I get it but I also get why OP is bothered - because if you just ignore toxic people, they’ll end up taking over. Letting evil happen makes you as bad as the evil people. If people just let the toxic social justice warriors take over, they’ll completely make a JOKE out of the movement and no one will take it seriously (like third wave feminism).
let me get this straight
overzealous feminists who, by and large, just blog about their zeal, are “toxic people” who are going to make the (apparently unnecessary anyway?) feminist movement not be taken seriously
but the alarmingly common dudes on the street who generally regard women as eye candy are not toxic and in no danger of making anything not be taken seriously
do i have this right, is this the thing being said
the OP even admits the world is full of assholes but somehow implicitly concludes that raging against assholes is a bad thing
i am aware there are people who genuinely believe, let’s say, all PIV to be rape. i am also aware there are people who genuinely believe the trails left behind by jet engines to be full of mind-controlling chemicals designed by the government. i’ve encountered roughly the same number of people from both groups.
and i don’t pay much attention to any of them, because it’s pretty fucking obvious that everything they’re saying is ludicrous and no one will ever care
in fact, the only people i’ve seen who act like e.g. the “PIV is rape” mantra is something to take seriously, let alone who are aware of it in the first place, are people like you and the OP who decry all of feminism because it has some loonies in it
do you know the best way to ensure feminism isn’t taken seriously? make a big fucking hoopla about why no one should take feminism seriously
i really don’t understand how you can claim to be so worried that these other people might “make a joke out of the movement” when that’s 90% of what your tumblr is already doing
and unlike the conspiracy theorists, you are a reasonable person, and thus far more likely to be listened to and rallied around
so please understand that from where i’m standing, the best way to get feminism taken more seriously is to shut you down
Mmmm… I can almost taste that equality….
You know. Almost .OH MY JESUS CHRIST ALRMIGHT Y IN THE SKY IT IS TO SHOW HOW IT IS UNFAIR THAT WOMEN GET PAID AOBUT 75 CENTS FOR EVERY DOLLAR A MAN EARNS THATS WHY JFUCKING FUCK
Except that wage gap is a myth that has been debunked ages ago.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2014/02/01/the_gender_wage_gap_is_a_myth_324880.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/01/no-women-don-t-make-less-money-than-men.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/04/16/its-time-that-we-end-the-equal-pay-myth/
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gender-pay-gap-is-a-complete-myth/
all of these links confirm that yes, in fact, women do make less than men—but we’ve decided that the reasons are unimportant as long as we can write them off as pure personal choice instead of problems of culture and opportunity
look at that daily beast one: most of the most lucrative majors are engineering, and utterly male-dominated. i have heard no end of anecdotes about women being driven away from science and engineering majors (or even classes, earlier) for one reason or another. everything from being uncomfortable as the only woman in a classroom to having a teacher outright say “give up now, women aren’t suited for this”. i can’t imagine how bad it is in an industry like truck driving.
hell, that same article says at the very bottom that white house staff alone have a 12% pay gap, so i don’t know where it gets off claiming the pay gap doesn’t exist
your cbs article links to another one that outright says: “women with a bachelor’s degree had median earnings of $39,571, compared with $59,079 for men … At every education level, from high-school dropouts to Ph.D.s, women continue to earn less than their male peers.”
let alone that women are often seen as less desirable employees because they might have children (even if they don’t have any now), women are less likely to be promoted to management (so they actually cannot do the same job), female-dominated careers are less likely to have bonuses and other retirement incentives (so women have less saving power), etc.
the gap may not be 23% for any given particular job when controlling for every other factor, but only a massive fucking jackass would look at all those other factors, see the 23% still exists, and shrug and say “well i guess it’s their problem then”
edit: the department of labor weighs in on this
I was suspended from FA for calling a sexual predator a sexual predator and pointing out that putting said sexual predator in a position of power was stupid.
