Taking credit for a lot of things that were actually accomplished by, for example, liberalism, rather than this tedious cult of perpetual victimhood. Things like the 19th amendment, in fact, which actually pre-date the emergence of feminism as a movement.

The Suffragettes worked for more than the vote.

But you know better. I know you do.

The suffragettes weren't feminists. If you want to honour the beginnings of the modern push for sex equality, then you owe your allegiance to such thinkers as John Locke, Jeremy Bentham and JS Mill - none of whom was a feminist. The entire first wave of feminism is a revisionist fiction.

This is on a par with the hideous christian impulse to annex and purloin all good behaviour into itself - "christian driver", "do the christian thing", "christian decency". So too, feminism appropriates every historical social advance in order to declare that, axiomatically, all female freedom ultimately derives from its doctrine, without which women would be slaves of the constantly threatening patriarchy.

In reality feminism is a phenomenon of the sixties - that's the nineteen sixties - with roots stretching back no more than a decade or two; which did a substantial amount of useful work in spite of its many aesthetic and ideological flaws, and which has now essentially petered out to be supplanted by, god help us, the advent of the filthy third wave and its hordes of ranting SJWs.

@gorillaman

What do you think "feminism" is?

It is the idea that women are people. Period.

Getting women the vote and making them full participating citizens is a profoundly "feminist" action.

Well, you can believe what you want to believe. Since men have been angry about women wanting to be treated equally for a very long time, I'll have to put you into the column of Super Victim yourself.

So you think I wrap myself in the cloak of "victim." I don't see that you are doing anything different.

So weird to me. This isn't rocket science. And yet here we are, decades later, still having to talk about this.

It fucking tiring.

So I'm done here. If you wish to lay down a long, complicated, intellectually dense diatribe about how I am wrong, go for it.

It has nothing to do with me and everything to do with who you are.

@bareboards2

The internet is a communication medium. If you engage with a communication medium expecting nothing more than silent approval for everything you say, well, you will be consistently disappointed.

You don't have to be angry, or feel victimised, or be a man, to want to debunk a falsehood. Falsehoods like, 'feminism is responsible for things that happened before it existed' or 'feminism is simply the belief that women are people'.

Um...sorry, but, directly from dictionary.com
feminism:
noun
1. the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.
2. (sometimes initial capital letter) an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.

I think your argument here is derived from you both having different definitions of 'feminism', so I posted the commonly agreed on definition.
I think you are thinking of 'The Feminist Movement of the 60's', (definition 2)which is not all encompassing of 'feminism' as the word is defined.

Everyone has a different definition of feminism; that is to some extent the problem. Rather, this is the final bulwark to which its advocates retreat when their main arguments have been punctured and deflated.

"But surely," says the distorter of domestic violence and rape statistics - says the agitator who runs dissenting professors off campus - says the censor of allegedly harmful pornography - says the fascist who criminalises prostitution or BDSM - says the conspiracy theorist who sees systemic sexism in places it couldn't possibly exist, like science and silicon valley (and videogaming, and science fiction) - says the proponent of patriarchy theory in societies in which men are routinely sacrificed to war, to dangerous jobs, to extreme poverty; whose genitals are mutilated; whose children, houses and paychecks can be taken away essentially at the whim of their partners; for whom there is vanishingly little support in the event of domestic abuse or homelessness; who are assumed to be rapists and wife-beaters and paedophiles; and who are told, throughout all of this, that it is their privilege - "I'm just claiming that women have rights. How can you disagree with that?"

The implication, in any event, that this is somehow a novel position, for which we have feminist advocacy to thank and to which there is actually anyone in the civilised world who objects, is a laughable and insulting one.

Still, I'm sure we all appreciate the attempt at consensus building.

Moving this video to bareboards2's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

Not true, and that's why I posted the actual definition, rather than my personal feeling on what the word means. Then we can all start from the ACTUAL definition(s) rather than just making some up and arguing about it.

