Rebutting the Straw Men/Owning up when "it's a fair cop, guv.

[LurcioAgain]

BertrandRussell has started an interesting thread in Chat asking women who consciously reject the label "feminist" why they do so. One thing that strikes me is a lot of the reasons being given are in fact "straw men", and that maybe a rebutting the straw men thread would be nice.

Aim of the game (of course I can't control the direction the conversation takes, but I hope people will be on board with this) - keep the conversation couched in reasonably accessible terms, keep the posts short enough not to be overwhelming (so probably only one straw man per post!)

Also agreeing here.

"to be this complete refusal to believe that women and men are different in anything much further than a very basic physical level. "

Just responding to this point from Stannis in case she stops by - as I'm off to bed

Stannis, on this, it is my genuine belief that all non-physical differences between men and women are socialised. It's not a stubborn refusal, I would be open to experiments that showed otherwise but it seems a hypothesis impossible to prove either way - all people are socialised according to their presenting sex and even experiments on barely socialised newborns are done by socialised researchers who often talk more softly to a baby girl or whatever.

I accept that we cannot prove whether it is nature, nurture or some of each that contributes to gender difference

...as it cannot be proved, my working hypothesis is 100% nurture. I would not stick to this stubbornly if I felt it was proved wrong, however, which may happen one day, of course.

Yonic I don't agree that the fact women on the whole tend to be less violent or on the whole tend to not drive at excessive speed or when drunk is just down to socialisation. I can't prove this theory but we are all (or most of us) are told not to do these things.

Sure, and I can see why you have drawn that conclusion. Is it worldwide, the difference between male and female speeding tickets? I'd also argue it's socialisation that men drive more and feel more confident (over confident???) behind the wheel - " women drivers" and "one careful lady owner" being common memes.

See, I'm all about refuting the "stubborn refusal" part above

I think there is some nature - but I think that there's more overlap than there is difference. I don't think that given a certain behaviour you could say with any certainty or accuracy whether that was a man or a woman, but that you can say on a population level that men are more likely to 'x'

I do think that having more testosterone or more oestrogen makes you behave in a different manner given the same stimuli - just as I behave differently given more or less sleep or more or less alcohol, however I also think that nurture can do a lot more damage, or a lot more good than nature, so you can't use hormone levels as an excuse for bad (or good) behaviour.

I also think that attributing behaviour to someone's sex contributes to the problem - boys not writing because we hear teachers saying that boys are slow to write, so no-one works hard enough with them on it early on. Girls who are continually congratulated on their pretty dress, so feel that's the important thing about themselves etc.

Some potentially helpful reading, for people who are interested.

Schrödinger's Rapist

Straw man (apologies for it being wiki)

Quote mining, happens a lot with Dworkin and similar feminist writings to "prove" that all feminists think something they patently don't, in order to formulte straw man arguments which are impossible to refute, due to them being incorrect in the first place. (again wiki)

Definitions of a range of logical fallacies not just those which are endlessly brought up about feminists and feminism.

Hope they help

Good links puffins

Hi Yonic, thanks for answering. Yes, it is interesting about the nature vs nurture thing. I do agree that a lot of the 'girls are like this, boys are like this' is bullshit (which i was able to disprove with my own massive sample of one son and one daughter!) and I think a lot of stuff happens without us even realising (see the end of this post)!

But im not sure about it being 100% nuture either. For example, didn't they observe chimpanzee teaching their young how to extract termites from their nests. The young male and female chimps behaved completely differently with the girls really concentrating and picking it up quite quickly, and the boys arsing around and taking longer to learn it.

Now obviously I understand that we are not chimpanzees (!!!) and that the above doesn't prove anything about the differences between males and females. But, given we did evolve from that sort of animal, I don't think it's beyond the realms of all possibility to suggest that some differences may be a bit more inherent than others? Plus when you think about how different men and women are on a purely physical level, it doesn't seem all that outrageous to think that there may be more perhaps subtle general differences in our brains etc.

I think the problem comes when people start putting values on those differences and saying that one characteristic is 'better' than another.

Or people say that someone cant do this, or be like that, simply on the basis of their sex eg. Men may be physically stronger than women in general, but that doesn't mean that all women have to be be meek and mild, or that a woman couldn't train so she becomes stronger than most men. Or women may naturally be more 'caring' (no basis for this whatsoever, just using it as an example now) but that doesn't mean that a man couldn't work in a nursery if that was what he wanted to do?

Meh, I do feel a bit a fraud posting ins feminist thread now when, despite my best efforts, yesterday my 3 year old DS announced with great authority that 'pink is for girls and blue is for boys and boys can't like pink'!

Oh my boys do that too!

