Doubt that it's a waste of time to give thought to who's to blame. Quite reasonable to argue that those most responsible have the greatest obligation to fix the problem or repudiate their arguments that contributed most to it.
You may have some interest in an early post by UK feminist Kathleen Stock who quite reasonably argued that femini…
Doubt that it's a waste of time to give thought to who's to blame. Quite reasonable to argue that those most responsible have the greatest obligation to fix the problem or repudiate their arguments that contributed most to it.
You may have some interest in an early post by UK feminist Kathleen Stock who quite reasonably argued that feminism is in urgent need of a reboot, that the whole transgender issue has reduced much of feminism to "risible absurdities:
It was supposed to be about wage equality. This was a tangible goal whose success or failure was directly measurable.
And, lo, wages did converge somewhat. Not all the way to equality, but measurably.
This was no time to abandon the fight, it was time to press on, but feminism did abandon the fight, and did not press on.
Priorities moved to "patriarchy," to bitter screeds about controlling men, "power structures," unfairness. Womon and womyn, fish and bicycles, misandry by the boxcar load. Hate your husbands and boyfriends, become lesbians, all men rape.
Because progress against "patriarchal attitudes" cannot be measured, bitter misandrists could claim endlessly that no progress was being made.
I do agree we need to know what's at the root of it all (who's to blame), to fix anything you need to understand what happened (possibly my feelings about blaming are coloured by my experiences in the world of addiction & recovery, where it seemed the more people focused on blame, the less progress they made on healing). I doubt those most responsible are likely to do any of the fixing, at least not yet. I don't know enough about the various iterations of feminism to comment on the state of it, though a lot of the people I follow on this subject would probably be called feminists.
👍🙂 Exactly. Why we need to hold feminists' feet to the fire, figuratively speaking of course ...
But something of a murky topic which I certainly haven't "plumbed the depths of". Part of the problem being that feminism has about as many "sects" as does Christianity (38,000 for the latter at last count).
But you might have some interest in a recent post by Substacker Paula Wright who takes a well-deserved shot or two at one of those sects, radical feminism:
I suppose this is lazy of me, but "feminism" is a rabbit hole I'm choosing not to go down (I did read the article though :-). I did pay some attention to a prominent British radfem last year (because there was a distant family connection), but I don't connect with the radical end any more than I did 40 years ago at uni. I read Germaine Greer back then, and no doubt I have views which would make some people call me a feminist (while some feminists wouldn't), but I have never "identified" as such. That said, in exploring transworld in depth I've been surprised and disheartened at how much hatred still exists (for some) for women, as if we are a monolith (ditto for some of the YouTube sites geared to younger men, many of whom seem to both want women and loathe them in equal proportions).
"rabbit hole", indeed. Why one needs some solid anchors in "reality" before doing any spelunking therein. Much of "feminism" being untethered from it at the outset.
But I'm certainly not denying that "feminism" has a bunch of justified grievances -- partly why I'm rather peeved at its corruption and bastardization by various antiscientific ideologues. One of the most damning indictments on that score that I've had the "pleasure" of reading came from a review of "Professing Feminism" by Daphne Patai & Noretta Koertge, not that I've read the book myself:
FC: "The authors, however, demonstrate that these problems have existed since their ideology’s inception, and were particularly common within Women Studies programs. The authors wrote of the isolationist attitude that dominates many of the programs, along with a virulent anti-science, anti-intellectual sentiment driving many of the professors, staff and students."
But that is most certainly not to say that "feminism" hasn't had or championed some decent and useful insights and perspectives. Prime example of that being the view that "gender" is most usefully defined as masculinity & femininity, as sexually dimorphic personalities and personality types:
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP]: "2.2 Gender as feminine and masculine personality ... Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices."
"Parenting practices"... it's odd that I haven't given it much thought before, but from the ages of 2 to nearly 6 I lived with my schoolteacher single dad (not well off) in a poor part of Jamaica. I doubt there was much modeling of the sort of traditional masculine & feminine roles I'd have seen had we stayed in Canada. By the time my very feminine stepmother came along it was too late to fix me, to her despair, and my dad did some things with me he'd likely have done with a boy (like teaching me to play catch by hitting me endless flies, sans glove). Perhaps my somewhat gender-role-neutral early years explain my ambivalence about some of these issues. Or maybe not, who knows.
Doubt that it's a waste of time to give thought to who's to blame. Quite reasonable to argue that those most responsible have the greatest obligation to fix the problem or repudiate their arguments that contributed most to it.
You may have some interest in an early post by UK feminist Kathleen Stock who quite reasonably argued that feminism is in urgent need of a reboot, that the whole transgender issue has reduced much of feminism to "risible absurdities:
https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/feminist-reboot-camp
Though I'm not sure that she has enough "intellectual honesty" herself to do justice to that task.
Feminism needed no help in sabotaging itself.
