Why Shouldn't Feminism Exist?

[Shad]

Are you sure equality is the word you want to use there?
View attachment 28490

Deficient thinking as it only highlights physical differences thus innate factors. Extend the metaphor into other situations which are not so clear cut such as height.

 

[crossfire]

Which version?

Any and all, but I would prefer yours.

 

[PureX]

I thought you said the reason wages were low is because women accepted lower pay than men?

It's 'part-n-parcel'. The lower pay rate comes with any increase in job-seekers. And it was deemed acceptable because (at the time) most women were secondary household earners. And as the average household incomes went up because there were now two incomes, the cost of household goods went up accordingly. Thus forcing even those women who did not want to work to have to go into the job market just to keep up with the increasing cost of living.

This was all very good for business, but very bad for families. And a lot of people resent the women's movement to this day, for it.

Do you actually want women to leave the labor force?

None of this has anything to do with what I want. I'm simply explaining why there is so much resentment toward the women's movement and toward 'feminism' in general.

The reason they started joining, as I recall, is because their husbands were at war overseas and someone had to get the work done.

No, the reason they joined the work force in the 1960s was the women's movement encouraging 'women's independence', and because having two incomes in a culture where most households had only one gave a couple a huge economic advantage.

I'm not sure what "wall" you're referring to. Are you saying people won't hire men for middle management positions because they're men?

No, I'm saying that it has been a standard business practice for decades, now, to hire women rather than men for middle management positions because women can do the job, will do it for less money, and because women are perceived as being more compliant, and more 'obedient', to upper management than men.

Anecdotally, I work in a predominantly female workplace (healthcare, like you) and the reason most of our employees are female is because most of our applicants are female. When qualified men apply, we hire them. There's no "wall" for men to climb aside from needing the requisite experience and qualifications to be hired, which would exist regardless of the gender dynamics.

Sixty years of patterned behavior has trained us well. Those jobs are now perceived as being "women's jobs". So men tend not to pursue them.

 

[PureX]

Feminism today is symbolized by the likes of Hillary Clinton - corporate feminists talking about busting through glass ceilings while continuing to crap on the workers and act as toadies for Wall Street capitalists. That's the kind of feminism we can do without.

Interesting. Though, I don't know how generalized this really is.

 

[dianaiad]

Oh ok, like what?

Give birth, breastfeed....that is POWER, Left Coast. If you don't think so, I'm sorry for you. I have done this five times and I am very aware of the power that gives a woman. My son is probably the most involved father I've ever seen; I don't think his wife changed a diaper for the first four days of their daughter's life. He comes home from work and the baby is HIS, by golly....this huge 6'2" truck driver who is not a bit embarrassed to take his five week old daughter from her carrier in the middle of a group of Harley Davidson riders, cuddle, burp and change her, calling her 'adorable' and such all the while he's doing it.

But he can't feed her. He didn't give birth to her. He has to give her back to mommy. You may not know what power that is, but SHE sure does.

Other than that, there isn't a single thing that he can do that she can't because her sex prevents her from doing it, from driving trucks to anything else she might want.

but she has chosen to stay home and raise her children; to raise them, and teach them, and guide them.

If you don't think THAT'S not power, you aren't paying attention at all. You can be the president of the USA, and you'll have power for four years, perhaps eight. Raise your children right and you have power for generations.

Screw that up and it doesn't much matter how many personal successes you may have. For us, family is more important than anything else. Period.

Wait, it is?

Sure. It is, after all, an assigned thing, not an intrinsic one. God can do whatever He wants.

Have they, ever?

Nope. Don't see it happening, either. The fact is, women can, and do, receive revelation and divine guidance for their families, serve in important leadership positions in the church, etc. Women getting the priesthood would make men pretty much superfluous, I think. At the risk of getting crass, we'd only need them for one thing, and for that, we'd only need to pop one out of the closet every other year or so, and send them on their merry way in the meantime. It would definitely not be fair to the men.

Men KNOW this, I think, under everything. That's why so many try so hard to establish the idea that they are somehow 'better' than women, to try to keep women from catching on to this basic fact.

It does have to do with attainment of positions of power/leadership within social and religious groups. A group comprised of all-male leadership can hardly tout itself as a paragon of feminist equality.

You are, again, confusing the priesthood with power over others. Don't do that. Women have 'positions of power/leadership within social and religious groups' with us. WE know that. If you don't...that's not our problem.

Really? So they are not the leaders of your church?

Yes, actually, we ARE leaders, and...that's what I thought. You have no idea what the priesthood...at least as we view it...is.

