Trying to understand 3rd/4th wave Feminism [Edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

[partisanpattiserie]

So have been on Twitter and watching all the feeds from PrideEdinburgh. Also noting that Nicola Sturgeon popped into CategoryisBooks the TransFeminist bookshop in Glasgow and listened to their dismay at the postponement of the GRA reforms. Am feeling totally hopeless to be honest. Glad Nicola is doing her research obviously but that and Patrick Harvie painting the further consultation as some sort of murderous attack on transgender rights makes me fearful. But I’m trying to understand... watched this video m.youtube.com/watch?v=nFhFt7ecVjg and it was an education to be fair. In a nutshell, 2nd Wave Feminists are painted as old women, obsessed with our bodies and in positions of ‘power’. Effectively we are the ‘matriarchy’ (my words) who just can’t accept that women with penises are just like us. For. Fuck’s. Sake. This is what we’re up against. How did we get here??? Apologies for ‘triggering’ anyone with the video. It’s very chirpy, I’ll give it that (while it scorches the very earth that women have fought to gain in the past 100 years)

I’m in my early 30s, and my complete confusion over the transgender thing, and the fact it seems to fly in the face of science, biology, and fairness, is what really led me to feminism. So I’ve absolutely no idea where I fit into her idea. And I know many other women like me.

The mistake you are making is thinking that feminism should be beneficial to females. Obviously with that misconception then you will get confused. Focus on the feelings of men and it will all make sense.

I really want to hear responses to that video - I am honestly not wanting to ridicule it but just get to the nub of how women can feel so differently about the very basics of what it is to be female. HOW can you think someone with a penis is female? I honestly want to know. How can you think your sex is ‘a feeling’? Can we get to a place where we accept that some people have a sense of mismatch between the sex they were born and the way they want to present to the world? Personally i would like to present as a prettier person... but I’m not - I’m me and my personality has to shine through. And work. Is that wrong?

Ha! I was so sure that was a 3-waver I know personally - same hair, same glasses, the way she's posed in her profile pic is the same way this one always poses for hers, this "very chirpy,... (while it scorches the very earth that women have fought to gain in the past 100 years)" is about the best description I can think of for the woman I know - and it's not her at all. Uncanny.

She’s an idiot but hopefully she’ll grow the fuck up.

The under-25s are especially good at ignoring cognitive dissonance due to clashing beliefs, because their brains aren't yet fully developed. One of the thrilling things about being a "revolutionary" and activist young person is the wonderful sense of group membership, solidarity and 'specialness', including moral superiority, that it brings. It's literally intoxicating, and a huge incentive to go along with the crowd and ignore any uncomfortable twinges of cognitive dissonance.

There's another factor as well. Personally, I suspect the only reason second wave feminism got off the ground at universities in the late 60s and the 70s is because the admissions sex ratio at the time meant there were significantly more young men than young women attending. It meant that young radical men had to listen to women if they wanted to get a girlfriend.

The switch in that sex ratio to young women significantly outnumbering young men was, IMO, partly what drove the shift to hook-up culture at universities, along with 'positivity' toward exploitative pornography etc etc that characterise '3rd wave' feminism.

Basically, radical young women still wanted to be seen as 'feminist' because the label is an important and accepted part of progressivism, but it had to be a kind of feminism that didn't make young men feel uncomfortable and challenged - because those young men now had the option of finding a more compliant girlfriend, or just sticking with 'hook-ups'. That's my take on the origins and driving force behind 'third wave' feminism, anyway.

I would give my response to the video, but that would mean I would have to watch it again and it was painful enough the first time. Plus it's Sunday morning and I've actually got a day off. I might have a go later, as I do recall it was fairly easy to pick holes in if you could wade through the breezy dismissal of the realities of the oppression of women.

Ok so I watched it. I had 10mins to spare. It's all so very typical of her type. Very cult compliant. (Quotes are slightly paraphrased)

"I'm going to use the term TERF because to me it's not a slur it's s just a very basic descriptor for a group of people"

But male or female person is not permitted to describe a group of people. Nooo. Literal Violence.

"Terf and lesbian are interchangeable" (!) Nice bit of lebophobia there.

"I've been a lesbian for years now but I can't call myself a lesbian because of the strong connotations with 'Terf' it just feels (does shaky bit) too weird"
I wonder if really you can't call yourself a lesbian because you know it means you could be a man with AGP and that makes you feel weird? Or maybe you're actually attracted to people with penises? What does lesbian mean anymore?. She doesn't say what she does call herself mind you. Only that she can't call herself a lesbian. Well, the word doesn't have much meaning now does it and lesbians are a bit bothered about that actually.

Denies AGP entirely, "people who think there are AGPs aka Terfs should not be given the time of day"
She needs more life experience! Someone should direct her to the transwidows thread on here.

"Transpeople are attacked and murdered every day that's why Terfs are so dangerous"
Just... Sure transpeople get harmed sometimes, but who is attacking them I mean, actual attacking, not just recognising biology and using the wrong pronoun on Twitter etc, but doing actual harm, do you think? Which group of people is doing the attacking, who commit 80%+ of all violent crime? Do we have a word we can use ?

"Some terfs have completely changed their mind about being trans exclusionary"
It usually goes the other way round though, people hating "terfs" who then become gender critical themselves.