Your second paragraph/sentence makes no sense at all to me, and sounds like a disjointed red herring/straw man/bad attempt at creating a false argument you can shoot down....but it's so all over the place it's unfollowable.

You continue to confuse feminism with Feminism, and also continue to paint all Feminists in the worst possible light based on a few overboard examples rather than describing the normal, average Feminist.
For instance, many Feminists see pornography and prostitution as empowering and taking control of their own sexuality, and it was actually prudish anti-feminist men who tried to censor it in the courts.

In fact, there ARE many people in the civilized world who still think women don't deserve the same rights as men in many areas, and insist they are unable to perform tasks men can perform, must be coddled and subservient, and are lesser beings based purely on gender, despite all evidence to the contrary.

It's only because of this continuing misunderstanding on your part that you claim anyone said anything like "The implication, in any event, that this is somehow a novel position, for which we have feminist advocacy to thank... "...you are again confusing feminist with Feminist, and using the wrong one. We don't have Feminist advocacy to thank, we do however have feminist advocacy to thank for the advancements in women's rights...it's what the word means.


It doesn't sound at all like you 'appreciate the attempt at consensus building', or even understood my point, since you continue to conflate feminism with Feminism. I can't be certain, but it seems you are doing that intentionally in order to argue a moot point.



EDIT:sorry, I thought I quoted you @gorillaman, so I'll cut and paste....

gorillaman said:
Everyone has a different definition of feminism; that is to some extent the problem. Rather, this is the final bulwark to which its advocates retreat when their main arguments have been punctured and deflated.

"But surely," says the distorter of domestic violence and rape statistics - says the agitator who runs dissenting professors off campus - says the censor of allegedly harmful pornography - says the fascist who criminalises prostitution or BDSM - says the conspiracy theorist who sees systemic sexism in places it couldn't possibly exist, like science and silicon valley (and videogaming, and science fiction) - says the proponent of patriarchy theory in societies in which men are routinely sacrificed to war, to dangerous jobs, to extreme poverty; whose genitals are mutilated; whose children, houses and paychecks can be taken away essentially at the whim of their partners; for whom there is vanishingly little support in the event of domestic abuse or homelessness; who are assumed to be rapists and wife-beaters and paedophiles; and who are told, throughout all of this, that it is their privilege - "I'm just claiming that women have rights. How can you disagree with that?"

The implication, in any event, that this is somehow a novel position, for which we have feminist advocacy to thank and to which there is actually anyone in the civilised world who objects, is a laughable and insulting one.

Still, I'm sure we all appreciate the attempt at consensus building.

@newtboy

I don't think I'm much in danger of contradiction in suggesting that you yourself have yet to crack a book of feminist theory or engage with a feminist activist making no more extravagant sex/gender claims that the one you quote from that unimpeachable source, dictionary.com (and when did dictionaries move from being an aid to understanding obscure words to the ultimate arbiters of political thought?).

There is no separating the movement from the ideology; this is an ancient truism. Without the movement, the idea dies. Without the idea, the movement doesn't exist. My unfollowable second paragraph comprises only examples of actual, nasty feminist doctrine which I have encountered in the real world, and could probably even document with a few google searches. I can hardly be blamed that this group is so dissolute, so indiscriminately inclusive of maniacs and criminal fanatics that no single representative feminist can be found, no central text can answer for the whole.

But for the sake of increasingly and inexplicably divisive argument, let's attempt to isolate just that 'small-f' feminism in the definition you give: "feminism: noun: the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men", which I will unconditionally repudiate and abjure, for the following reasons.

i) Let's be boring and start with the name. A name that has rightly attracted much criticism, and which Virginia Woolf - not a feminist, merely a devastatingly intelligent and talented woman - called "a vicious and corrupt word that has done much harm in its day and is now obsolete".* Anyone can see the defect here, an implicitly sexist term that apparently calls for the advancement of one sex at the expense of - whom? Well, whom do you think? A special politics for women only and exclusionary of those other incidental members of the human species, once allies and comrades and now relegated to the other side of what has become a literally unending antagonism.

