Is the constant misinterpretation of Feminism ignorance or wilful misunderstanding?

[messyisthenewtidy]

The other day at work I had a book about feminism on my desk and my colleague jokingly said "oh gawd, you're not going all feminist on us are you messy?!" I replied that I'd always been a feminist and proud of it and they looked at me all like I was a bit odd.

It made me think that all my life feminism has been understood in our common language as a bad thing. Everywhere: in popular films to newspapers etc. From women saying "I'm not a feminist but..." to the common phrase "I believe in equality but feminism has gone too far" to the instances in my life where men, upon finding out I was a feminist, have gone out of their way to bait me and tell me why feminism is really a form of female supremacy.

I suppose my question is: How did this happen? And the people who misunderstand feminism - are they just being ignorant of what it really is or are they wilfully misunderstanding in a conscious attempt to dismiss it?

I wrote - "in a recent rape survey in Norway, 9% of the women questioned reported that they had been raped. Feminism still has some way to go to end sexual violence against women, even in Norway."

Snow wrote - "The research results also show that as many men as women also have been victims of serious physical violence and domestic violence."

I'd hoped for a response to my comment more along the lines of :
"9% of women in Norway raped is unacceptable and every Norwegian should do all they can to reduce this to zero."

"why do females get priority over us?"

I understand what you're saying but the answer to your question is that they don't. Women don't get priority. Take Science as an example. Although women are ostensibly seen to benefit from affirmative action programs, the real recipients of affirmative action are men. From science toys being aimed at them as boys, from lots of tiny comments made by adults, from the hundreds of male scientists in history that act as role models to them to the fact that no one has ever implied that they can't be a scientist because they don't have the right brain for it. that is affirmative action at its best. And that is the reason why women need priority - to counter it. But it is a drop in the ocean.

Snow, I believe that the stats show there is a pay gap even for childless women.

I presumed that was self explanatory? The discussion was around feminism and if it was ignorance or willful misunderstanding. My points were therefore addressing my opinion that for a lot of guys they view it as equal opportunities. If it helps I mentioned in the other topic that murder etc was unacceptable? However I just assumed no one would consider rape/ guys making stupid excuses that they couldn't help it to be at all ok so it didn't need stating now?

"However I just assumed no one would consider rape/ guys making stupid excuses that they couldn't help it to be at all ok so it didn't need stating now?"

I agree. I assume the same but it's beginning to seem hopelessly naive.

Zazzle, yes I see your point. But whilst I can see that the finer points of feminism may be up for grabs I've always assumed its main ethos (of equal opportunities) to be pretty established.

messyisthenewtidy

I do agree there are lots of cases like that. However what I mean is that guys have the same issues for many things, just a different viewpoint. So switching your good example of science for girls to boys, then it would be the same for nursing or being a teacher for example. So again I would view it as equal opportunities rather than feminism being required.

Yonic

I am no expert in this area, but I would imagine so. However I would expect this to be a lot smaller in younger people? The damage would already be done in the difference for older people (when each difference in the increase gets multiplied many times over the career). Having a look at Wikipedia (which is never wrong!) it says:

"The earnings difference between women and men varies with age, with younger women more closely approaching pay equity than older women.[17]

In 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported women's median weekly earnings to be 81% of men's.[2]

According to Andrew Beveridge, a Professor of Sociology at Queens College, between 2000 and 2005, young women in their twenties earned more than their male counterparts in some large urban centers, including Dallas (120%), New York (117%), Chicago, Boston, and Minneapolis. A major reason for this is that women have been graduating from college in larger numbers than men, and that many of those women seem to be gravitating toward major urban areas. In 2005, 53% of women in their 20s working in New York were college graduates, compared with only 38% of men of that age. Nationwide, the wages of that group of women averaged 89% of the average full-time pay for men between 2000 and 2005.[18]"

So it seems to say that there is still a difference, but it is smaller for young people. Which could suggest things are getting better, or actually they havenæt changed (since you would expect any pay gap to increase due to the multiplication effect I mentioned earlier...). I guess it's not seperating childless women, although as a generalization the 20-24yr age group would not have too many anyway. However I am no expert on the statistics, so if anyone has better information I'd be happy to hear it. I guess part of it is type of jobs too (i.e. investment banking with a high salary is probably more male oriented compared to nursing being more female oriented and less pay (stupidly in my opinion). Which comes back to the "training" towards careers when growing up.

messyisthenewtidy

Zazzle, yes I see your point. But whilst I can see that the finer points of feminism may be up for grabs I've always assumed its main ethos (of equal opportunities) to be pretty established.

I guess as a generalisation for us guys it's often not seen that way. I know I certainly am never sure if it's referring to "female supremacy" or equal opportunities for all. I guess part of it comes down to the media liking to use extremes as those are the stories that get website hits and therefore advertising money. An example would be that idiot guy story linked in one of the other threads saying guys can't help rape if they're turned on. Most guys obviously don't think that way, but it wouldn't sell papers if they had a story saying "Most guys are against rape". So when feminism stories come out they're usually the more extreme ones, so guys feel it's hating them as guys, not equal rights. I guess that's what this He-She campaign is about - focusing on the equal rights side of things.