Do not ever forget that Zaush sexually harassed several women. Do not ever forget that he raped someone. Do not ever forget that the administration of this website never stood up for the victims, and protected Adam Wan when the information about what he had done was leaked.
i could swear i’ve raved about this phenomenon before, somewhere
we are all pretty aware that “rape” is a bad thing, but the culture is still full of people doing things that dance around the line
so we encounter people who believe “rape” is bad, but find themselves (or their friends) having done something that could be classified as “rape”
now, we never want to think of ourselves as evil, but “rape” is clearly a thing only “rapists” (Evil People with twirly moustaches) do
thus, cognitive dissonance, and the gut reaction is to define “rape” such that the thing that was done is not “rape”.
which is why i’ve been putting it in quotes: people easily forget that it’s a horrific act and instead treat it as a horrific label. if you can argue that the label doesn’t apply to what you did, you are scot free!
the same thing has happened with “racist”, bringing us such gems as “i’m not a racist but” and “i’m not a racist because”
it doesn’t matter what effects our actions have on anyone else as long as we can argue that they don’t fall into one of a set of predefined buckets of bad behavior
this is particularly fun with dragoneer; he is the owner of the biggest furry art site, and here he is, completely oblivious to his position of power as he dispenses moral judgment and graciously offers to let the victim climb on a soapbox to “attack” someone else who is popular and powerful.
not only that but (i believe) he’s a bit paranoid about delegating any meaningful power or responsibility to anyone—hence the constant lack of admins and devs. so of course he would turn to zaush, who appears at first blush to have no idea what he’s doing. his qualifications don’t matter. his behavior and ethics don’t matter. the only thing that matters is that dragoneer believes zaush won’t do anything to sabotage FA.
Ambitious Privilege is not being called “lazy” for failing to live up to oppressive ambition-normative standards.
Ambitious Privilege is not having to worry about the fact that “sloth” (which is an offensive slur to begin with) is a deadly sin.
Ambitious Privilege is having the motivation to study in school.
Ambitious Privilege is not having your day-to-day lifestyle stigmatized and mocked simply because you’re not genetically predisposed to “doing your best.”
yes, yes, we get it
you know this could actually even be an interesting conversation if you bothered to try instead of lazily playing mad libs with things you’ve heard feminists say
but atm it just looks like you’re equating e.g. ethnic slurs to laziness, which is probably not a great way to win favor
[bad math 5] Discrimination of Men Facts
i’m shuffling this post around a bit because there’s an important bit at the bottom that’s needed for some interesting context
You will notice that I have not even touched “social discrimination” such as a group of women, on a popular talk show, cheering and laughing about a woman who cut off and destroyed a man’s penis simply because he was divorcing her. Or gender stereotypes forcing men to work to their deaths, treating men as predators and pedophiles, that sort of thing.
That is because I recognize that though social discrimination is bad, ultimately you still have choice and agency. People can mock you for being a male who likes sewing, but ultimately you can still choose to do it or not. But that pales in comparison to actual oppression, where you genuinely have no choice about the matter.
Note the numerous examples of governmental and legal discrimination against men.
These are examples of real discrimination, where there is literally nothing you can do about it. Not “discrimination” where women do more housework.
Most of the discrimination against men described here government-enforced discrimination, which is involuntary, non-consensual, and inescapable.
For instance, if you are a male victim of domestic violence, you cannot simply choose to walk into a government funded men’s shelter - they don’t exist. You cannot choose to call the pro-male police who fairly punish female batterers; there is only one police, and they are likely to arrest you if you do make the call.
In contrast, a lot of discrimination that feminists discuss is what I call societal discrimination, which is voluntary, consensual, and less significant.
Feminists state, as evidence of discrimination, that women do more unpaid housework due to societal norms. Even if that is true, given that surveys are biased and do not include male work like car repair, exterior house repair, etc. that is not discrimination since women are choosing to do more housework. They are choosing to be involved with men who do less housework, and choosing to tolerate such a state. They make that choice freely, without coercion. That is why it is not discrimination.
i observe that it’s never considered here whether women can choose to find men who do more housework. there are a lot of men, but there are also a lot of police officers, so the same logic would surely seem to apply. why is it a woman’s choice whether she falls in love with a man who feels chores should be shared equally, but not a man’s choice whether he approaches a cop who takes domestic violence against men seriously?
anyway the important part here is: problems that arise from personal choice are considered irrelevant. got it? ok.
