Feminism Catch-All (with FAQ)

SixteenBlue wrote:

So the problem is E3's security?

This feels like an unfair quip. KG had stated in the previous post that he was not referencing the entire issue here, just the reaction by E3's security group, in contrast to other security groups keeping order at comparable events.

So I suppose the answer is, yes, [one of] the [many] problem[s] is E3's security.

Seth wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

So the problem is E3's security?

This feels like an unfair quip. KG had stated in the previous post that he was not referencing the entire issue here, just the reaction by E3's security group, in contrast to other security groups keeping order at comparable events.

So I suppose the answer is, yes, [one of] the [many] problem[s] is E3's security.

I agree. From what I've read about the phenomenon of rape, the belief by the attacker that he will be able to get away with the crime is a significant reason why he commits the crime in the first place. So it's not so crazy to talk about the link between (effective) security and decreasing the incidence of rape.

Sure, that doesn't change the rapist's internal makeup or 'reform' him in any way, but I don't think it's illegitimate to talk about anything that can reduce the incidence of rape. Especially if it's part of a change in the culture to where the general feeling is that society *won't* let you get away with it as easily as used to be the case.

Hyp, I just read that Disney rape story, and I'm simply floored. The "oh, he's French so it's cultural differences" excuses, the counselor and the employee relations reactions... Oh - my - gosh, what the hell? Rape is NEVER okay, not in France, not in the US, not in Botswana. I can't believe that girl was just blown off like that, and the guy walked away. I'm just so angry right now, I wish there was something to be done. I'm just so sick and tired of all this.

Some context. I was brought to be a good little girl, to dress modestly, to avoid parties, and if I ever went to one, to never, ever EVER let anyone serve me a drink because I might get roofied and raped. Girls had to avoid putting themselves in these situations. Because, well, if we wore short skirts and prettied ourselves up too much, of course we were gonna get raped.

Enough. Seriously, enough. When are we going to accept that the rapist is the bad guy here, not the victim? "No" means "no", end of story.

What happened when I started a feminist society at school (Guardian)

The situation recently reached a crescendo when our feminist society decided to take part in a national project called Who Needs Feminism. We took photos of girls standing with a whiteboard on which they completed the sentence "I need feminism because...", often delving into painful personal experiences to articulate why feminism was important to them.

When we posted these pictures online we were subject to a torrent of degrading and explicitly sexual comments.

We were told that our "militant vaginas" were "as dry as the Sahara desert", girls who complained of sexual objectification in their photos were given ratings out of 10, details of the sex lives of some of the girls were posted beside their photos, and others were sent threatening messages warning them that things would soon "get personal".

We, a group of 16-, 17- and 18-year-old girls, have made ourselves vulnerable by talking about our experiences of sexual and gender oppression only to elicit the wrath of our male peer group. Instead of our school taking action against such intimidating behaviour, it insisted that we remove the pictures. Without the support from our school, girls who had participated in the campaign were isolated, facing a great deal of verbal abuse with the full knowledge that there would be no repercussions for the perpetrators.

Note: Her school, which didn't support them? It's an all girls high school.

That's just so depressing.... And wrong, so very, very wrong... Once again, the victim takes the blame.

So now I'm asking myself the question, "how do I teach my son to respect people, not be an entitled ass, while at the same time standing up as his own person?" How do I mold him to not be the young men described in that Guardian article?

It... really doesn't seem that hard to me. Teach him to respect people and not be an entitled ass, while at the same time standing up as his own person. Expecting people to respect you and respecting other people are not that hard to reconcile.

As for practicalities... well, [em]talk[/em] about these sorts of things. When it's in the media, talk about it at the dinner table or whatever. Like "I can't believe people are still blaming victims like this. It's ridiculous." It doesn't have to be a constant refrain, just one of those things that comes up every once in a while. Like "Jeez, I wish we had a real space program".

I swear, I think it's a major problem that we shy away from talking about "controversial" things. Not talking about something means that people who respect you who are forming opinions about things (like we always are) don't get to know what you think about it. Don't get the idea that you think it's wrong.

And in the worst case scenario, it's the same thing as the "people are silent instead of stepping in when some BS thing happens": by not saying anything, the silence gives the impression that you don't care about the thing or object to it. So if something is all over the news, and you avoid talking about it, the message is "that's not to be talked about". If you do talk about it, well, your kid will know what you think about it, and will think about it themselves.

(The opinions of a father of a single daughter, about eight years old. I welcome the opinions of those more experienced.)

