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?

cailindana
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?

It's more an observation from anecdotal evidence, but I know a lot of guys have raised this question. The general outline is that in a long term relationship if you are insisting to still wear them you will get questioned about lack of trust. You would only wear them to stop the other person getting pregnant, or getting an STD. Either says "I don't trust you" and so will destroy the relationship in practice. I know a lot of guys who have suspicions that their partner "accidentally" got pregnant. I mentioned it in the list of things as I saw a discussion about it recently on a male dominated forum. The question was about did the person feel ready to be a dad, and it seemed to be that a lot of posters said no, but their partner had got pregnant anyway (they also pretty much all said it turned out to be the best thing that had happened to them, but that's a bit off topic). The other stereotype is some women getting pregnant to try and save a dying relationship.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it is very normal, but there certainly is a number of people who feel it is something that has affected them. Also it will be more noticeable since people don't really affirm a negative.

LurcioAgain

Some really interesting stuff there that I had no idea about, particularly about the pay scale and changes there. Great to hear. It is Norway, I believe in the case from my personal experience the person who got a lower salary increase was also on the same grades as the person who was away. I wasn't meaning it was unfair the woman was paid more so much as it is an individual case, more than is it fair that less experience is rewarded? There is a perfectly valid point to be made that a lot of the skills from being at home with a kid will also benefit the company. However I guess on a personal note a huge amount of the work my company does is related to knowledge and experience. So to get nothing extra despite having this could be viewed as unfair. I don't mean this as me being against feminism, but more that a fairer way is having a more equal spread of time looking after the children and therefore the "lost" experience (and learning of new skills at home) can be used. As an aside my company also seems to be giving graduates higher salary increases than those working, so it's certainly not an anti-woman point, but it's not related to this conversation).

SevenZarkSeven
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.

I understand what you mean, and completely agree that different problems require different solutions based on the actual problem. What I am meaning by it being treated more equally is that guys feel it is much easier for women to raise an issue without being called sexist (for example the very real problem of rape), but if guys come out with "guy" issues they get called misogynistic/ sexist and that we should be thankful we have it so good. Which then leads to feeling more annoyed/ bitter about feminism. Therefore if it was more under equality then it removes that "them" versus "us" reaction. I think OutragedFromLeeds has a very good point with this - put the focus on the sexist people, not on the normal ones. Otherwise it does portray it more as a rivalry, not working together.

Or just to add to that last point and to link it to what BuffytheReasonableFeminist said...

I really don't feel I have done anything like oppress someone for being a girl. So when you get accused of being misogynistic for arguing something from a guy's point of view/ for a guy's issue then it makes you react against "feminism" - because that's the thing attacking you as it were.

Hopefully this isn't read the wrong way, and I don't think Buffy meant it that way at all from seeing her other posts. But hopefully it's an example to show why some people might react against it when they feel they are being attacked for something they feel they are innocent about?

Which is kind of the original point in the OP, isn't it? Why don't men - and women - understand feminist analysis properly? Clearly Messy's colleague did not, otherwise she would not have made her comment.

Snow: " I wasn't meaning it was unfair the woman was paid more so much as it is an individual case, more than is it fair that less experience is rewarded?"

I think you still haven't quite got the hang of principles behind structuring job roles/ promotion/ progression that I was trying to get across. If you're a manager of a company and you have a job which it takes 7 years (the length from entry to "rate for the job" of old-fashioned UK civil service grades), then you've designed the specs of the job wrong. You should have two jobs there - a junior and a senior one, with progression from one to the other according to publically stated criteria. The issue should be one of defining what it takes to do the job properly, not simply rewarding length of time served. Yes, part of what it takes, in more senior roles, will be the wealth of knowledge that comes with experience - but again, that should be played out in terms of outputs (widgets, papers, sales figures, etc), not simply years served. (Apart from anything else, people gain the necessary experience at different rates - are you going to hold back the high flyers and reward the plodders?) And I say this as someone who works in a knowledge industry (in a scientific research establishment which, in my field, is ranked number 1 in the world on citations) where there's a hell of a lot of background knowledge needed - there aren't many of us who don't start in the job with a PhD, often postdoctoral experience.