1. Women are treated better in all aspects of the legal system. For instance, women receive lighter sentences and a higher chance of acquittal, simply for being women.
we have tread this ground before; much of it can be chalked up to men committing worse crimes than women, and black men in particular being hit hard because the system is hecka racist
this link is down so i have no idea what it says, alas
3. Despite domestic violence being equally committed by women, for the most part only male perpetrators are arrested:
this is just a bibliography of papers i cannot easily read, but the summary of this one near the top is fascinating:
(…the author reports that women are more likely than men to throw something at their partners, as well as slap, kick, bite, punch and hit with an object. Men were more likely than women to strangle, choke, or beat up their partners.)
i’d wondered about this, and it’s nice that you’ve provided a source suggesting it: violence from men is significantly more brutal than violence from women.
this is the same class of error you made with the prison claim: there is a significant difference in magnitude of incidents involving men versus women. women slap, men choke.
but if so many female batterers are slapping and throwing things… frankly, how many men would call the police over that? and how many women would call the police if their partners tried to choke them?
a cursory glance over the previous bibliography suggests that most of the data comes from surveys, which in turn could easily mean that many male victims of domestic violence simply don’t consider it worthy of police involvement
5. It is legal to circumcise male babies against their will. In some places, laws have been passed which forbid any attempts to make male circumcision illegal. Meanwhile, female circumcision is completely illegal, even though some types of female circumcision are equivalent in harm to male circumcision, and other types (a symbolic prick to draw blood) are non-harmful.
while routine infant circumcision is indeed total bs, you seem to have a severe misunderstanding of just what female circumcision is. it is the removal of the clit, equivalent to the removal of the entire male glans. they are absolutely not equivalent in harm; female circumcision can easily leave women unable to ever orgasm (exactly the intended effect), whereas many American men can tell you the same is not true for them.
6. Men comprise 95% of workplace deaths.
7. Men commit suicide at over triple the rate that women do.
8. The vast majority of prisoners are men.
ah, and here’s why i put the concluding bit first.
are men not choosing to take far more dangerous jobs? they could be nurses and secretaries.
are men not choosing to take their own lives?
are men not choosing to commit more crimes, and ones that are more severe to boot?
it is not at all clear to me how these three things are the result of active government discrimination, which is how you yourself are defining oppression
moreover: what do you suggest be done about these? there’s no clear instigator to go after, yet you seem content merely to parade them around as evidence of your oppression
9. Men are doing worse in all aspects of the educational system, from kindergarten to university.
this is now a domain park
what you say has nothing to do with the linked story; this is a tale of men falsely accused of rape successfully suing those who falsely prosecuted them under bad faith. at worst this is classic corruption in the justice system, and at best it’s a success story where the justice system is correcting itself.
11. Reproductive rights. Men have none. Simply read this story.
12. Parental rights. Men have virtually none. See below.
the law is probably suboptimal here, yes
but this is really a hypothetical tale about what one person could to do another when they trust each other with their lives. you could just as easily weave a tale about a man who lies to his long-time girlfriend about having had a vasectomy and bails as soon as she’s pregnant. or, worse, lies about not having something like HIV.
the irony is that these laws almost certainly exist because the government has long considered it critically important to preserve something that looks roughly like the nuclear family (and as part of that, treats the mother like she can’t take care of herself)
13. The majority of homeless are men.
again, how is the government discriminating here? is it giving free houses to homeless women only?
also, careful phrasing here. the majority of people are women, too, but when you’re only dividing everyone into two groups that doesn’t mean anything. we have seen before that just under 60% of homeless are men, which is imbalanced but not outlandishly so.
14. Despite men’s need being arguably greater than women, government spending to help women is 10 to 100 times greater than that to help men. That figure is unrelated to medical spending.