Well.
Nice blue/green hair though. And obviously a woman.

At least she used words like 'rhetoric' and 'discourse' and stated that not all all radical feminists are trans exclusionary, would have been useful if she had some stats/data sets to educate her viewers with. She doesn't really go into any detail about 1st and 2nd wave and that's fine but it's came across as dismissive to me.

It's just her opinion and she's elevating herself in her videos to appear to be some kind of expert on the issues she discussing, same old same old.

At least when I watch the YouTube videos of young people who have detransitioned or have gone through surgery they have gone and can speak on the subject from their own experience.

I wonder whether there are parallels with young people who have working class origins, but were brought up by parents who had worked their asses off to buy a house and send them to a good school. Whilst the young people will give a nod to their family background, many will be clueless as what it really meant to climb out. Similarly with this young woman: a nod to previous waves of feminism but no understanding of how bad it can actually be for women, and no understanding of how she is standing on the shoulders of all the feminists that came before her. Even more simplistically, she probably does not understand that the VERY REASON she can make such a video is because of the previous/ongoing fight.

It is good that they are confident about their place in the world in a way that I certainly wasn't at their age because of feminism, but it is underpinned by no knowledge of history. And so, it won't be until she gets older that the penny will drop - women's rights are a temporary and can be taken away at any time, as we can see happening now. We still aren't recognised as equal human beings. And it makes me furious.

Sadly, we all know that she will get it eventually, probably via an incident of male sexual violence, if she becomes a parent, gets paid less than a man etc etc etc. All those ways that women are routinely discriminated against that she yet to experience.

I would give my response to the video, but that would mean I would have to watch it again and it was painful enough the first time.

Pretty much where I'm at.

I honestly think the older you are and the less bourgeois you are, the less dick pandering you have time for. And that's what it boils down to.

That's so sad. She makes so many absolute statements and obviously believes them as she says them! I wonder how she will feel in 5 years?

NOTHING she ascribes to TERFs describes me, my thoughts, feelings etc. NOTHING! I just don't believe that humans can change sex.

All the rest of it is down to personal choice and good luck to you!

So where does her certainty come from? How does a young, obviously eduated, intelligent young woman get all that weird, double think from? Who is fucking up our young women? Why is pretty obvious, so obvious you have to really wonder what we, previous generations, did or didn't do right, how we came to be so contrary to each other that we can't we save them?

I had another go. I don't know about 'literal violence', but I do feel I suffered particularly from the persistent "air quotes".

No real engagement with the ideas she claims to be introducing, and I suspect that is because she hasn't really investigated beyond a few screenshots on Twitter.

As to why these young women are susceptible to this sort of close mindedness, well, it's been my contention for some time that humans, for whatever evolutionary reason, are often innately religious.
I think there was a fond expectation from some in the West, as organized religion loosened it's grip, that a new age of rationality would dawn. I think, however, that what has instead happened is that religious impulse, and subsequent susceptibility to cult thinking, has crept in un-noticed, leading to all sorts of manifestations that are quite antithetical to rational, scientific investigation.

This young woman will have benefitted from education, relative security and enough affluence to access social media and blue hair dye. She won't even notice her cult thinking. She has enough education to know about the particular waves of Feminism, but she hasn't made any attempt to understand or grapple with those ideas (as evidenced by her pointless use of Wiki in the video).
It's reminiscent of theological presuppositionism, which can often make a great show of knowing the language of an opposing idea but not to actually discover it's merits, as the decision to retain every belief already held without deviation has been firmly made.

“Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don't like, including all the women you don't want to be around, including all the women who used to be your best friends whom you don't want anything to do with anymore. It doesn't matter who the individual women are. They all have the same vulnerability to rape, to battery, as children to incest.
Poorer women have more vulnerability to prostitution, which is basically a form of sexual exploitation that is intolerable in an egalitarian society, which is the society we are fighting for.”

Andrea Dworkin

Humans are a sexually dimorphic species. women are treated as lesser than men - even non human - on the grounds of sex. Not how they identify.

If your activism removes womens sex based rights, it's male rights activism.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_rights_movement

It's reminiscent of theological presuppositionism, which can often make a great show of knowing the language of an opposing idea but not to actually discover it's merits, as the decision to retain every belief already held without deviation has been firmly made. Oh! That rang a very loud bell!

Rowan makes videos on YouTube about LGBTQ+ issues, feminist advocacy, and pop culture - this has spilled out into “IRL” talks, panels, and workshops across Europe and America. Her works has been covered in publications including Forbes, The Guardian, Teen Vogue, Elle UK, and BBC.
This all seems a bit desperate to me. How do young people make their way in the world without abject conformity. She obviously has no depth of knowledge or understanding but still has this self righteous self belief. It would be sad if it wasn't so dangerous. By the way I've never heard any GC feminist call transwomen scum. Perhaps she's confusing us with her allies using the term truscum.

There are no radical feminists who think that MTF trans are women. We base our politics in material reality.

Blue haired, speaks too fast, rejects the label "lesbian" as terfy, doesn't know her history. Waste of time.

A lot of people are shallow thinkers. Our education system and media make it worse. It crossed boundaries of philosophy, religion and belief pretty much proportionally. People who go to university who are like this pick up the basic language of thought but they still don't engage Unfortunately they are generally unaware they haven't engaged.