The discussion on feminism was interesting and I did gain a new perspective.
But through the comments I also thought I saw some underlying accusations that were concerning - but I will have to confirm them through this post.
To clarify, honestly I am not passionate either way. I do not think feminism is retarded, nor can I call myself a diehard supporter. I am on the side of accepting that there are problems with society with regards to sexism. As one from "the outside" I have a good idea of why men aren't responding the way you'd want them to. But I am one (almost) man and the world is many.
And it is difficult to convince someone more passionate than I am of my views.
And hence my standing on feminism is "yeahp society is fucked but I cbf cos I can't do it myself. And I can't get more people because they aren't gonna listen to me."
So all seriousness I do agree that society is sexist, and there is a great problem with it. However I also do have a problem with how people are seeking to change it.
This is mainly to Amanda and Claudia, and to some extent Emily.
Oh yes I also need to mention I am very heartened to see that
a) People are not afraid of placing a name behind their words
b) People care about this enough to warrant part a)
I am going to be asking some neutral (as in minimal presumptions made) questions, and then asking another question based on your answer
The big question is:
Do you view feminism as a fight? (I would prefer a simple yes or no answer but I have a feeling I will be getting a lot of elaboration :L)
Trigger warning: Many of these links are about rape
Some links to responses to my initial post, "carded":
Amanda's and Kerrie's.
Kerrie linked this, which is an interesting "look from the bottom not the top" view. It is, however, written by a man. Though I still think it's worth a read, because I think it's pretty tactful.
Claudia linked, in one of her comments to my post, this post about rape culture which I found exceptionally eye-opening.
Interesting link if you have any views at all about the situation with women in higher corporate positions. Linked to me by Claudia. It's a very lengthy article and in honesty I'm only through 3/4 of it. But it provides a woman's view of the corporate world, and discusses issues such as "old boys groups", differences in corporate drive, the presence of women in exec boards, etc etc. What I read was an extremely interesting read (Y)
3 comments:
I think that viewing feminism as a fight antagonises the people who don't agree far too much. When you antagonise people, you tend to make them defensive and this causes the person to position themselves against feminism. Once a person has firmly placed themselves against feminism, it becomes difficult for them to switch to the other side.
But if feminism is not a fight, what is it's direction? How would you define the cause?
- i am a humanist. i believe that every human deserves the same rights etc. etc. and something that benefits all humans is a very good thing. (this is one of my beliefs that i haven't thought too much about so feel free to attack it :L)
- one can treat ideas as 'viruses of the mind,' and since humans are emotional beings with the power to rationalise, i don't believe that we can treat humans in general as rational and peaceful beings (further reading: cass sunstein - on rumors)
- when there is discussion of issues where people get hurt, whether its physical or psychological damage, the discussion tends to get very passionate and charged. feminism is one of these. this passion causes our emotional selves to rationalise our own beliefs instead of patiently thinking over how logical an idea is - i.e. i don't blame these people for being passionate. however when people are passionate, they tend to forget that attacking another person's beliefs directly and angrily antagonises them and [insert comment before here].
- feminism is a fight in that we are trying to eradicate one (dominant) virus of the mind and replace it with another that is more beneficial to society and humans on the whole. or perhaps, we're trying to give people a better understanding of how culture and society works so that they can see how their own perspective is affected by their own culture and society, and seek to reduce the harmful effects of that.
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