15. In 2009/2010 it was $1,516,460 toward men and $57,562,373 toward women. In 2010/2011 it was $3,740,800 toward men and $48,331,443 toward women. In 2008/2009 the province dedicated $561,360 toward men’s resources and $98,983,236 toward women’s resources. (figures are for British Columbia, Canada, but representative of Western society).
(“unrelated to medical spending”, but the very first link here says it was for ovarian cancer. many of these are about housing for the homeless, yes.)
looking at the source website, though, it seems the vast majority of housing initiatives are for people of either gender. there are millions and millions of dollars here spent on facilities available to both men and women, and you are severely skewing the ratio by counting only those available to either men or women.
yes, it’s a common practice to give money to groups who are underrepresented. the majority (!) of business owners are already men.
17. On some airlines, men were banned from sitting next to kids on airplanes, simply because they were men. Why? Because men are pedophiles, obviously. This ban remains on some airlines, such as Air New Zealand.
shouldn’t you be applauding this story? a man successfully sued the airline over this—meaning the government supported gender equality. if Air New Zealand is still doing this, link a story that says that, not one that says your problem has already been solved three years ago.
i admit i don’t understand exactly how DoE “directives” work, but this all hinges on interpreting sexual assault as sex discrimination (?!) which sounds completely bogus from the start
he was unexpelled in october 2011
20. Selective service. Enough said.
agreed, but this argument would have more teeth if the draft had ever actually been used.
note that women have been excluded from the draft because they have historically been barred from fighting on the front lines. (which kind of sounds like discrimination against women, actually.) this is no longer the case as of last January, so perhaps the draft will change as well shortly.
Is this why feminists are so angry all the time and seem to be lonely?
Could this also explain why the word “slut” hasa negative connotation and is something you should not be ok with being, any why men dislike such promiscuous behavior and may prefer virgins, and why virginity is something valued by men?
The answer is of course yes.
Full pic and all graphs here: http://i.imgur.com/n3vOyJe.jpg?1
allow me to offer an alternative interpretation:
- women who aren’t married, or are in unhappy marriages, have more sex with other people, because they don’t have a spouse to have sex with
- women who are unhappy turn to sex, much like men who are unhappy
interpreting statistics is tricky business; careful when making bold claims or you might come across as a bit silly
re: bad math, round 3
“no crime, no workplace injury, no suicide, no homelessness, and no custody battles.”
If that’s what your goal is, then have fun never achieving it.
it’s what i would like to see. it’s what i hope everyone would like to see.
why, what’s your goal?
Feminists see *everything* as worse for women, even the things that are in reality, equally bad for men (rape and domestic violence for example). I’d like to know exactly which issues actually *are* worse for women, because every time I’ve had a Feminist bring up supposed “women’s issues” they’ve either been:
i am hardly the spokesperson for feminist theory
but the one closest to home is that women (and several racial minorities) are vastly under-represented in software engineering, and even moreso in open source software
also i particularly like this study in which scientists were given a résumé to evaluate, purportedly for a student applying to grad school. everyone was given the same résumé, but half of them had a male name and half had a female name. across the board the male name earned a better reported impression. so who knows what is going on in STEM generally.
A) Issues that effect men just as much or;
so let’s solve them for everyone. that is an admirable thing to do and i will fight anyone who tries to stop you
but distinct from issues that affect men just as much are issues that have different negative effects on men and women
for example, while women still win more custody battles, that also means most single parents (about 5 in 6) are single mothers. and over a third of single mothers have never been married.
more men die from workplace accidents, but there are indeed feminists who care that fewer women work in those dangerous jobs. earlier this year i saw a story about a group of women fighting to be allowed to work in coal mines somewhere. alas now i can’t find it, and google only turns up people asking why feminists don’t fight to get more women in coal mines.
more money goes to breast cancer, but that’s because people want to save boobs. (look at the flak angelina jolie took.) also as i recall much of the money actually goes to raising “awareness”, not so much actually curing anything, as if anyone were not aware that breast cancer exists. everyone feels better for wearing little ribbons that support breasts. i mean, breast cancer.
these are the things feminists refer to when they say that feminism is for men too
B) Social issues like catcalling or slut shaming, which involve the opinions of people and therefore aren’t really problems you can solve.