I think teaching someone not to be entitled is actually somewhat hard, because they will primarily learn entitled behavior by modeling it from you, the parent. And the curse of entitlement is that entitled behaviors tend to be invisible to the entitled. So it starts by working hard to become aware of your own privilege and entitlement, and modeling behaviors you actively feel good about instead of unconsciously entitled ones. (I also think that there is a lot of value in making that process of self-awareness visible to your child. It will help them learn how to react when they've made a mistake or realize they are flawed in some way, and being human, they'll be doing that a lot. )

Hypatian wrote:

As for practicalities... well, [em]talk[/em] about these sorts of things. When it's in the media, talk about it at the dinner table or whatever. Like "I can't believe people are still blaming victims like this. It's ridiculous." It doesn't have to be a constant refrain, just one of those things that comes up every once in a while. Like "Jeez, I wish we had a real space program".

This is good advice, but I think it's half of the equation, specifically the second half. It shows what we want to avoid, but the story of how someone can think that is okay starts with the messages our culture sends us about acceptable behavior, blame, social roles, and so on. Again, a lot starts with self-awareness. Once you train yourself to notice the assumptions our culture makes about things, you can point them out to your child, along with showing them the techniques people use (knowingly or not) to transmit those ideas.

To this end, I think it's a good idea to limit not only the amount of media children consume, but particularly children's media. Advertising is finely tuned to groups, and I don't feel confident that I know child psychology better than the guy paid to know child psychology by, say, Mattel. Advertising aimed at adults is easier for me to deconstruct and talk about with my child, and I fancy that the remove from their frame of reference makes it easier for them to be analytical about it.

(There's all sorts of other issues there, of course, about whether something is appropriate for kids. I can say with confidence, though, that when my then-two-year-old girl was at her grandparents, the Golf channel was something she, I and her granddad could all agree on. There's still a fair amount of stuff that's geared for adults that isn't automatically inappropriate for kids, thank goodness. And as my daughter gets older and more savvy, I'm lengthening the leash. The point isn't to hide, it's to prepare.)

I swear, I think it's a major problem that we shy away from talking about "controversial" things. Not talking about something means that people who respect you who are forming opinions about things (like we always are) don't get to know what you think about it. Don't get the idea that you think it's wrong.

And in the worst case scenario, it's the same thing as the "people are silent instead of stepping in when some BS thing happens": by not saying anything, the silence gives the impression that you don't care about the thing or object to it. So if something is all over the news, and you avoid talking about it, the message is "that's not to be talked about". If you do talk about it, well, your kid will know what you think about it, and will think about it themselves.

I also think it's important to show your kids how to respond to controversy. First, not all controversy is created equal; a lot of people have been conditioned to think something is important because the media treat it as important, when the two things are only tenuously related these days. Second, coverage of controversy has the same built-in assumptions as the rest of media and society. Showing your kids how to evaluate media events critically (and recognize things that [em]should[/em] be media events) is more important than ever.

Once you feel like you have a handle on what something is, though, the next step is discussing why it happened, how it relates to the world at large, and how we can change things to make things turn out better next time. (Or make positive things happen more often!) Media tends to teach a different approach to controversy, usually centered around picking a side and rooting for it like a sports team. It can be useful to deconstruct this, too (especially to distinguish between original ideas and talking points that are being repeated second-hand), but it's more important IMO to provide an affirmative model of how to analyze controversy constructively.

Well, that's a lot of words, I'll stop now. I've spoken quite generally, but I think about these things when I think about how to teach my daughter feminism and how the world should work. Hopefully it's been useful.

Read too many things today that I can't un-see. Why do so many people feel the need to be so vile to women. WTF.

realityhack wrote:

Why do so many people feel the need to be so vile to women. WTF.

Because being a self-congratulatory asshole feels good?

??

realityhack wrote:

Read too many things today that I can't un-see. Why do so many people feel the need to be so vile to women. WTF.

I think people feel the pull of their culture to act out certain roles, roles they see themselves and their victims assigned to in a power structure. I think they dehumanize both their victims and themselves to do so.

Jonman wrote:
realityhack wrote:

Why do so many people feel the need to be so vile to women. WTF.

Because being a self-congratulatory asshole feels good?

Edit: deleted tangent.

What I actually wanted to say: Wander Dead, that was a great post.

Hope this belongs here. Kick-starter showing the right way to apologize.

http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/we-w...

