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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism as "let's be nice to everyone"

303 replies

OneFlewOverTheDodosNest · 10/08/2017 14:16

I've started getting the rage with celebrities and women I know who like to virtue signal about the importance of feminism, but then make the definition of feminism so broad that's it's useless.

Some things I've seen lately that have made my teeth clench include "feminism works for all genders", "feminism is another word for equalism", "we can only make feminism work if we get men on side, so let's be nice to them" "here's a list of things feminism works on for men" etc etc.

One thing that REALLY pissed me off was Emma-Feminist-Watson (I know...) saying that boys not being able to cry was the "saddest thing" she could think of and it just really brought home to me how feminism has turned from this fight to liberate woman, to this platitude designed to show that you're nice but "don't worry, not in a threatening way". Seriously, you can't think of a single thing SADDER than a bloke being emotionally stunted?

How did it happen that mainstream feminism started focusing on the emotional needs of men, rather than the increasing rates of DV and sexual violence? How did the conversation shift from "we need to fund these shelters for women" to "we need to make sure men have refuges [that never get used]"?

OP posts:
Ereshkigal · 11/08/2017 14:08

The thing is, nicey nicey feminism lite often isn't actually particularly nice and frequently involves throwing other women under the bus to pander to men.

Moussemoose · 11/08/2017 14:27

MrGHardy

I would suspect valuing a cause is something I know considerably more about than most people. Most people would still class me as assertive and occasionally aggressive. I don't care. But I am not prepared to insert the political into all aspects of my life any more? Do you?

Moussemoose · 11/08/2017 14:35

Ereshkigal
The thing is, nicey nicey feminism lite often isn't actually particularly nice and frequently involves throwing other women under the bus to pander to men

Or is it good for some women who call themselves feminists to be dismissed and patronised by other women who call themselves feminists?

Circumstances alter cases. When acting as a TU official I would be as assertive as any man and I know I am classed as 'formidable' by management. Not nice?

When I working with a 17 year old, male, Afghan asylum seeker I would moderate my tone and attitude and be nice. This is the best way to deal with this man. Nice?

When on MN and trying to engage with women who do not class themselves as feminist I would go out of my way to be nice and funny and draw them in in a supportive way. Too nice?

Too many keyboard warriors who talk a good game. Who write letters and sign petitions and are happy to criticise other women who aren't in a position to be as 'intellectually pure'.

AssassinatedBeauty · 11/08/2017 14:40

"Too many keyboard warriors who talk a good game. Who write letters and sign petitions"

Tbf, you have absolutely no way of knowing that, it's your assumption based on nothing at all about people who regularly post here.

Moussemoose · 11/08/2017 15:08

AssassinatedBeauty

Tbf, you have absolutely no way of knowing that, it's your assumption based on nothing at all about people who regularly post here

Yep but I was a little irritated as someone had questioned how much I valued the cause. Lots of the comments I read are from posters who have discovered 'the cause' relatively recently and that's brilliant. People new to a cause bring new life and new ideas but some of us have been round the course a few times and experience also has its value.

My experience suggests you need to pick your fights. There is a time to stand your ground and throw down - and I do. On the other hand there are times, like when engaging with non politicised people a softer tone is better. And there is never a time when questioning if someone is 'really' a feminist is a good plan.

Ereshkigal · 11/08/2017 15:11

That wasn't my point Mousse. Good job missing it.

Moussemoose · 11/08/2017 15:14

Ereshkigal

So your point was........?

Dervel · 11/08/2017 15:20

It's just an attempt to lockdown women to a role. Women always have to be a "thing". You can't be assertive and aggressive one day, and conciliatory and diplomatic the next. We give women less agency and pigeonhole them way more than men.

I had a female boss once who was bloody brilliant, she had this reputation for being prickly but actually she was simply direct and assertive when shit needed to get done, literally the whole rest of the time she was approachable and great to talk to. She would also tie herself up in knots to accommodate all of us who worked for her.

We don't accept flexibility in women at all which must make things like management magnitudes more difficult. In terms of feminism rhetoric is crucial tool in the communication of ideas, sometimes a soft touch works, sometimes you have to forcefully put a position forward yet again in others a little wit and humour gets the message across. We should stop straightjacking women with needless descriptors like "nice", "bossy" etc etc.

I hate to bring up the recent US election debacle, but Trump could assert so many labels to himself, whereas Hilary can't. Just take the word feminist, when a man claims the descriptor for himself that doesn't take away from anything else he is or isn't. When a woman does it it's taken as a defining characteristic, whenever a woman describes herself there are assumptions made that simply aren't for men.