err the advertising and political campaigning industries would like to have a word with you
besides, it’s social issues all the way down. laws and shelters and prisons and whathaveyou were all still built by people, and you fix them by changing people’s opinions.
if there’s a wage gap, that’s a reflection of your boss’s opinion of you. if there are fewer women in politics, that’s a reflection of voters’ opinions of who should run the country. more women getting custody and more men in jail? judges’ opinions. none of this is carved in stone anywhere; it’s just a pattern we notice after the fact. and if it’s a reflection of our culture, all anyone can do is keep talking about it and encourage people to pay more attention to how they regard each other.
so isn’t changing opinions exactly what you’re trying to do?
bad math, round 3
Would feminists feel that equality has been reached when 50% of the prison population consisted of women? When 50% of workplace deaths consisted of women? When 50% of suicides consisted of women? When 50% of homeless were women and 50% of women lost their children in divorce?
Does anyone reading this believe for a single solitary moment that feminists would EVER fight to deprive women of their children to benefit men? To actively work to create that 50% of women who lose their children to men. It would certainly be equal.
Somehow, I don’t think so. This is why I think Feminism and Feminists in general are full of shit.
The practical application of the stated goals of their ideology (equal rights/economics/etc etc for all) would require women to ACTIVELY WORK AGAINST THEIR OWN INTERESTS.
i have several simultaneous comments
yes
well, 51%
what is your proposal? the last paragraph strongly implies that the only solution is to increase the number of homeless women, women committing suicide, etc. to balance the numbers out. this seems impractical.
what i would actually like to see is not equal representation in tragedy, but a reduction in tragedy: no crime, no workplace injury, no suicide, no homelessness, and no custody battles. if these problems concern you so much, you should work to address them, not flaunt them as evidence of how hard up you are by demographic proxy.
feminists see things that are worse for women, and want to make them better for women. you see things that are worse for men, and apparently want to make them worse for women.
bad math, round 2
Feminists tell us that men are more privileged in society, even though men make up 76% of the homeless population.
i am too lazy to reply to most of these (sorry!) because i’m far more interested in this bad math here
from your own link, and also some others i found, we get:
“In 2007, a survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that of the population surveyed 35% of the homeless people who are members of households with children are male while 65% of these people are females. However, 67.5% of the single homeless population is male, and it is this single population that makes up 76% of the homeless populations surveyed.”
i am pretty sure you’re reading this wrong because the numbers don’t make any sense otherwise. this paragraph says that 76% of homeless people are single, not single males. that gives us a male homeless rate of 67.5% × 76% + 35% × 24% = 59.7%. still an imbalance, but rather less of one.
(your interpretation would mean that 76% of all homeless people are male, even though 35% of homeless household members are male and 67.5% of single homeless are male. you cannot combine two crossed subsets like that and end up with a larger total.)
i’m also curious why there are almost twice as many homeless women with children as homeless men with children. does this mean about half of homeless families have both parents, and half have only a mother? where is the father? is he separately homeless, putting him in the single population? prison? dead? fucking statistics.
IN CONCLUSION i suspect that a lot of this numerology (especially in regards to crime and violence and other serious tragedy) boils down to problems with poverty, and gender disparity in either direction is a weird symptom of how gender intersects with poverty rates. the poor get pretty fucked in the US and i don’t think anyone who claims to be progressive in any direction is opposed to fixing that.
bad math, round 1
Do you know who makes up the majority of the electorate in America? Yeah, that’d be women. That means *gasp* WOMEN have more of the voting power. It’s been this way since the 1964 election.
according to this breakdown of the 2012 election (via exit polling), women are 53% of voters. which is technically a majority, but barely more than the 51% of women in the general population. i don’t believe the difference is statistically significant but please don’t make me do the math
tl;dr men and women vote in roughly equal proportion
it’s kinda weird to use voter turnout as a measure of political influence when the viable presidential nominees are always men. though bravo to Belva Ann Lockwood for getting on the ballot in 6 states all the way back in 1884 damn
Women also control about 80% of consumer wealth, and 51.3% of the private wealth. That means that WOMEN have more of the spending power.
