Up Front: Say When
539 Responses
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recordari, in reply to
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See, that’s why we have Craig.
Oh I don’t know. There’s a few of you with a pretty good left hook. Not in this discussion though, which has been a good'un.
I’ve learned a little in this discussion. Thanks.
+1
Lots of plus ones going on at the moment. This seems ‘healthy’. -
Craig Ranapia, in reply to
See, that’s why we have Craig.
Snarf. Can I cut you with this broken beer bottle I prepared earlier? Just a little bit. You'll faint, but I promise you'll wake up again. Probably. :)
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Can we agree that speaking for people is problematic?
Yes, because it is. But to get all Phil Dick-ian for a moment, simple empathy may well be all that separates us from being meat-bots. I don't have to be a woman to realise that sexism and misogyny sucks; and one of the many reasons I love and respect people like Deborah, Megan and Emma is they constantly challenge me to be better; more mindful of what I say and do; to just be human. A valuable subset of that is remembering that the urge to tidy away human beings into a neat stack of collective nouns is moally and intellectual laziness.
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nzlemming, in reply to
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I was wondering where the hell you were :-D
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It seems like talking about the definitions IS one of the real problems, so ironically it is worth talking about. But yes, this is not a new debate.
I (and I'm in Gio's camp, I think feminism has some identity in it) think it's worth exploring why the debate about who is included as a 'feminist' comes about. To me it's a way of distancing 'ourselves' from our gendered past/current/future where patriarchy wasn't the best. "I'm not like that, I'm a feminist." No feminist is a perfect feminist, but the word doesn't have meaning to me if it includes everyone. There's enough debate about "I'm a woman but I'm not a feminist" without adding in the other half.
I also feel it's a distraction from the actual issues, what's the problem with (for example) men not being able to be feminists? Does the work change in any substantial way? Are we sulking because we're not getting the recognition we feel we deserve from women for no longer grinding them down as a gender?
One is a cheap and tacky stunt that will turn some men on whether the participant intends to or not, the other is an act of freedom and self-expression that is more likely to intimidate men than turn them on.
On top of Megan's response, feminist women aren't entitled to find turning men on as an act of freedom and self-expression? I'd imagine quite a few women feel empowered by their sexual influence over men, and I'm sure we can find a way for that to be feminist.
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Email Web
Can we agree that speaking for people is problematic?
Yes, and as a parent of one female girl, I do my damnedest to make sure she gets the right to speak for herself.
I sometimes wonder if there is confusion in these internet conversations about being female, and feminism. One being biological, the other being political.
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I also feel it's a distraction from the actual issues, what's the problem with (for example) men not being able to be feminists?
It's a distraction, sure. Give me a word for "males who believe in some selection of feminist principles", and I'll happily use it. It does seem a rather strange thing to do, though, if that selection is identical to a particular feminist sect - introducing gendered words into the language has always seemed odd to me. But if it means we don't have to have this argument every time we want to talk about the actual issues of feminism, it could serve the purpose nicely.
It would be interesting to see over time whether that makes transmission of feminist ideas easier or harder.
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Megan Wegan, in reply to
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Give me a word for “males who believe in some selection of feminist principles”, and I’ll happily use it.
Yeah, at the risk of repeating myself, I have a word. Feminist.
And at the risk of repeating myself again (because I have linked to it all over the internet), I recommend this.
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You don't have to write a twenty-page paper on Valerie Solanas's use of satire in The S.C.U.M. Manifesto
Thank whomever for that!
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BenWilson, in reply to
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No feminist is a perfect feminist, but the word doesn't have meaning to me if it includes everyone.
It's pretty clear even in the broadest sense that it doesn't include everyone. Chauvinists will often happily disavow the word. Men from societies with awful treatment of women actively suppress the idea.
Edit: I'll also note that the men of my acquaintance most happy to lose the label, who have often done so because they have been told they can't take the label, are the most chauvinistic of the lot. "It's not my battle, good luck to them". They're perfectly happy to acknowledge gender difference all the time, noting female superiority in the kitchen and childcare.
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Jacqui Dunn, in reply to
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I have a word. Feminist.
Or :Fe man ist. Like? :)
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Sacha, in reply to
+1
Lots of plus ones going on at the moment.Think of it as a manual "Like" button, I guess
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Give me a word for “males who believe in some selection of feminist principles”, and I’ll happily use it.
If only ‘Not-being-a-douchebag-to-and-about-the-vagina-bearing-half-of-the-human-race-ism’ would trip of the tongue a little easier, a lot of time and energy would be spared from endless semantic games of Who's A Real Feminist Bingo.
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recordari, in reply to
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Think of it as a manual “Like” button, I guess
Yezbut, it also seems more than that sometimes. On my part it signals ‘shit you just expressed my point of view way better than I could’. On these occasions I’ve decided not to try and be cleverer or somehow more erudite, as that leads to ‘stuff’n’nonsense’.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
Give me a word for “males who believe in some selection of feminist principles”
Do you really need to be labelled Ben? What’s wrong with having ideas and opinions and experiences and thoughts without having a label?