MrGHardy · 11/08/2017 15:26

I never meant to question whether you "really" are a feminist. Merely wondering how pandering to patriarchy in order to make your life easier, doesn't undermine all the other effort.

Outside of your "feminist activism" let's call it, your actions, which are admittedly non-feminist and conforming to sexist stereotypes, suggest to other people you are perfectly ok with the current structures. So if they then hear you criticize those structures elsewhere, that might seem odd.

I have no doubt that to yourself the two are totally separate, but others will use it to attack. As I suppose it looks like I have done (though it wasn't my intention, which was simply to question how you reconcile the two).

Moussemoose · 11/08/2017 15:47

MrGHardy

The thing is having been brought up in a patriarchal society and socialised to accept certain norms - I do. Fighting those norms, not shaving my body hair for example, feels stressful. It is easier to conform. I would suggest most posters make similar accommodations without the angst. Like I keep saying I pick my battles. I choose the stereotypes I want.

The point of the thread is about being 'nice' a vile term thatvi don't think is often applied to meWink

I get irritated when I read posts sniping at other women and questioning how real their feminism is. I think we need a broad base to build activism on top of. To get that broad base we need to use forums like this to engage with non politicised women. What happens, too frequently, is that women are sneered at for not being, as I keep saying, ideologically pure.

MrGHardy · 11/08/2017 15:55

Fair enough, I see what you mean now. Apologies if you felt I questioned "how real" your intentions are.

Xenophile · 11/08/2017 17:37

The thing is, nicey nicey feminism lite often isn't actually particularly nice and frequently involves throwing other women under the bus to pander to men.

And this is completely the case when it comes to things like conflating gender and sex and the whole direction of "call-out" culture. Lena Dunham seems to believe she is a nice feminist, and yet she still sold out two women who were speaking about a subject in a way she didn't like to their employer, presumably for cookies from the group being discussed. if it ever happened

PricklyBall · 11/08/2017 18:08

I think it's important to make a distinction between liberal feminism, correctly understood, and what I think of as nicey-nice feminism. Let's use prostitution as an example.

The classical liberal feminist may defend complete decriminalisation on a number of grounds, and do so in good faith (I think she's wrong but the arguments are worthy of taking seriously).

So, for instance, she might argue on the basis of harm reduction: that decriminalisation, allowing women to form collectives and bringing the practice into the open, helps to reduce rapes, assaults and murders and makes prostitution safer than it would be while underground. (I favour the Nordic model and would counter by arguing that a compare and contrast of Sweden, France and Ireland on the one hand and Holland and Germany on the other, suggests that full decrim actually makes the situation worse for prostitutes).

Then there's the individual autonomy argument. This goes along the lines of selling sex in and of itself is not harmful. It is of course harmful when one party is coerced - so let's put our efforts into stamping down on coercion and trafficking, not interfering with individual women's right to sell their bodies if they wish. (Again, I'd say that selling sex might be unproblematic in some sci fi world peopled by hermaphrodites where economic inequality didn't exist and it was just one way of earning a living among many - but in the real world where men hold economic and political power over women and can use their greater physical strength to carry out violent assault, selling sex, which is an activity where the buyers are overwhelmingly male and the sellers overwhelmingly disempowered socially and economically, can almost never be a free choice).

These are arguments worth having, and I wouldn't want to shut them down. And I believe liberal feminists who advance these arguments are coming from good motivations - harm reduction and the defence of women's right to bodily autonomy in all things including with whom and in what circumstances they want to engage in sex. (And there's a further liberal argument which would say the principle conceded in criminalising prostitution, namely interfering with how women run their sex lives, is the thin end of the wedge in a world with men on the religious right seeking to erode women's control over their fertility through abortion and contraception restrictions - again, an argument which we should take seriously).

But what I will never accept as feminist is the braying of the sex-pozzie lobby who don't debate, don't argue, don't engage, but simply bray "whorephobia", "kink-shaming", "slut shaming" and the like at the first mention of the Nordic model. They are not feminists, they are man pleasing twats and I'm more than happy to call them out on it.

Moussemoose · 11/08/2017 19:36

PricklyBall

braying of the sex-pozzie lobby who don't debate, don't argue, don't engage, but simply bray "whorephobia", "kink-shaming

Absolutely and any woman not debating and name calling is wrong. Totally wrong, name calling, patronising, belittling all wrong. Wrong.