Length of service on its own means diddly squat, and simply entrenches (albeit usually unintentionally) institutionalised inequalities in pay. The UK university sector is a prime example of this. Women academics don't just earn less than men because there are more male professors (the typical inverted triangle). They earn less when you compare like with like - lecturer A, lecturer B, senior lecturer, reader, professor. The same is true in a lot of other jobs.

Buffy

"I know many men react angrily because they take feminist analysis personally. That's because men are used to being treated as individuals whose views matter and who are judged only on their individual behaviour. But unfortunately, men taking feminist analysis personally is evidence of those men not having understood feminist analysis properly."

"you can also be in the fortunate position of not yet having awoken to your oppression"

This is meant as a genuine question, not an attack, just in case it seems that way. But why is the female colleague of the OP someone who hasn't woken up to being oppressed, rather than someone who is treating things on their own individual behavior like you make reference to guys doing? Could it not be the same thing?

I guess the last part is well explained by your later post. Individual experience being both a good thing, but also masking trends in the bigger picture.

Buffy

"But I'd thought that the OP was more about how opponents of feminism smear it so it seems like a set of extreme and unpleasant set of man-hating beliefs promoted by fat ugly women in dungarees."

Whhhhhaaatttttt? It's not?

The socialisation part is an interesting point - what is cause and effect. E.g. are there more women caring/ nursing because biologically they prefer that, or is it just because of social norms? I think there is a big social impact, but there also must be some biological stuff going on. For example different mental illnesses tend to be related to different brain chemistry, and we group roughly similar conditions into groups, which often are linked to those chemical differences.

With male and females having (on a general scale) much more similar chemistry within their "group" then there must be stuff each group prefers. As I mentioned before it's certainly not a case of ignoring the cultural pressure, but is it also worth (or better?!) to have some focus on getting nurses (stereotypical female job/ volunteers) paid better, and (male - overpaid) footballers paid less? If it is just social pressure then in theory it's no problem getting any job to be equal. However if it is chemistry then it's much harder in theory to get people to do something they don't enjoy as much.

LurcioAgain

Yes, from reading your latest post I didn't properly understand what you were meaning. I think I still don't - but that's more my own ignorance probably! I agree it's important to reward good work, not the time you sit at your desk. However if you are rewarding someone on how long they learn the job, and it generally takes, say, 3 years. Then if a female has missed 1 year looking after a kid will that not mean in practice she takes 4 years (assuming average employee learning) to get promoted? Therefore a male starting at the same time would move into a senior position to her more quickly, resulting in more senior positions being dominated by males? Pay may be relatively similar, since the mum staying at home got paid the same as the guy who was working, but since the promotion would normally be associated with higher salary he would in practice earn more too?

The issue is that there's a lot of crossover between feminists and man haters.

Sure, there are loads of feminist who love men, and loads of man-haters that don't identify as feminism... but naturally, there's a big crossover.

If you have been screwed over by men in your life, it's natural (if not logical) to paint all men with the same brush and to be hostile to them as a group. How many times have we heard the exclamation "Men!" when some woman has been wronged by one, how many times have we heard a woman declare that she's "had enough of men!" when she's been cheated on repeatedly? Feminism has parallels with this in the sense that they consider 'men' to be a class or group (not saying that's wrong, mind).

Likewise, if you have been hurt by men throughout your life (abusive father, cheating parents, absent father's to your own children, sexist boss, etc) then you might have a negative attitude towards men that would naturally compel you to think about broader issues in which men oppress and hurt you.

As I said earlier, there are a lot of feminists who arrive at feminism for other reasons, and a lot of women who've had bad experiences who have not found feminism. But given this crossover, some women might not want to identify as feminist because they fear being seen as man-haters... and a lot of people might not be fond of feminism because they assume it is about man-hating.

Or... it could be that the person believes in equal rights, but does not agree with the theoretical premises of feminism (the patriarchy, male privilege, etc).

^ that should be 'cheating partners', not parents

I think the problem is "feminism" is about as well defined a thing as "christianity". Different people mean different things by it, albeit with a common theme. You can't say "no that's wrong that's not what feminism is" any more than you can say "no that's not what christians believe".