It is NOT 'leadership/power,' it is, purely and simply, a call to serve others and the authority to perform certain ordinances for others. The relief society president in a ward has as much sheer 'power' as the Bishop, y'know. No priesthood holder can perform a single religious ordinance for himself. Someone else must baptize him, marry him, serve him the Sacrament, interview him, perform Temple ordinances for him.

My husband had to sit next to me in Sacrament meeting and wait for someone else to pass him the bread and water, just as I did. It did not give him power over me or anybody else.

When the family is THE most important organization in the church, then the person with the most power in the family is the one with the most power, period--and in our culture, that's the woman. WE know that. our MEN know that and respect it (unless they've gone nutty, and a few try).

I don't much care what anybody else thinks, frankly.

 

[dianaiad]

Victim blaming is still very much a problem in our society, whether the victim is male or female. I would say the company was wise in making the protection of the victim a priority, imo.

Yeah. I think so too. The problem is, no protection would have been needed if the man had been doing the harassing. The automatic assumption is that the woman is innocent. Even in the days when men almost always got away with it, the woman was seen as 'innocent...' innocent and proper 'prey.' The thought was that men had the right to harass women in the workplace, whether they objected or not. Now it is assumed that if there is harassment, it is ALWAYS the man doing the harassing.

So, yeah, the company was right to do this. I just wish it had not been the best thing to do.

True equality between the sexes would mean that it would not have been; true equality would lie in fighting ALL such cases, not in having to protect the victim because he is male and even if the company won the case, his life would have been permanently changed. It just...isn't right. It's acceding to blackmail.

I just hope this young man never runs for public office. I mean, if he were a Democrat it wouldn't matter, but if he's a Republican, SOMEONE would dig into this and make soup out of a rock.

 

[crossfire]

Yeah. I think so too. The problem is, no protection would have been needed if the man had been doing the harassing. The automatic assumption is that the woman is innocent. Even in the days when men almost always got away with it, the woman was seen as 'innocent...' innocent and proper 'prey.' The thought was that men had the right to harass women in the workplace, whether they objected or not. Now it is assumed that if there is harassment, it is ALWAYS the man doing the harassing.

So, yeah, the company was right to do this. I just wish it had not been the best thing to do.

True equality between the sexes would mean that it would not have been; true equality would lie in fighting ALL such cases, not in having to protect the victim because he is male and even if the company won the case, his life would have been permanently changed. It just...isn't right. It's acceding to blackmail.

I just hope this young man never runs for public office. I mean, if he were a Democrat it wouldn't matter, but if he's a Republican, SOMEONE would dig into this and make soup out of a rock.

I'm all for raising awareness regarding sexual harassment and putting a stop to it. I think the younger generations understand.

 

[Stevicus]

So focus only on legal issues and avoid critiquing the cultural nomos from which it arose, while using feminism as a political tool for class warfare? Is that correct?

Legal and economic issues, yes. Those are the things that can be dealt with at a political level. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think feminism is about human rights, specifically (but not necessarily limited to) the rights of women and girls. Only governments can grant, protect, or take away human rights - and they're the only ones who get to define what human rights actually are (although there are UN declarations on it as well).

When speaking of the "cultural nomos from which it arose," can you elaborate on this? The cultural nomos from which what arose? Maybe you can define "cultural nomos" or give examples so that I can connect the dots between the "cultural nomos" and whatever it is that arose from it.

The government can't really control the culture that much, although some governments might try. However, the media, entertainment industry, and powerful elements in Corporate America have exerted a great deal of influence over the culture we live in nowadays.

In other words, whatever it is that's wrong with society which feminists wish to fix, their efforts and energies would be put to better use by focusing on the top 1%, the ruling class (whether in government or private sector), since they're the only ones with the power and influence to fix these things.

That doesn't necessarily mean "using feminism as a political tool for class warfare," although that's not such a bad idea now that you've brought it up. Some feminists have expressed the idea that women are an oppressed class in this society, so feminism definitely relates to class warfare on at least some levels.

 

[Shad]

Any and all, but I would prefer yours.

Radical feminism and those that use "patriarchy" obsessively. Most feminists on Youtube as per the latter.

 

[Stevicus]

Interesting. Though, I don't know how generalized this really is.

Well, it's difficult to quantify it, although in terms of what gets the most attention and media coverage, in terms of women's issues or topics relating to feminism - it seems to focus more on the upper classes than anything else.

 

[crossfire]

Legal and economic issues, yes. Those are the things that can be dealt with at a political level. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think feminism is about human rights, specifically (but not necessarily limited to) the rights of women and girls. Only governments can grant, protect, or take away human rights - and they're the only ones who get to define what human rights actually are (although there are UN declarations on it as well).