And just cos they do it should you?

Ereshkigal · 11/08/2017 19:39

Mousse, the last two posts have made it well. "Nice" isn't selling out other women or throwing away women's rights in favour of male centred ideology. I'm not selling women out, I'm criticising their actions. I don't have to be nice and I'm not inclined to be.

Moussemoose · 11/08/2017 20:46

Ereshkigal

You don't have to be nice to other women. You can be as rude as you like, calling other women names, questioning their right to use the term feminist. You can belittle and laugh at women who are nice. You can do all those things and lots of women do. You can wrap yourself in your cloak of moral superiority. You can criticise their actions and know you are right and they are wrong. You can point out where they are selling out and you are not.

What you can't do is do all that and criticise men for doing the same thing.

You will be a pig that looks like a man through a window.

BertrandRussell · 11/08/2017 20:53

Why do you have to agree with other women just because you are a feminist?

PricklyBall · 11/08/2017 21:05

I think you're missing the point Mousse. "Niceness" in this discussion isn't about being a nice, or kind, or understanding person in an individual sense. It's about the demand that we must be blanket "nice" to everyone, because we are women, and women are supposed to be "nice".

We must be "nice" to the man who says "I'm a feminist, but your feminism must involve you in campaigning for men's DV shelters and men's mental health issues before I'll let you talk about women." We must be "nice" to the endless succession of male trolls who pop up on this board with endless whataboutery and derailing. We must be "nice" to the woman who says "I'm a feminist, but frankly modern feminism has gone too far and I fear for my sons - they're going to go to university, have a drunken one-night stand and be falsely accused of rape."

Well, I'm not prepared to be nice to those people, if by nice you mean not arguing back and pretending I agree for some meaningless concept of solidarity, I'm not prepared to stay silent when they claim to be feminists then espouse views which are patently anti-women.

There comes a point with being "inclusive of different voices" where you've included so many voices you no longer have any discernible point of view at all.

Ereshkigal · 11/08/2017 21:08

You can belittle and laugh at women who are nice.

But I don't belittle women who are nice. Yet again the point goes sailing over your head. I'm not talking about genuinely nice women. I criticise not very nice behaviour. And can take criticism myself.

Ereshkigal · 11/08/2017 21:09

You will be a pig that looks like a man through a window.

Hmm
AssassinatedBeauty · 11/08/2017 21:19

Animal Farm??

ButtHoleinOne · 11/08/2017 21:52

Some of its man pleasing. Some of its just attempting to sugar coat the butter pill of losing privilege to men with a bit of influence. I like Emma Watson I think she's doing her best in a sort of weird situation.

I don't think it hurts to have different ways of doing feminism, and getting it out there. 14 year old girls are more likely to pick an article by Hermione Granger than a book by Dworkin.

But I think "feminism is good for everyone" etc isn't necessarily the same as "sex positive, pro kink, pro trans, Liberal feminism. It's simply (to me) the friendly face of the whole 'taking over the world' agenda

Moussemoose · 11/08/2017 21:54

Arggghhhhh

I didn't say and I have never said you have to agree with every other woman. You can disagree, you can debate, but I would suggest sneering at other women's feminist credentials is a bad idea.

As I have made clear in a number of previous posts you do not have to be nice all the time to everyone. You pick and choose your battles. I have given examples.

As I have said previously on this thread sneering at non politicised women is a bad idea that does not promote feminism in any form. I believe non politicised women need to be engaged. As you know PricklyBall the media and society engender a false consciousness this needs to be tackled gently and not by patronising people and shouting at them.

As I have said previously on this thread you do need to argue back - I have given examples where I do this. But not all the time and not with everyone, especially not other women.

Belittling women is male behaviour. You don't belittle 'genuinely' nice women!!!! You only criticise not "very nice" behaviour! Stop picking up some of the more irritating aspects of male behaviour - belittling and sneering at women.

QuentinSummers · 11/08/2017 22:59

Gosh. The only people I have seen belittling other women on here are people coming on claiming they are feminist but FWR feminists are nasty. That's a very odd post mousse.

QuentinSummers · 11/08/2017 23:06

dervel I love your post. Interesting to read about women being penalised for being flexible, I've never thought of that before but it makes sense.
I feel like I spend a lot of energy trying to figure out the knife edge of "nice-but-not-fake" "not-too-assertive-but-not-a-pushover" "bright-but-not-too-clever" "attractive-but-not-slutty" and it makes my head spin. Don't know if it's even possible.

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