You may say, "it's only a name", but how little else your dictionary leaves me to examine. No, were there no other social or intellectual harm in feminism, I would reject it on the ground of its name alone.

ii, sailor) Would that there were a known equivalent for the term 'racialism' that could relate to the cultural fiction of gender. The demand for women's rights necessarily requires that such a category 'women' exists, and is in need of special protection. Well what virtue is there in any woman that exists in no man? What mannish fault that finds no womanly echo? Then how is this distinction maintained except through supernatural thinking?

There are no women; and if there are no women, then there is nothing for feminism to accomplish. You may sign me up at any time for the doctrine of 'anti-sexism' or of 'individualism', but I will spit on anyone who advocates for 'women's rights'.

iii) This has been touched on before, and praise satan for that time saving mercy, but I reject the implicit assumption that there is a natural societal opposition to the principle of sex equality and that those who fail to declare for this, again, historically very recent dogma fall by default into that opposing force.



*The quote is worth taking in its fuller context, written in a time when the word 'feminist' was a slur on those heroes whose suffering and idealism has been so ghoulishly plundered for the tawdry use of @bareboards2 and her cohort:

"What more fitting than to destroy an old word, a vicious and corrupt word that has done much harm in its day and is now obsolete? The word ‘feminist’ is the word indicated. That word, according to the dictionary, means ‘one who champions the rights of women’. Since the only right, the right to earn a living, has been won, the word no longer has a meaning. And a word without a meaning is a dead word, a corrupt word. Let us therefore celebrate this occasion by cremating the corpse. Let us write that word in large black letters on a sheet of foolscap; then solemnly apply a match to the paper. Look, how it burns! What a light dances over the world! Now let us bray the ashes in a mortar with a goose-feather pen, and declare in unison singing together that anyone who uses that word in future is a ring-the-bell-and-run-away-man, a mischief maker, a groper among old bones, the proof of whose defilement is written in a smudge of dirty water upon his face. The smoke has died down; the word is destroyed. Observe, Sir, what has happened as the result of our celebration. The word ‘feminist’ is destroyed; the air is cleared; and in that clearer air what do we see? Men and women working together for the same cause. The cloud has lifted from the past too. What were they working for in the nineteenth century — those queer dead women in their poke bonnets and shawls? The very same cause for which we are working now. ‘Our claim was no claim of women’s rights only;’— it is Josephine Butler who speaks —‘it was larger and deeper; it was a claim for the rights of all — all men and women — to the respect in their persons of the great principles of Justice and Equality and Liberty.’"

Sweet Bastard Zombie Jesus!

You don't think well, and are 100% wrong about both my education and acquaintances, but you, on the other hand, do not seem to have either education or personal acquaintances to draw from on this subject. It seems some militant Feminist (they are not the only brand of Feminist, BTW) left a bad taste in your mouth, so now all feminism, to you, is distasteful. That's like eating a single spoilt sausage and from then on loudly telling people at dinner "meat is all tainted and it all makes you sick...you're just too dumb to know it", and continuing on that vein until they either (from exasperation) either stop eating it in your presence or find a way to ignore you, IMO, because attempting to rationally explain that some improperly handled meat is tainted, but not all, falls on deaf ears.

Dictionaries are where you look up the definitions of words, which is exactly what I did. Because you can't grasp the concept doesn't make it wrong.

Because your mind can't grasp the difference between the name of a movement based loosely on an idea and that idea does not mean there isn't one. Sorry, fail, just like your second paragraph in your last post which included many ANTI-feminist theories along with some overboard militant Feminist theories...I wonder if you can follow that thought since you don't grasp the difference in the words and claim there isn't one.

Equality is not advancement of one group at the expense of the other, it's the discontinuation of that process.