When speaking of the "cultural nomos from which it arose," can you elaborate on this? The cultural nomos from which what arose? Maybe you can define "cultural nomos" or give examples so that I can connect the dots between the "cultural nomos" and whatever it is that arose from it.

Here's an article I wrote about it and shared in the Feminist DIR

What is Feminism, and how does it relate to Animus Individuation?

The government can't really control the culture that much, although some governments might try. However, the media, entertainment industry, and powerful elements in Corporate America have exerted a great deal of influence over the culture we live in nowadays.

In other words, whatever it is that's wrong with society which feminists wish to fix, their efforts and energies would be put to better use by focusing on the top 1%, the ruling class (whether in government or private sector), since they're the only ones with the power and influence to fix these things.

The cultural nomos works just below the conscious mind, is taken for granted as self-evident, and is therefore shielded from critique. People will get downright uncomfortable and sometimes even violent if you bring it up into consciousness and critique it. It is this cultural nomos that feminism refers to as "The Patriarchy." Just as personal habits can be difficult to change, collective habits are even more difficult to change.

That doesn't necessarily mean "using feminism as a political tool for class warfare," although that's not such a bad idea now that you've brought it up. Some feminists have expressed the idea that women are an oppressed class in this society, so feminism definitely relates to class warfare on at least some levels.

This is mostly a focus of third-wave feminism.

 

[crossfire]

Radical feminism and those that use "patriarchy" obsessively. Most feminists on Youtube as per the latter.

Feminists call the cultural nomos "The Patriarchy." People tend to get uncomfortable when you critique the nomos.

Nomos (sociology) - Wikipedia

 

[England my lionheart]

You'd have to ask those who made the meme. (I know Milo Yiannopoulos helped to spread the meme, but not who authored it.) I can give you the descriptive blurb from the book of that name:

"Feminism is more than a political movement; it is a deadly cancer afflicting modern society with insanity, violence, and public degeneracy. In this brilliant tome Thomas Rogers holds nothing back in describing what the female supremacist group represents, while also providing actionable solutions to help save Western civilization from the pink scourge."
-sourced from Amazon-

Wow,I've never experienced this.

 

[Shad]

Feminists call the cultural nomos "The Patriarchy." People tend to get uncomfortable when you critique the nomos.

Nomos (sociology) - Wikipedia

Its critiquing itself. Its that their critique is fundamental flawed and wrong. Keep my context in mind

 

[PureX]

Well, it's difficult to quantify it, although in terms of what gets the most attention and media coverage, in terms of women's issues or topics relating to feminism - it seems to focus more on the upper classes than anything else.

The 'media' exists to sell stuff. And the sellers all want to sell their stuff to people who have lots of disposable money. So, of course, the media is almost exclusively aimed at those people, and so it tends only to focus on those people, and to portray those people. We forget that the media is not about us. It does not exist to inform us, or to present us with a realistic picture of ourselves, or of our culture. It exists TO SELL STUFF. It's content exists solely to get us to pay attention to the commercial advertisements. So of course it presents a very weird and twisted version of 'feminism'. As it presents a very weird and twisted version of everything.

Unfortunately, 'seeing is believing' for a lot of people. So they don't realize that they are being manipulated by the media for the purpose of economic exploitation. They think what they're seeing in the media is what actually exists in the world. And they get so invested in this idea that they will actually fight hard to maintain it even in the face of contrary evidence. That's were human bias comes into play. Some media blowhard on FOX Phony News spouts off about some angry man-hating feminists somewhere in the world as if three of them in Poughkeepsie equates to legions, and soon there are thousands of frightened, angry, resentful men jumping on the bandwagon and reiterating some nonsense about an imaginary hoard of angry man-hating lesbian femi-nazis trying to destroy society as we know it. And of course they will keep tuning into the FOX Phony News Network for more of the same, because it feeds their lust for righteous indignation.

 

[Stevicus]

Here's an article I wrote about it and shared in the Feminist DIR

What is Feminism, and how does it relate to Animus Individuation?

A bit much to bite off here, but I'll try to get through it.

The cultural nomos works just below the conscious mind, is taken for granted as self-evident, and is therefore shielded from critique. People will get downright uncomfortable and sometimes even violent if you bring it up into consciousness and critique it. It is this cultural nomos that feminism refers to as "The Patriarchy." Just as personal habits can be difficult to change, collective habits are even more difficult to change.

When I hear the term "Patriarchy," it makes it seem so one-sided. If we're talking about gender roles as traditionally propagated in our culture, both in the past and the present, then we're talking about things that can't be legislated or directly controlled through governmental action.