Hi I’m Bart, if you want to know and understand what I think and why, I’m sorry but there is no easy peasy label to use that will allow you to skip the hard work of actually trying to understand me. Or not because frankly most folks can’t be arsed. Which is fine really.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
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Do you really need to be labelled Ben? What’s wrong with having ideas and opinions and experiences and thoughts without having a label?
Sometimes it's about making a stand. I consider myself pro-feminist and a socialist. I could fudge or overcomplicate either position so that people won't pigeonhole me or caricature me, but those are good descriptors of my politics and it would be a little precious of me not to use them. Besides, "Hi I'm Bart" might work at a dinner party, but in order to organise politically you simply need other people, and to identify with a variety of groups and currents of thought. Labels can be affirming and also say true things about who you are.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
Labels can be affirming and also say true things about who you are.
Agreed. And to be fair I use labels any time I try and describe myself.
But it seems to me from the discussions I have seen that feminist is a label that no longer functions.
As soon as the word is used the discussion turns from the actual subject at hand to discussion of the label. If one were cynical you could simply use the word to deflect the discussion.
Emma's discussion of her freedom to wear what she wants without be abused no longer exists. That strongly suggests the label is not helpful.
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Quoth Germaine Greeer:
Afterwards I spoke to Greer to get her thoughts on it all. "Feminism?" she queried. "Oh it's such an old-fashioned word anyway."
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recordari, in reply to
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Labels can be affirming and also say true things about who you are.
Perhaps when you apply them to yourself. I can handle ‘I’m a feminist’ much more readily than ‘you’re a feminist’.
When others arbitrarily apply them on your behalf, often when they don’t really know ‘you’, in Bart’s sense, they can also be limiting and set you off on a course where expectations are lowered, opportunities diminished, playing fields shrunk and a number of other not so healthy things can happen. The baggage that most significant labels hold, when applied by others, seems so heavy that it’s hard to cut through the ‘what you think I mean by this’ to ‘what I actually mean ’. If you know what I mean.
ETA: Bart replied. Think I'm still current, but things move quickly round here.
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Megan Clayton, in reply to
it seems to me from the discussions I have seen that feminist is a label that no longer functions.
I tend to think that it's because feminist, as a label, "can be affirming and also say true things about who you are" that it is a term whose definition people are willing to contest.
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steven crawford, in reply to
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What’s wrong with having ideas and opinions and experiences and thoughts without having a label?
Words aid in our ability to express ideas and opinion. Not being able to label abstract concepts restricts there development. I think that part of the angst in about the feminist label, is academic. And I mean old academic culture, like who has the fattest head.
Edit: That was written before Gio my my point, but with more sophistication and humility.
PS: Gio is one of my favorite arguers on this subject. He doesn't get all kids gloves when I mention sexual abuse.
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Do you really need to be labelled Ben?
No, but it does save time. Beating around the bush can also be a very annoying habit, can be used to wreck debate too.
What’s wrong with having ideas and opinions and experiences and thoughts without having a label?
Labels are not universally bad. Language would be nearly impossible without them. Of course they're always generalizations, but they might point to the locus of your viewpoint, without accurately ring-fencing it.
However, you might have missed that I was actually not really arguing to be given a label. The point of that was a thought experiment designed to show the poor direction that introducing gender into labels for viewpoints can go. You can go the reverse direction, like you're arguing, and try to drop the labels altogether. But I think this is impractical. Say a label stands in place of ten words, you could use those? But within those ten words will be yet more labels, which might take their ten word toll each. This recurses very deep, the number of ideas contained in a big label might be enormous, and not much idea transmission is really going to be going on if they have to be used every single time. That exercise might be inevitable in a lot of cases, where a mismatch in label usage seems to be apparent, but it's not guaranteed. A lot of the time, the label does point to a sufficiently similar idea-space/point (I'm undecided whether ideas are points or locuses in idea space, indeed unsure whether such a space really exists at all, but it's a useful theory), for the purposes of the point being made.
I don't think the entire feminist lexicon has degraded to the point where just about every single word popularly used in it has no useful meaning. There's lots of fantastic ideas which can be readily used there. "Feminism" itself is still meaningful, IMHO, but it's one highly prone to definitional fights. Might be best avoided, or at least highly qualified, sure.
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recordari, in reply to
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Not being able to label abstract concepts restricts there development.
In some instances I think labeling them can equally restrict them.
Real life example. One of my daughters is constantly called a 'tomboy'. In my opinion this pre supposes a number of things which are not always helpful.
1) She will be more sporty than her twin sister. Wrong. They just excel in different areas.
2) She will be tough when she gets hurt. Wrong, she cries much more readily than her siblings.
3) She will discourage physical contact and tend to be stand offish. Wrong, she is much more affectionate, and craves contact more than her siblings.
4) She hates 'girl's clothes'. True.The 'tomboy' label proves completely unhelpful in most of the circumstances we encounter. If anything Islander's comments, and her 'singularity' gives me more insight, and hope, that she is just who she is, and all of it is wonderful.
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feminist is a label that no longer functions
Yeah, I... kind of have a wee bit of a problem with being told that.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
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Emma's discussion of her freedom to wear what she wants without be abused no longer exists. That strongly suggests the label is not helpful.
I wouldn't be so sure, given that in the early hours of this thread Emma herself tweeted this.
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