Like I said, I'm not close minded to the possibility. I also know that "brain difference" has been used to justify some fairly shitty things in the past eg treatment of black people vs white (not saying you are doing this of course!)

Stannis there may well be differences but the question is how much impact do those differences have?

I've not heard of this piece of research you mentioned. It could as you say point to a gendered brain, or that gendering of males and females happens in other higher functioning animals or mean nothing at all since our brains are not their brains.

It's all very interesting

Also if we are making confessions my dd sleeps with her pink jewellery box and my ds declared that cats were for girls so he wanted a dog.

Strawperson surely ?

No, domino.

Re the gendered brain - I've begun to wonder whether finding out that me's behaviour is biologically induced would cause a big problem for feminism. If gendered violence is caused by socialisation there is a way out, and also an onus on men to sort themselves out. Finding out that a greater tendency to violence is part of a biological make-up (I'm thinking hormones, more than just structure), sort of let's men off the hook. A bit, anyway.

Yops, I disagree. Our legal structure is set up on the basis that we are "civilised" beings who can control our impulses to violence, theft, anti social behaviour like shouting in the street etc.

And that system was probably originally established by aristocratic men who thought the poor man an inferior creature at the mercy of his impulses!

No one is let off the hook unless their impulse control is sufficiently poor to be an excuse and then the sentencing may be of a different nature (attending rehab for example)

Violence is interesting, isn't it ?

I wonder if people would be shocked to find out just how often I clench my fists and want to pummel someone or to raise my voice and yell at someone and yet I've never hit someone or really shouted. How much of that is because I know it would be morally and legally wrong and how much is because women simply aren't allowed to use violence ?

I don't think I'm a particularly angry woman but feeling violent isn't unfamiliar whereas acting violent is generally outwith my experience.

I don't think violence is biologically ( well I don't think anything is 100% nature or nurture but it's a scale). I think most people have a temper/ violent tendencies to some degree but different people are better at dealing with them. Dealing whth those feelings is a learned behaviour IMO.
Blistory- as I man I know that men are simply not allowed to use violence either.

LEM: So if i argued vehemently that Father Christmas was real? that would be a straw man?

Not quite. If you told a Christian 'but you beleive in Father Christmas!' And then argued vehementently about their believing in Father Christmas being why you cannot call yourself a christian, that would be a straw man. You arguing against a belief they dont hold, because your (mis)understanding of the expectations of the group they belong to.

saying you wouldnt call yourself a Christian because you dont believe in Father Christmas is like some people who argue they can't/won't call themselves feminist because of the mistaken idea that (something they have heard referenced in popular media that is a very twisted version of what that one famous feminist sort of wrote once.) is an absolute required belief.

Like Christianity (and other organised religions), feminism comes in many gradiations, and has many individuals who spout off their own opinion in ways that others can mistake for a required or expected belief. There are many Christian faiths, and many individuals who don't necessarily exactly accept the definition given by the church they attend.

In the US, i have been known to tell people, who dont otherwise trust FOX news, that if they are not feminists because of something FOX says feminists are or do, then they should seriously rethink their position.

I disagree about men being allowed to use violence. Yes, in a general sense about thumping another man on the street but as a society, we allow and promote the use of violence as a means of statecraft and we largely ask men to be the tools of violence.

We also allow men physical outlets like boxing and generally frown upon women doing so.

We also can't deny that there is status and credibility to be gained amongst some groups of young men by proving that they can hold their own physically amongst their peers so whilst it might be punished under the legal system, it brings it's own reward with street credibility.

I do think that it's one of the major ways in which patriarchy harms men quite significantly.

It's not the reseach pp referred to, but one that I was aware of. I will keep looking for the other research too

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/

Found it
psychcentral.com/news/archives/2004-04/uom-ycs041204.html

IMO a strawman argument is when someone assigns to you an opinion so ridiculous that no sane person would espouse it, then takes you down based on that argument.

It's also very derailing.

For example at a party one guy, upon finding out from the host that I was a feminist, proceeded to tell me that feminists hated men and believed that women should be given special treatment over men.

I spent all evening trying to reassure him that this wasn't the case (hey I was a newbie then!) and that feminists liked men and just wanted equal opportunities before I realised that I was wasting my time.

I find the best way to deal with such people now is to give them a Paddington bear stare and say "yup, that's EXACTLY what I said!"

Which I probably picked up from someone here

How much of that is because I know it would be morally and legally wrong and how much is because women simply aren't allowed to use violence ?

Neither are men.

There are women boxers - I dislike them as much as I dislike male boxing.

I know there are women boxers. My point is that society tends to be more squeamish about the idea of two women knocking lumps out of each other than of two men.