Do you think it is necessary to have good analytical and critical thinking skills be a feminist?

[QuentinSummers]

Lots of current "feminist" thinking seems not feminist at all and I wondered if it's because people are not abe to apply critical thinking skills to arguments like "Any choice a woman makes is a feminist choice".
Wondered what you all thought?

[VestalVirgin]

Plenty of women can uphold the principles of feminism without engaging in the theory. They can and do fight for refuge shelters for women (for example) because instinctively they know women need them. They may not have the stats to hand but they have eyes, they have their own experiences, they talk to their friends and they know too many women are afraid of their partners. I don't think a great deal of critical analysis needs to take place for women to know they are being oppressed.

Not a great deal of it, no.

But enough critical thinking to know male violence when they see it.

When I was a little child and some boys told me I wasn't allowed to have the haircut I had because it was a "boy's" haircut, I thought: "Well, that's obviously irrational nonsense" ... or, well, that's how I would put it today. No analysis or statistics or anything required.

But you would be surprised how many adult women are incapable of recognizing that sort of thing as sexism when they see it.

[PoochSmooch]

Does it set you free though?

Well, to an extent, yes. I wouldn't do or think half what I do without thinking I'm the equal of any man. Society doesn't always agree with me, and that's where the problems start. It's definitely more of an aspiration than a reality. So yes, sometimes when I'm watching a film and I notice that it dismally fails the Bechdel test, all I see is the bars of the prison...

[DonkeySkin]

enough critical thinking to know male violence when they see it.

I agree Vestal, and I would say that women's shelters would never have been established had feminists not come up with an analysis that placed male violence against women and children in a broader political context, instead of accepting the 'wisdom' that had held true for centuries, that some men beat their wives and kids and that was just the way it was.

You could condemn it (and plenty of people did, even in a time when wives were literally the property of their husbands - many 19th C authors portrayed domestic violence with strong moral disapproval), but you couldn't change it. It took feminist analysis of the whole structure of the nuclear family, the law, and male-female power relations to give birth to the women's shelter movement.

Maybe in contradiction to others in this thread, I think having a coherent analysis of patriarchy is essential to feminism. Unlike radical feminism, liberal feminism never had one, and that's why mainstream feminism is in the mess it is in today. Having no clear understanding of why women are oppressed or the mechanisms behind it, liberal feminists left themselves open to corruption by anti-feminist queer theory, which is itself an unholy blend of postmodernism and libertarianism.

It easy to see the seductions of queer theory from a liberal feminist point of view: liberal feminists are aware that women are discriminated against, and they have a vague notion that this is because of our female bodies, but they are unable to go beyond the concept of discrimination to exploitation - to realising that the physical differences between men and women are the foundation of male exploitation of female bodies, and that exploitation itself necessitates the creation of not just formal inequalities but a totalising ideological system, which in the case of sexism goes all the way down to the construction of sexuality itself. That's why they try to pretend that pornography, for instance, has nothing to do with the perpetuation of male supremacy, why they try to cordon off discussions of sex and sexuality from sexism at all, and instead insist that women plaster on a grin and remain 'sex positive!' in the face of a sexual culture that is deeply negative for women and girls.

Thus, when queer theory came along to posit the seductive idea that femaleness itself was a fiction, which could be deconstructed linguistically and ideologically, they embraced that too, and now they accuse women who insist on the importance of the female body to feminist analysis of being the real sexists - because femaleness itself is obviously the problem, not male exploitation of same.

And that's why liberal feminists are ardently pushing laws that will destroy women's shelters (and every other sex-segregated space): they understand that the shelters are needed, but they don't know why. According to this non-understanding of male violence, one can oppose it, but one is forbidden to have a structural analysis of it, or indeed even to recognise that maleness and femaleness are material states, not identities. So we can see from this where 'feminism' without coherent analysis or critical thinking leads to: anti-feminism.

[PoochSmooch]

Fab post, donkeyskin. You're swaying me back the other way now! Queer theory was just flourishing when I left uni, things were just starting to shift from women's studies to gender studies. As part of an elective topic, I remember being made to read Foucault and I think Judith Butler ? and being very, very unimpressed because I couldn't for the life of me see how it helped with anything in the real world. But it was all the rage, and you had to at least pretend to understand it. Sure, I get the deconstruction of heteronormativity, and so on, but it's spawned some horrendous navel gazing nonsense too.

[QuentinSummers]

Thanks donkey.

[Datun]

DonkeySkin

Wonderfully incisive post. You might pop over to AIBU where there is a thread asserting feminism is unnecessary. And most women wouldn't touch with it with a barge pole, despite believing in equality.

[BeyondUser24601]

Love that post!

[birdsdestiny]

It's the easier way though isn't it. Critical thinking can be a tricky beast. In the current debate on women's spaces I consistently feel I am on ' the wrong side'. It would be so much easier to stop asking the questions. I can see how tempting it is to just agree with the current ideology.

[hmcAsWas]

scallopsrgreat - agree with that completely.

[DonkeySkin]

Thanks Datun. I just checked out that AIBU thread and it reminded me why I don't post in AIBU feminist threads that often - the anti-feminist trolls are so exhausting! Lots of good posts in there too, though. Kudos to you and the other women who manage to cut through the bullshit for the benefit of casual readers.