i wish there were a source here other than a book (which only covers part of it) because i’m very interested in the breakdown of these numbers
i did find this nielsen (lol) article which suggests to me that women do more of the spending because they buy most of the groceries and clothing and have more of a vested interest in a lot of appliances. which doesn’t sound quite so much like “control” unless the choice between jif and skippy is critically important to your life. (it is to mine!)
the same article suggests that the spending done by men is increasing steadily, which is cool if it means regular shopping is becoming less of a Wife Thing
your article says women own half of the stock held in the US, but keep in mind that the richest 10% own 80% of all stock, making this statistic of dubious value to most women. the census does show that the wealthiest women own a sizable share of wealth (albeit still less than men, and in fewer numbers), but that still just suggests that oprah is rich, which is not a surprise. also none of these things are very clear about how joint ownership affects the numbers; mitt romney’s wife probably owns half of his assets, even though we probably wouldn’t think to name her as the millionaire, and i can’t actually remember her name.
Women are also favored in every form of the legal system (custody cases, shorter prison sentences for the same crime, etc). That means that WOMEN have more of the legal power.
the very article you link about custody cases suggests that determination of the “primary caregiver” often determines custody, and the standard 50s-era nuclear family structure is a stay-at-home mother with a working father. i don’t know if 80% of families still look like that, but surely it plays a big part.
not to say that custody battles always end fairly, but there is more room for nuance than you are giving here. also it’s encouraging that the first paragraph of the article says mothers are explicitly not to be automatically given custody.
i’m surprised that i couldn’t find much of anyone talking about that prison gap article (except MRAs celebrating its existence), so i had to go read the damn thing. the article contains some fascinating insights that were lost in the huffpo article, such as: 30% of the gender gap in drug cases is due to differences in drug quantity; 20% of the gap is non-drug cases is due to severity in crime (which is hard to measure and may be much less or much more); black men are penalized significantly more harshly than anyone else, whereas black women appear to be treated about the same as non-black women. most of the article is actually about mitigating factors like these, yet the only number in the conclusion is the 63%. there’s no prosaic conclusion about how much of the gap isn’t explained by the bulk of the paper. kind of disappointing.
also unusual: it appears that there are four times as many men in the sample as women, but this is never commented upon. and it’s not that three quarters of women get off without a sentence, because this data supposedly tracks all the way back to initial arrest records or something. hmm.
Women also make up the majority of college graduates, and the school system favors girls from KINDERGARTEN. This means that WOMEN have more of the educational power.
CNN suggests that this growing difference is because men decide they’ve racked up too much debt and drop out to start working, whereas women who’ve dropped out generally have lower starting salaries and are dissuaded from doing the same.
which i suppose makes sense, since the huge spike in tuition costs did start just before 1985, the year your article cites as the first year women outnumbered men as graduates.
your first huffpo article says “that girls are truly only outperforming boys in ‘non-cognitive approaches to learning’ – defined as attentiveness, task persistence, eagerness to learn, learning independence, flexibility and organization – leading to better grades from teachers.”
i’m not sure what i should conclude from this. schools “favor girls” because they grade on whether you can pay attention and work on your own, not just by how you do on standardized tests? is the argument that boys shouldn’t need to be flexible or organized to succeed? i don’t get it. these sound like pretty reasonable criteria to me, and if boys are having trouble with them, that is an alarming problem.
that same CNN article quotes: “our research shows that boys’ underperformance in school has more to do with society’s norms about masculinity … Boys involved in extracurricular cultural activities such as music, art, drama, and foreign languages report higher levels of school engagement and get better grades than other boys. But these activities are often denigrated as un-masculine. … Boys have less understanding than girls about how their future success in college and work is directly linked to their academic effort in middle school and high school.”
surprise, gender stereotyping ruins everything
There isn’t a “pay gap” there is an EARNINGS gap. It’s nobody’s fault if women decide to work less.Here’s two sources.
well, not so fast. you might as well say “it’s nobody’s fault if men decide to commit crime more often”. why do women decide to work less?
i basically hate the whole wage gap argument since both sides have piles of studies that claim to control for every imaginable variable and still come out with wildly contradictory results. fucking statistics.
it sure looks like something funny is going on, and i wish we could figure out what that something is and address it instead of arguing about who to blame for it.