Whose habits need to change, and why? When it comes to cultural mores and habits, it seems be a mixed bag and somewhat contradictory when looking at the overall culture. It seems that some people want to retain some traditional gender roles while discarding others - and it seems the big argument nowadays is which roles to keep and which ones to throw away.

This is mostly a focus of third-wave feminism.

Perhaps. I remember feminism was quite different when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s. I've since learned that this was the period of second-wave feminism.

But I never heard the term "Patriarchy" in this context until the 1990s.

Back in the 60s, feminism was just one of many movements advocating for social change and justice, and they were all, more or less, allied with each other. (For example, feminists back in those days weren't pushing for women in combat roles, as they were against the idea of men being put into combat roles as well. This is one of many aspects where feminism has changed drastically.)

Besides, most of the larger issues were addressed and resolved during that era (second wave). One can discern a huge jump between the 1950s era housewives and the working women of the 1970s. That's the result of a movement directed towards a few key, realistic goals and expressed in clear, understandable, unambiguous terms. That's how to get things done, and the feminist movement achieved measurable success.

I think it was the late 80s/early 90s when things started to get weird. Perhaps a combination of Reaganism, consumerism, cocaine, and Material Girl feminism had some kind of twisted effect on the direction things took at that point.

In any case, the way I see it, if one is required to get an advanced degree in Gender Studies or Psychology to even be able to understand what it is feminists want or what they're asking for, then they're doing it wrong.

 

[Stevicus]

The 'media' exists to sell stuff. And the sellers all want to sell their stuff to people who have lots of disposable money. So, of course, the media is almost exclusively aimed at those people, and so it tends only to focus on those people, and to portray those people. We forget that the media is not about us. It does not exist to inform us, or to present us with a realistic picture of ourselves, or of our culture. It exists TO SELL STUFF. It's content exists solely to get us to pay attention to the commercial advertisements. So of course it presents a very weird and twisted version of 'feminism'. As it presents a very weird and twisted version of everything.

Unfortunately, 'seeing is believing' for a lot of people. So they don't realize that they are being manipulated by the media for the purpose of economic exploitation. They think what they're seeing in the media is what actually exists in the world. And they get so invested in this idea that they will actually fight hard to maintain it even in the face of contrary evidence. That's were human bias comes into play. Some media blowhard on FOX Phony News spouts off about some angry man-hating feminists somewhere in the world as if three of them in Poughkeepsie equates to legions, and soon there are thousands of frightened, angry, resentful men jumping on the bandwagon and reiterating some nonsense about an imaginary hoard of angry man-hating lesbian femi-nazis trying to destroy society as we know it. And of course they will keep tuning into the FOX Phony News Network for more of the same, because it feeds their lust for righteous indignation.

Well, I agree with what you're saying here about the media and the way that certain ideals and political principles get twisted and manipulated in the hearts and minds of the general public. There's also the internet - social media, YouTube, etc. I don't know what the numbers are, although I have come across some who are pro-feminist and others who are anti-feminist. But most people I meet seem to be somewhere in between, at least in the sense that they see that there are other issues which are a greater priority for them.

A lot of people measure things by their own individual perception as well. There are many people who are happy with their lives, doing quite well - and don't see any immediate need for any political movement to alter their current status in society. Of course, not everyone is doing so well, and there are those who try to work to help those who are less fortunate.

My only point here is that (just like with anything else), if they'd focus on the basic issues - particularly in regards to supporting a better quality of life for the poor and working classes - that would certainly be of great benefit to the vast numbers of women and children who numbered among the poor and working classes.

 

[Left Coast]

I don't much care what anybody else thinks, frankly.

Since you don't much care what I think, I don't much care to respond. Have a nice day.

 

[dianaiad]

Since you don't much care what I think, I don't much care to respond. Have a nice day.

Wow. THAT is thin skin, indeed.

Do you care, really, what those who disagree with you think enough to change your opinions and beliefs in order to accommodate them? If you do, then please continue to debate with me, because I won't change mine; that leaves only you who will change, and I'm all for getting converts.

 

[Left Coast]

Wow. THAT is thin skin, indeed.

LOL, it's not thin-skinned. It's taking you at your word.

Do you care, really, what those who disagree with you think enough to change your opinions and beliefs in order to accommodate them?

Yes. I've done it more than once.

If you do, then please continue to debate with me, because I won't change mine; that leaves only you who will change, and I'm all for getting converts.

Why would I "debate" someone who thinks she's infallible? This isn't my first rodeo. Better luck next time.