It was supposed to be about wage equality. This was a tangible goal whose success or failure was directly measurable.
And, lo, wages did converge somewhat. Not all the way to equality, but measurably.
This was no time to abandon the fight, it was time to press on, but feminism did abandon the fight, and did not press on.
Priorities moved to "patriarchy," to bitter screeds about controlling men, "power structures," unfairness. Womon and womyn, fish and bicycles, misandry by the boxcar load. Hate your husbands and boyfriends, become lesbians, all men rape.
Because progress against "patriarchal attitudes" cannot be measured, bitter misandrists could claim endlessly that no progress was being made.
Aim at each foot, fire!
I do agree we need to know what's at the root of it all (who's to blame), to fix anything you need to understand what happened (possibly my feelings about blaming are coloured by my experiences in the world of addiction & recovery, where it seemed the more people focused on blame, the less progress they made on healing). I doubt those most responsible are likely to do any of the fixing, at least not yet. I don't know enough about the various iterations of feminism to comment on the state of it, though a lot of the people I follow on this subject would probably be called feminists.
"at least not yet ... "
👍🙂 Exactly. Why we need to hold feminists' feet to the fire, figuratively speaking of course ...
But something of a murky topic which I certainly haven't "plumbed the depths of". Part of the problem being that feminism has about as many "sects" as does Christianity (38,000 for the latter at last count).
But you might have some interest in a recent post by Substacker Paula Wright who takes a well-deserved shot or two at one of those sects, radical feminism:
https://paulawright.substack.com/p/radical-feminism-back-on-brand?utm_medium=reader2
Kathleen Stock did likewise in one of her posts which argued, rather solidly, that Radfems were "barking (mad)" to try to "abolish gender".
I suppose this is lazy of me, but "feminism" is a rabbit hole I'm choosing not to go down (I did read the article though :-). I did pay some attention to a prominent British radfem last year (because there was a distant family connection), but I don't connect with the radical end any more than I did 40 years ago at uni. I read Germaine Greer back then, and no doubt I have views which would make some people call me a feminist (while some feminists wouldn't), but I have never "identified" as such. That said, in exploring transworld in depth I've been surprised and disheartened at how much hatred still exists (for some) for women, as if we are a monolith (ditto for some of the YouTube sites geared to younger men, many of whom seem to both want women and loathe them in equal proportions).
"rabbit hole", indeed. Why one needs some solid anchors in "reality" before doing any spelunking therein. Much of "feminism" being untethered from it at the outset.
But I'm certainly not denying that "feminism" has a bunch of justified grievances -- partly why I'm rather peeved at its corruption and bastardization by various antiscientific ideologues. One of the most damning indictments on that score that I've had the "pleasure" of reading came from a review of "Professing Feminism" by Daphne Patai & Noretta Koertge, not that I've read the book myself:
FC: "The authors, however, demonstrate that these problems have existed since their ideology’s inception, and were particularly common within Women Studies programs. The authors wrote of the isolationist attitude that dominates many of the programs, along with a virulent anti-science, anti-intellectual sentiment driving many of the professors, staff and students."
https://web.archive.org/web/20090807234859/http://www.feministcritics.org/blog/2009/07/27/professing-feminism-noh/
"virulent anti-science, anti-intellectual sentiment", indeed. Game, set, match; guilty as charged.
But that is most certainly not to say that "feminism" hasn't had or championed some decent and useful insights and perspectives. Prime example of that being the view that "gender" is most usefully defined as masculinity & femininity, as sexually dimorphic personalities and personality types:
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP]: "2.2 Gender as feminine and masculine personality ... Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices."
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/feminism-gender/#GenFemMasPer
"Parenting practices"... it's odd that I haven't given it much thought before, but from the ages of 2 to nearly 6 I lived with my schoolteacher single dad (not well off) in a poor part of Jamaica. I doubt there was much modeling of the sort of traditional masculine & feminine roles I'd have seen had we stayed in Canada. By the time my very feminine stepmother came along it was too late to fix me, to her despair, and my dad did some things with me he'd likely have done with a boy (like teaching me to play catch by hitting me endless flies, sans glove). Perhaps my somewhat gender-role-neutral early years explain my ambivalence about some of these issues. Or maybe not, who knows.
Simply amazing how kids pick up things from their parents. Not that I would know first-hand as I've never had kids myself.
But I can still appreciate many, often amusing cases of that, this quite charming "been farming long" meme being a classic:
https://ocj.com/2017/12/where-are-the-you-been-farming-long-boys-now/
"Kids say the darndest things ...."; mouths of babes and all that 🙂.
Adorable. Thanks for the Paula Wright tip, interesting stuff.
My pleasure; share the wealth; praise the lord and pass the ammunition ... 🙂
Somewhat apropos of which & ICYMI:
https://paulawright.substack.com/p/radical-feminism-back-on-brand/comment/40624840