Anonymous asked:Thank you for the article on smarm, it was very good. Now that I think about it... a great deal of social justice is very smarmy, isn't it. Not "what you say", but "how you say it"...
actually it’s mostly the reaction to social justice that’s smarmy in my experience, which is where the notion of “tone policing” comes from
there is an awkward and blurry line here of course
sometimes people do get shot down for “tone policing” or “concern trolling” when the speaker really is being pretty abrasive
but then who defines “too” abrasive? it’s not like being angry about imbalances is unjustified; snark is a response in kind
besides, it would seem that people who are polite about hot topics are rather more often just ignored. which is, perhaps, one of the driving forces of smarm: if you were nicer, it would be easier for me to not listen to you at all. by being snarky, you got me all riled up, and now i have to feel things. curse you, feminazis!!
i do wince when it degenerates to “cis people are scum” because i know how that will be received. majority groups are surprisingly tender about being vilified for their group identification (hmm)
but how can you blame someone for feeling that way? imagine if the most horrible parts of your life were inflicted by group A upon you merely for being a member of group B
and this is where the equivocation becomes laughable: if a woman hates or fears men as a group because she’s been assaulted a dozen times by a dozen different men, how is that remotely comparable to a man who is a jerk to women because they’re women
maybe stop being a fucking dickhead to outsiders and it won’t make your tribe keep looking like a bunch of xenophobic assholes
this meandered a little but it is basically the train of thought i went through when wondering whether social justice really did need to be “nicer”
the answer is: i don’t know and it doesn’t matter because people will do what they feel they need to do regardless
also it’s kind of funny how mel-vs-lulz is a microcosm of all this. reactions condemned by the people who caused the reaction first, utter obliviousness to one’s own antagonistic behavior, etc.
admiralalbatross:
That man who raised you is a fucking asshole. When someone gets to win, everyone else gets to lose, and how hard you try doesn’t always matter. The world is not this fantastical place where the people who put in the most effort always get the best rewards, and it is unbelievably toxic to inject that kind of fantasy into a nine-year-old’s head. Now whenever you fail, no matter what you may have done, it’s something wrong with you for not being better. (Not to mention how that fucks up the notion of what failure even is. Failure is a fabulous learning tool, not a thing to be ashamed of.)
And you certainly took the lesson to heart: here you are, blaming everyone else for not already winning, for not trying hard enough. It doesn’t matter to you that Western society is still blatantly overflowing with preconceived notions about women’s roles and limitations; if only women would try harder, far harder than men need to try for some reason, there’d be no problem. If only the poor and homeless would try harder to not be poor, if only transpeople would try harder to not get shot, if only anyone anywhere on the wrong side of a power imbalance would try harder to compensate for it.
The people I’ve seen and met with the most interesting feminist insights have also been the people with the most crap piled on them their entire lives, who attract yet more of it for bothering to speak up, and who keep buggering on despite it. Fuck your trivialization; it insults them far more than teenagers’ proclaiming their hatred of all men just because it looks like a trendy bandwagon.
ETA: The more I mull this over, the less I think I have a problem with participation ribbons. Fuck the self-esteem, that’s your own thing to work out, but it’s always nice to have a reminder that you did something, that you did try, and that even if you didn’t win, you’ve now had an experience that most people haven’t.
I observe that “Olympic athlete” and “Oscar-nominated” are still treated as pretty damn special, and nobody tells them “oh, honey, if only you’d tried harder, you pathetic failure”. You can only tell this story in the first place because you tried. I didn’t; I have no long-jump story. Taking that away from you by turning it into a shame of failure is a massive dick move. People who learn that lesson just stop trying so they don’t fail so often, and here you are, railing against trying.