for petty crimes that a middle-class boy whose parents could afford a good lawyer would have got away with (assuming that they actually committed them in the first place, absent a climate of financial need and boredom). But some of her female pupils were being pimped into prostitution by older men. And the hard-working middle-of-the-road kids who simply wanted jobs so they could provide for themselves and their families found there were none to go to. And the brightest kids were failed by a school environment that put more emphasis on political orthodoxy than their pupils' futures (it was school policy only to enter kids for CSEs because O levels were divisive, even though this then meant that the kids were effectively barred from university applications as a result).

Okay, huge essay of a post - but in short, no analogy is perfect, but it's highly disingenuous to set up a "wealthy middle class feminist who's had it easy" versus "hard done-by white working class boy who suffers so much" dichotomy. Yes the problems of the latter group are huge and desperately need addressing, but that should be used as a reason to critique the class system, not as a stick to beat feminism with.

[FartyMcGhee]

"There's a reason why so few women/girls these days want anything to do with feminism."

because men are still so bloody powerful/privileged that they have fixed society to make women and girls think there is something wrong with feminism?

[LurcioAgain]

Re Bigmouth's point about intersectional feminism (and because we've been accused in other threads on this board, quite rightly I think, of using long words and thus excluding people from discussion) - intersectionality is roughly speaking the idea that you have cross-cutting and intersecting systems of oppression - as exemplified by the "white working class boys have it harder than middle class educated women" discussion I've just mentioned (at tedious length, sorry all!)

[ReallyFuckingFedUp]

There was a very interesting thread not long ago monty where several people admitted (on a website for mothers) that they don't hire women of breeding age.

So the young white male on the sinkhole estate who does work hard and does get a scholarship and go to school. He probably still does have a better chance going for the same job. He is also less likely to have his career aspirations pushed to the side for his partner or be murdered by his partner or suffer DV from his partner or be assumed to not be as intelligent or capable at the job he does eventually get.

No one is disputing being poor makes your life harder to start with but unlike being a woman or black or gay or disabled. you can work to get beyond that. and you don't have that hanging over you your whole life.

I very much doubt Alan Sugar still has people doubting him at his job because he was born poor. Women on this section have posted about being speakers at conferences and expected to get the fucking tea.

Also (not really directed at you Monty)... but why does everyone go on and on and on about poor young white men? It's a constant on the news about how they are "under performing". In comparison to who? Poor young black men? Poor young white women? Poor young black women? Because I fucking doubt it. It's almost like they are owed the right to be out performing other groups and when they aren't something must have gone horrbly wrong

[MontyGlee]

Fair enough Lurcio - I hadn't read that far. Thanks for posting.

[ReallyFuckingFedUp]

I'm less interested in why women don't read the feminism boards and call themselves feminist than I am with why some MRAs seem desperate to read it?

Really what do they is going to happen? They spend hours trolling in a really second rate high school way and repeatedly get their ass handed to them on a plate. It's all a bit masochistic really.

[MontyGlee]

No, RFU, I'm not going to see being a woman as something that 'hangs over me my whole life'. I don't think that's a helpful way of looking at it. A lot of these barriers are self-imposed and that sort of attitude plays to that.

Also, that's a pretty big 'if' you've employed. By and large people stay at the social level they were born at and shoving Alan Sugar forward doesn't change that and more than the few women asked to make tea. The fact is that in 2014, gender isn't really as important as it used to be. The old hierarchies of education and class haven't improved as quickly and are now more relevant.

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/10958074/Women-have-it-easy-in-the-workplace-today-claims-business-pioneer-Dame-Stephanie-Shirley.html

[bigmouthstrikesagain]

I am not sure if 'poor young white men' have all the attention and focus of concern that you mention really - perhaps that is true but perhaps that is your perception. The point of 'checking your privilege' and that includes women, is that poverty is not just something you can 'work hard to get over' there is systemic bias against people coming from poor backgrounds male or female.

What about people living on rubbish tips on the outskirts of cities in India or South America, scraping a living by sorting through the scrap, they are working hard - where is the solution to their problem. There is an issue of economic inequality that underlines and 'intersects' with the issue of gender inequality they don't cancel each other out they should both be engaged with. I have a problem with placing feminism on its own as it does not tackle all the inequalities we see in the world. That shouldn't be ignored by anyone who wants to tackle injustice.

[ReallyFuckingFedUp]

You can have "attitude power" or what ever you want. It's ridiculous to call sexism or racism a "self imposed barrier".

When does being a woman or a minority stop being an issue in your mind if it isn't always 'hanging over someone's head'?

[Tweasels]

I think there is a lot of misconceptions about feminism. Mostly perpetuated by men I would guess. I've seen so many (generally lovely, respectful) men roll their eyes when it gets mentioned. Some men also seem unable to tell the difference between being a feminist and being a lesbian .

My female friend in conversation said 'I'm not a feminist but...' I was really surprised because to me she absolutely is a feminist. Everything she believes, the way she does her work, the way she raises her children etc. When I challenged her, the reason she didn't identify as feminist is because she likes men and their company.

She thinks of feminists as shouty men haters. I'd guess many people think that way.

[LurcioAgain]

Bigmouth - aren't you in danger of simply using the "but this problem is more important than that one" technique so beloved of MRAs? Why are we (as women) not allowed to say "I get that class is a massive system of oppression, and I'm very glad that there are people out there tackling the problem of the way, say, Dalits are treated in India - but no one single person can tackle all of the world's problems at once, and I personally want to concentrate on helping to provide better sanitation facilities for Dalit women, because while both men and women in that caste have an unimaginably shitty life, it's the women who are in danger of being raped when they go to the toilet."

Your post does smack of "whataboutery" and the refusal to accept that one can (a) care about more than one thing but (b) accept that human limitations on one's time and energy means one has to make a decision about what to campaign about.

[ReallyFuckingFedUp]

Bigmouth apologies if I gave the impression it doesn't matter it does. I am from a poor back ground. And from the states where we don't have a social system that really helps you out of that place unless you are a genuine overachiever. I left school at 16. I am looking at it form the angle of a woman who is confused as to why it only seems to matters that young men aren't finding jobs, young men are finding themselves in prison, young men are poor.

It seems to happen in a vagina free vacuum. And yes, I have seen tv documentaries and news articles.. loads of them. I have never seen an article entitled "Why are young working class black woman doing so badly"? Unless maybe they are all doing awesome and I am super behind the times.