MY dictionary?!? Me thinks you protest too much. What's your issue with the English language (or language in general) that use of one of the main tools of language causes you such consternation and spawns such disrespectful and angry sounding replies? I honestly think you're just angry that I proved your argument's major flaw (that flaw being your inability to distinguish between a loose group's name and an idea...which makes one wonder, do you believe there were roaming gangs of large, dark colored cats protesting and attacking police in the US in the 60's and 70's?), but can't bring yourself to admit your argument had any flaw.

"Cultural fiction of gender"?!? Oh...I didn't realize I was having a discussion with a completely crazy person. If you actually believe gender is a "cultural fiction", there's no point discussing anything with you, because you live in a different reality from the rest of us that actually HAVE a gender, and not just culturally derived gender, and have ancestors that had gender before there was such a thing as "culture". What an insane statement, one that totally missed the point as well.

Spit on me, you'll find yourself in a bad place, and you'll find that many in favor of Women's rights are also in favor of removing ALL involuntary cultural distinctions of gender, a thing that has NOT been done by far, and you wish to stop any advancement towards equality of genders while one side is SO far ahead based solely on their GENDER. (damn, that word again describing a thing that doesn't exist...you must hate that, huh?)

Yes, if you fail to even conceive that, unfairly, there is a gender split in society that 99% of the time favors one gender to the detriment of the other, you by default fall into that opposing force, opposing fairness and equality, and individualism. No question. It's sad to me that you can't see that.

I'll ignore your last 2 paragraphs, I'm not speaking for @bareboards2, she's perfectly capable of speaking for herself, but has intelligently decided that further discussion with you on this subject is pointless...and I see she's likely right, you just want to argue about it, as made clear by your never ending arguments spawning from a simple clarification of what 2 words (spelled the same, but one being a proper name, the other an idea) actually mean...according to THE dictionary, and your insistence that the dictionary is wrong because it doesn't support your position that feminism and Feminism are the same thing. BWAAAHAAHAAHAAHAA!! That's too funny. Thanks for the laugh.

Enjoy exploring that hypothesis further, but without my further input. My points are made, some repeatedly.

Too lazy to read even the first sentence of a relatively short post sufficiently closely to understand what it actually said. Too cowardly to engage with even slightly foreign ideas.

Too myopic to admit you're 100% wrong.
Too insulting to be worth my time.
"...relatively short post"! That says it all....and I did take the time to read your ridiculous tome, obviously, since I addressed it from top to (near) bottom....which was far more than it deserved....as to your first sentence.

I read. You said you were not in danger of contradiction in suggesting I had not cracked a book about feminist theory...you're quite wrong.
You said you were not in danger of contradiction in suggesting I had not engaged with a feminist activist making no more extravagant sex/gender claims that the one you quote ( or to translate that chogie-speak, you said I had never met a reasonable Feminist that actually stuck to feminism)....again you are wrong....I was raised by one.
You suggested the dictionary definition of words you continue to misuse was provided to address the disparate levels of political thought through out humanity and civilization? You were again wrong. It was provided to show that the 'group' (I use the word loosely) using the name "Feminist" is not the same thing as the idea of 'feminism'. Again, you were completely wrong, as you were in your complete last insulting post.

Now, because you stoop to infantile insults, I'm done with YOU, not just the subject.
Thank you, (please don't) come again.

gorillaman said:
I don't think I'm much in danger of contradiction in suggesting that you yourself have yet to crack a book of feminist theory or engage with a feminist activist making no more extravagant sex/gender claims that the one you quote from that unimpeachable source, dictionary.com (and when did dictionaries move from being an aid to understanding obscure words to the ultimate arbiters of political thought?).

Imagine wasting my time quoting Virginia Woolf at someone who is, to all appearances, functionally illiterate.

It's a shame, because it's an interesting topic. But here I stand with two successive interlocutors fleeing the field in a hysterical panic merely at having been contradicted.

Dear me, if they're going to slay the beast of male tyranny together then they'll have to toughen up a bit first.

Thank you, come again.