I'm very vocal for equality. A major tenet for me is that we should be seen as people first not constantly labelled by our gender. So a label for believing in equality that itself selects by gender does not work for me personally. Language makes a difference.

But that doesn't make sense catkind when one gender is oppressed. How are you supposed to emphasise that, highlight it, work towards sorting it out if you don't name it?

When one gender was oppressed then yes it was a useful label and a fantastic movement that achieved a lot. And I appreciate in some places that is still the case.

If you're saying in the western culture we (or I at least) live in one gender is oppressed then I disagree. There's a lot of sexism, it goes both ways, and much of it comes from over-classification, so I don't think more classification is the answer.

Ahh right.

OK.

30% gender pay gap, 148 out of 160 MPs are women, 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted during their lifetimes (and yes, some men get assaulted too - but interesting the vast majority of the perpetrators in both cases are men), only a tiny fraction of rapes make it as far as a successful conviction (but any attempt to talk about the reasons for this attracts vast swathes of idiots who want to talk about the even smaller fraction of false rape accusations), we don't legally have abortion on demand (two doctors have to sign to say it's needed for medical reasons)... yes, everything in the garden is rosy, isn't it.

Oh well, as the old adage has it, "you can't argue with stupid".

I think that should say 148 out of 160 MPs are men.

If you seriously believe women aren't oppressed in western society catkind, then there's no point in even engaging with feminism. To use your own analogy, you're basically coming along to Christians and saying Jesus didn't exist.

"It's more an observation from anecdotal evidence, but I know a lot of guys have raised this question. The general outline is that in a long term relationship if you are insisting to still wear them you will get questioned about lack of trust. You would only wear them to stop the other person getting pregnant, or getting an STD. Either says "I don't trust you" and so will destroy the relationship in practice. I know a lot of guys who have suspicions that their partner "accidentally" got pregnant. I mentioned it in the list of things as I saw a discussion about it recently on a male dominated forum. The question was about did the person feel ready to be a dad, and it seemed to be that a lot of posters said no, but their partner had got pregnant anyway (they also pretty much all said it turned out to be the best thing that had happened to them, but that's a bit off topic). The other stereotype is some women getting pregnant to try and save a dying relationship."

Thanks for answering my question Snow. You say "a lot of guys...have suspicions that their partner "accidentally" got pregnant." How does that happen? How does a woman get pregnant on her own?
You seem to be coming from a standpoint that PIV sex is absolutely inevitable in a relationship, even a relationship where the man doesn't trust the woman, and that if the woman "accidentally" gets pregnant well that's the same as "accidentally" falling down the stairs - an unfortunate side effect of day to day life, because you can't avoid stairs, can you?
My question is, if these guys were so afraid of pregnancy why weren't they taking steps to avoid it, either by refusing to have sex without a condom, refusing to have sex at all, or ending the relationship, given that they couldn't trust their partner? It was by no means inevitable that this situation would end in pregnancy. The only way a woman could be pregnant with their child would be to have unprotected sex with her, which is an active choice made by the man.

cailin.... you're on fire recently, so many great posts!

Snow, you might want to revisit your post about mental illness and have a bit of a goggle for some facts. Because it was light on those.

Thanks Puffins!

I should be working, but all my energy is going into MN. I can't tell you what a wonderful feeling it has been to feel so at home in the F(WR) section - it's like speaking having to speak French (badly) all your life then finally finding a group of people who speak English! I can express myself!

are they just being ignorant of what it really is or are they wilfully misunderstanding in a conscious attempt to dismiss it?

Some of them have had profoundly toxic experiences with feminists in their lives, to the point that believing in egalitarianism requires an active struggle and feminism is associated with intense hatred and misery.

I'm absolutely staggered by the hate and fear in those postcards linked at the beginning of the thread. Will now read the rest of it.

Hating an entire group of people because of a few "toxic experiences" strikes me as somewhat immature.

I've been raped, by more than one man, I also have a father who couldn't give a shit about me, I've been harassed and groped by men and told I didn't deserve an education by men. I don't hate men, not at all. I suppose I have good reason to hate them but I don't. I can understand that while some men are rapists, some men are misogynistic pigs, some men are downright nasty evil shitheads, a lot of men are kind and caring and lovely to be around.