I've been thinking about posting this for a while now - a couple months. Now feels like a right time. I'm not painting Mitchell as a bigot or anything. I do NOT want to do that. I think he's normal and wants to be open and welcoming to everyone. I think all the sentiments he uses in this segment is fairly mainstream; which is exactly why the part where he says "like a girl" with obvious contempt is a problem, IMO.

Am I reading that wrong?

LarryC wrote:

Am I reading that wrong?

I think so. That's just dry humour, which Brits are famous for perfecting. See also, everyone taking Yahtzee entirely too seriously.

Even when it's a joke, I think saying "like a girl" with contempt is a very dangerous sexist cultural element. Ain't nothing wrong with a man wishing to be effeminate. It's not that I take Mitchell or Yahtzee "too seriously." I'm not taking them at all. I'm examining this cultural element on display and wondering whether it's too dangerously sexist to allow in any form whatsoever.

LarryC wrote:

Even when it's a joke, I think saying "like a girl" with contempt is a very dangerous sexist cultural element. Ain't nothing wrong with a man wishing to be effeminate. It's not that I take Mitchell or Yahtzee "too seriously." I'm not taking them at all. I'm examining this cultural element on display and wondering whether it's too dangerously sexist to allow in any form whatsoever.

That's my point, it's not contempt. It's satire.

It doesn't matter what it is, is my point. It's that it's there at all.

LarryC wrote:

It doesn't matter what it is, is my point. It's that it's there at all.

It definitely matters, because satire highlights a point through irony and exaggerating a point to absurdity. There is sarcasm dripping from every syllable of that sentence.

Let's put that a different way. I'm making the point. You can't engage that if you're trying to make a different point or argue a different point. I mean, you can make another point, but that's tangential to what I'm pointing out, so it's not like you have to reply to me or anything.

My point is, is it legitimate and useful for "like a girl" as a idea to exist at all (in whatever form) more than it is harmful and should just be aggressively expunged with extreme prejudice? I think you're saying that it is.

Redwing wrote:
LarryC wrote:

It doesn't matter what it is, is my point. It's that it's there at all.

It definitely matters, because satire highlights a point through irony and exaggerating a point to absurdity. There is sarcasm dripping from every syllable of that sentence.

Some people have serious issues identifying satire. Poe's Law in full effect.

LarryC wrote:

Let's put that a different way. I'm making the point. You can't engage that if you're trying to make a different point or argue a different point. I mean, you can make another point, but that's tangential to what I'm pointing out, so it's not like you have to reply to me or anything.

I have no idea what that means.

Jayhawker wrote:
Redwing wrote:
LarryC wrote:

It doesn't matter what it is, is my point. It's that it's there at all.

It definitely matters, because satire highlights a point through irony and exaggerating a point to absurdity. There is sarcasm dripping from every syllable of that sentence.

Some people have serious issues identifying satire. Poe's Law in full effect.

Fair point, although I think the satire is pretty clear in this particular case, especially when you've seen his other videos for comparison.

Redwing:

It means that you're engaging a point I was not making.

LarryC wrote:

Redwing:

It means that you're engaging a point I was not making.

Redwing wrote:
LarryC wrote:

Am I reading that wrong?

I think so.

That was point I was engaging. I don't think you understood the intent of the video, and intent counts for a lot when it comes to judging the worth of comedy.

Oh right. But see response thereafter. Whatever the joke is or how it is meant, is actually rather beside the point, do you see?

LarryC wrote:

Oh right. But see response thereafter. Whatever the joke is or how it is meant, is actually rather beside the point, do you see?

No, it's not beside the point. Context matters.

It's beside the main point I was trying to make, not the one you were responding to. Ah, screw it. NVM. My English is godawful.

LarryC wrote:

It's beside the main point I was trying to make, not the one you were responding to. Ah, screw it. NVM. My English is godawful.

We understand the point you are making. The reason you are struggling is that we think you are wrong. The logical endgame with the point you are making is that satire is politically incorrect. Satire can be done poorly, but it is a legitimate form f rhetoric that uses offensive views or statements of those you are mocking in order to create humor that resonates with others.

It really is hard for some people to detect, they struggle with that form of humor. In this case, he is mocking people that hold views like "Don't be girl," by pointing out that grooming products remove facial hair that makes them more like a girl.

And yes, your constant wading into topics that you continually fail to recognize the nuance of the arguments means you are a likely candidate to misunderstand satire.

Larry, could you chill out on posting for a bit? You're stomping all over multiple threads here.