[QuentinSummers]

I've worked out who that STFU poster is and then hidden the thread, have wasted way too many hours arguing with that one

[quencher]

@QuentinSummers I see what you mean about the thread. Something like that appeared on my screen about two days ago with this older woman saying things similar to the thread. I almost started a thread berating her but I didn't have the energy for it. Dh got the brunt of it because I needed somewhere to rant.

[Datun]

QuentinSummers

Are they not who they said they are? PM me if you don't want to be accused of trolling. I'd dearly like to know.

[Datun]

• toll hunting, not trolling

[VestalVirgin]

Maybe in contradiction to others in this thread, I think having a coherent analysis of patriarchy is essential to feminism. Unlike radical feminism, liberal feminism never had one, and that's why mainstream feminism is in the mess it is in today. Having no clear understanding of why women are oppressed or the mechanisms behind it, liberal feminists left themselves open to corruption by anti-feminist queer theory, which is itself an unholy blend of postmodernism and libertarianism.

You are totally right about liberal feminism.

Though I think the earliest feminists didn't need much education to understand what was going on - men were much more obvious in denying women the right to vote than what is now going on.

And in a way, I still suspect liberal feminism is hindered not so much by a lack of analysis but by an unwillingness to see the truth.

[PencilsInSpace]

Great thread and amazing posts from Pooch, Scallops and Donkey.

I do believe critical thinking is necessary for feminism as it is for any other political movement. I think that's the case whether we are writing theory, campaigning and organising, volunteering or fundraising, or just talking to people about issues we care about. If we don't think critically we can end up supporting all sorts of dreadful things.

That doesn't mean we all need to be academic though and I agree, sometimes that gets in the way. I did art and graduated with a head full of postmodernist bullshit which at the time I thought was irrelevant. Sadly it's turned out not to be, it's turned out to be the foundation of some very dangerous harmful ideas.

Most people are capable of critical thinking and I agree it's a life skill you can improve and which will serve you well in all areas of life. That story of the emperor's new clothes - it was a little child who employed critical thinking.

It's questioning whether someone's claims make sense and whether there is any evidence to support them. Whether their arguments are logical. If they are saying 'thing A, therefore thing B' - does thing B actually logically follow from thing A or is there a step (or 10) missing? Or does A have no relation to B at all?

If someone is making an argument that you don't understand it might not be you being thick, it might be that their argument doesn't stand up. Ask them to explain. The majority of arguments that are solid can be put into simpler terms. Those that are built on hot air can't.

though, eh?

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

I've worked out who that STFU poster is and then hidden the thread, have wasted way too many hours arguing with that one

I am frequently very critical of feminist ideology. I would hope however that no one thinks that poster is me- even if for no other reasons than I never name change or swear.

[QuentinSummers]

No I don't think it's you lass. I don't think I've spent many hours on pointless arguments with you

[Datun]

I certainly didn't think it was you lass. I thought that person had a bit of a downer on women, to be honest. I don't have to agree with someone, but their logic, to me, didn't stand up at all.

[BertrandRussell]

The trouble is that critical thinking is sadly lacking in practically every area of our lives-it's not just feminism.

[ISaySteadyOn]

I've actually learned a lot about critical thinking from feminism and this board so I don't think you need it to be a feminist.

I lurk a lot and, Lass, that poster sounded nothing like you. Agree with Datun there.

[CaoNiMartacus]

Critical thinking is the enemy of capitalism/consumerism, and since that is the ideology that governs our age, no wonder critical thinking skills are no longer prized.

[BertrandRussell]

"I don't think I've spent many hours on pointless arguments with you flowers"

I have! But Lass is not STFU.

[quencher]

It's not lass.
It's someone whom I have always thought of as a man. Am surprised they said they were female.

[Blistory]

Nice to see FWR going down the tired old path that there's a correct theory of feminism and that it happens to be radical feminism. I find it alienating that so many posters on here are willing to write off liberal feminists on the untruths that liberal feminism is all about choice and is supportive of trans ideology. And to have liberal feminism equated with sex positive feminism is entirely inaccurate and misses the nuances of liberal feminist thinking.

Being gender critical is not something that radical feminism gets to appropriate for itself. Plenty of feminist theory stands together and transcends the various politics and is all the more powerful for it. Please don't buy into the trans notion of TERFdom as that just splits us and alienates many who are otherwise sympathetic.

I'd like to think that I apply as much critical thinking and analysis to my feminism that any feminist does but the day to day reality of feminism for me is that my actions count more and feminist theory has gone from being front and centre to simply being an adjunct.

I also don't think that we have enough diverse views on here for there to be much meaningful critical analysis on a lot of issues. The feminist theory that is discussed is generally through the lens of radical or liberal feminism from white women and rarely is there a different view heard. That narrowness of viewpoint affects us all and lets our thoughts pass unchallenged. There's comfort in consensus and in not standing alone but I wonder if that sometimes obscures our focus and makes us unwittingly unwelcoming to other feminists or closed off to different viewpoints.