I think it's because it goes against the pattern of language iyswim.

We don't have a word for the people that want gay people to have equal rights, they're just people. The ones that don't are homophobic.

We don't have a word for the people that want all ethnicities/colours to be equal, they're just people. The ones that don't are racist.

We don't have a word for the people that want people with disabilities to be equal, they're just people. The ones that don't are disabalist.

For some reason with feminism it goes the other way. We have a special word for the people that want gender equality and those that don't are just 'people'. I think when we drop the label and just assume the majority of people want gender equality it will be a big step forward. The misogynists (or maybe there is a better term?) should wear the label.

The constant misinterpretation of Feminism is sometimes ignorance and sometimes wilful misunderstanding.

Outraged. Good post. I suppose that's my main gripe. Feminism should be the default position and it has been incorporated into many aspects of daily life in the West but it feels like no one wants to give it credit for what it's achieved or be seen to publicly endorse it.

Feminism is seen in the same light as political correctness. People invoke it in order to distance themselves from it. "I'm all for women's lib but it's gone too far... " and "I know this is politically incorrect but ....." It's that willingness to dismiss it, to neutralise it that makes me think that it's still very much needed.

Snow yes, the media's shit isn't it?! And definitely goes some way to explaining why people think of feminism as a "battle of the sexes".

Been thinking about Snow1's eg of a woman on maternity leave who gets a bigger payrise than a male colleague who's present, and I thought I'd explain (to the best of my understanding) the position in UK law (used to be on my Trade Union Branch council and was involved in equality issues, so know a bit from a lay-person's perspective about this).

It used to be the case that many workplaces, especially public sector, had long pay scales. This was deemed to be discriminatory because typically it entrenched a structural sexism whereby women ended up paid less for the same job than men (in fact in some job roles in my current workplace, this is still the case - my union's waiting for someone brave enough to stick their head above the parapet and be the test case). Now there are two attitudes you can take to a long salary scale - one is that it rewards loyalty, and the other is that in general it takes about three years to get good at a job (barring rocket science, corporate contract law, that sort of thing), and people should be paid for doing the job, not for the length of time their bum's been on the seat. Current law doesn't explicitly rule out long pay scales, but they have to be carefully designed not to lead to indirect sex discrimination.

As for the specific example - well, it's worth thinking about how the situation of a man who's been in work all year getting a lower rise than a woman who's been on maternity leave might arise. In my work place, we have a form of performance related pay (that's a whole other discussion - broadly speaking, most management scientists agree that PRP is divisive and de-motivating, unless you are managing say a bunch of merchant bankers - in which case the problem is that it motivates them so highly they start running insane risks and bring the economy of the whole country to the brink of bankruptcy - but I digress). We have 3 markings at the end of year - exceeded, met or unsatisfactory. Women on maternity leave are given "met" as a default because there's no evidence one way or the other. So a man who got a lower pay rise in my workplace (I say lower - we've had a 3 year pay freeze followed by a 1% deal so we're talking peanuts here - cf comments about motivation above) would in effect get that because he was being punished for being a screw-up (and he'd also be on an improvement plan which he'd have to meet or find himself going through formal dismissal procedures). So it wouldn't be that he was being getting a lesser pay rise than the woman on maternity leave in particular - he would be getting a lesser pay rise than all the people in the firm who'd been deemed to be doing their job properly. (Note also that an indivdual woman might have a track record of getting "exceeded" in every staff report for the last 10 years - she'd still get "met" for the year she was on maternity leave).

Of course, I don't know how it works in Norway (apologies, may have forgotten what country). But it's important to be clear on how the law works, and company procedures work, and not cherry pick individual cases without relevant background information to give a misleading impression of unfairness when, without information about how the pay system is designed in terms of equality law and PRP, we don't actually know whether the individual in this specific case was treated unfairly.

There's just no point in pretending that things which don't affect men and women equally the same, do, or that they should be tackled together as the root causes are different.

For instance it is no good having a campaign around child victims of sexual exploitation in Rochdale when the victims were in the vast majority girls. You don't get this argument around other factors do you. If people say that children in care are more at risk of sexual exploitation you don't get people saying oh but children not in care are as well and what about them. Well that's true but at the moment we are focussing on children in care.

Similarly the recent (unsurprising to many feminists) news that the police are still basically telling victims of sexual violence to piss off. The vast majority of those who approach the police about matters of sexual violence are female. It's OK to therefore talk about the problems women and girls have getting these crimes recorded and investigated. Incidentally the work done to improve this will improve matters for male victims of sexual violence as well. So that's all good isn't it.

Similarly the statement "The research results also show that as many men as women also have been victims of serious physical violence and domestic violence" but the causes and things around that will differ. I'd be interested to see the source of those stats, and whether they include sexual violence. I'm guessing not, as sexual violence, and sex crimes in general tend not to be included in these figures for some reason.

Anecdotally though I would imagine that for instance males are more likely to be involved in gang violence, street violence, pub-related violence (if we are excluding rape etc). The drivers for these things are not the same as the drivers for much of the violence against women (well patriarchy but under that it differs).

If you want to tackle gang violence in inner cities it is no good saying well women in Devon are the victims of violence in the home as well so let's look at that at the same time.

And vice versa.

And this doesn't seem to happen with other things. It's only when women and girls are identified as the group, or the majority group, who need assistance in some way that everyone says "well hold on a minute".

It's really depressing.

Hmm that didn't read very well.

The bit about Rochdale was that if you know gangs of men are targeting girls in certain circumstances for grooming then you concentrate on that. You don't say well this sometimes happens to boys too although actually it isn't in this case so we need to give 50% of our time and energy to protecting boys otherwise it's not fair or something.

Similarly when people look at gangs targeting boys then that should be the focus as with the appalling situations around various boys homes.

I just think that having to have everything do do with sex made "fair" so that the focus is on males as much as females even when one or the other is a clear majority and the approaches needed to tackle it may differ, is ridiculous. And I guess what people who say that really want is resource diverted away from women and girls and spent on men and boys. Yet you never hear them arguing for resource earmarked for men and boys to be diverted away, IME and as far as I can remember.

And of course there are links which come together later, right, when you look at Rochdale + the BBC + all teh 70s slebs + the children's homes + the stuff with various churches 1 + the police telling people to get stuffed and you realise that there is a monumental porblem that needs tackling.

But again it's going to be women and children that are most affected and if you don't like that fact well tough.

Strangely men who don't like women talking about rape never seem to be off helping charities for male victims of sexual violence. Just as an observation.

Snow1, I know it's a slight derail but you said: "it is very hard to guys to stop a long term girlfriend getting pregnant if she wants to." Could you explain this? What's the stop the guy in that relationship using condoms?

Back to the OP's question - How did this happen? And the people who misunderstand feminism - are they just being ignorant of what it really is or are they wilfully misunderstanding in a conscious attempt to dismiss it?

Are they just ignorant of what it really is? Hmm. Ask ten feminists what feminism is, and you'll get ten different replies. As is so often pointed out, they aren't the Borg. It's lots of different things to different people. So who's version of feminism do you want them to 'get'? And what would that be?

True Nojacket - but on the other hand, the version of feminism most of them project is man-hating male baby-eaters.

Vanishingly few of us are that.

Which makes me feel that it's willful belittling in many cases. Either to put us back in our place, or to curry favour.

The best I can ascribe it is like lesbian. For all my growing up lesbians were not individuals but a stereotype. Dms fat denim and short haired is what I would remember as lesbian in the 80s. Now it's cool to be a lipstick lesbian. Ie pretty, well dressed coiffed and attractive. God forbid if you're now lesbian and ugly... Or worse a straight girl pretending for catching men.

So feminism became a stereo type. Hippy dippy or strident ball breaker/hater. It's not real.

I wouldn't deny that that sort of stereotyping does go on, Chunky. But Feminism is, at heart, a political movement, and political movements always have opponents and detractors. There was a discussion on here a few weeks ago about why relatively few women frequent FWR, and how feminism on MN was perceived. It was quite enlightening. Did you see it?

That's interesting - my instant thought was that I don't think of feminism as a political movement (Ha, what were your saying about us all being different :) )

For me feminism is more than a political affiliation - it's a way of life, a way of raising my kids and interacting with everyone, not as theoretical as a philosophy, more important than being the member of the labour/libdem/green/whatever party.

Perhaps that's me stereotyping political movements though.

I did see it. I didn't quite get people's problem. If you want to have theoretical discussions, have them (I like reading them sometimes), if you want to talk activism, do it, etc.

It's not like there's a finite amount of internet restricting who can talk about what.

I meant enlightening as in the expression of some of the difficulties those women had with feminism and feminists. I don't think those women saw themselves as currying favour with men by denying their feminist principles. As someone said, the whole of MN - not just this board - is overflowing with practical, feminist-y thoughts and actions. And yet I think some of them found engaging with FWR to be problematic for one reason or another.

I think people can agree with much of what feminism proposes, and yet at the same time have problems engaging in feminist discourse. Maybe that is what the OP's colleague was referring to? And, go on, be honest - how many people here made the initial assumption that the OP's colleague was a man?

No, the colleague was a woman of the female persuasion. From Messy's post after the OP....

But you see my colleague DOES subscribe to the same beliefs as me. She is a female who works for a living in a male dominated job and would be horrified to be paid less than her male colleagues.

You don't have to be a handmaiden to have these feelings towards feminism.