The Left Wing Case Against Feminism AND MRA - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14887893
So the last time I made a thread like this there was some controversy over the way I distinguished between 'left' and 'right' which is fair. So I will take the opportunity to define these terms from the offset:

I define these terms in terms of the social need and justification for egalitarianism (specifically equality of opportunity) versus the mindset that people already have equality of opportunity and that the blame for their failures to succeed in life is on them. This is because the left wing is inherently a materialist, collectivist doctrine, the conclusion of a philosophy that people are not in control of their biological and social circumstances and that we should have mercy on people for where there circumstances lead them in life. By contrast the right wing by contrast is individualist.

This thread is concerned primarily with the argument that feminism in the 21st century is no longer concerned with a genuinely egalitarian and doctrine that endorses collectivist materialism. To plainly speak as an egalitarian and to not attempt to render oneself as a feminist (either as an attempted expansion of egalitarian beliefs or in direct opposition to egalitarianism) is in fact not the logical conclusion of certain premises found within materialist and collectivist thinking. I know some feminists will be thinking at this point that the whole point of their movement is predicated on the notion of equality between the sexes ("feminism is egalitarianism"), so please give me a chance to expand on my views.

This is simply because men and women, especially in the 21st century, have a roughly equal 'bundle' of rights and privileges compared to their disadvantages and lack of rights in life. To make a specific attempt to promote one groups interests even if it is in the name of supposed equality or activism of an underprivileged group is in fact contrary to egalitarianism and it hurts the other group's interests. To prove my case, I will demonstrate examples of how I feel women have already achieved equality.

To begin with, it was necessary for sufragettes to win the vote for women even though this was an era that men were drafted off to fight wars and socially/economically pressured into being the provider. This is because women deserve the right to vote and also the right to take on roles and responsibilities that society traditionally considered male. I say this even though most men did not actually have the right to vote at that stage, however we can safely say that both groups of working class males and females were underprivileged at this point in time. This was an issue of economic egalitarianism and class hierarchy as well as the remnants of the aristocracy that were true enemies to equal rights, privileges and responsibilities that men and women were entitled to.

With second wave feminism we can also say that we lived in a society that was culturally and sexually repressed. There definitely needed to be an emphasis on libertinism or the need for people (men and women equally) to freely express their sexuality although we can also say that some conservative restrictions on this, e.g. a person's right to host a Bachus styled wine-drinking orgy in a public street, are perfectly acceptable and to be expected for the sake of common decency. The point is that people need an outlet and shouldn't be restricted to ethical monogamy for the sake of others' narrow minded judgement. I know people on the right will disagree with some of this but keep in mind this thread is about how my opposition to feminism is (in my view) compatible with what I consider to be genuine egalitarianism.

The reason why now I don't think there is a real basis for modern feminism in egalitarianism is not just based on the actions and opinions of a radical minority feminists ('feminazis') but in fact purely due to the limitations of feminist activism and the way it's restricted by it's own etymology. There are a few - the feminazis - that will openly and vocally marginalise and deny the existence of men's issues, such as prison rape, the fact it is mainly men that have to work 9-5 menial blue collar labour type jobs, the fact that men are more likely to be victims of violent assault, the fact that men will have such a hard time getting paternity leave, the fact that men will be shamed by society for trying to open up to their feelings or seek therapy, etc., etc. Of course, it's possible to see why they feel so emotionally about this, after all women have a hard time too! My point in all of this is that working class men and women in this era still have things equally tough, so why make this about 'feminism' or 'men's rights' or whatever, why not try to solve men's and women's problems by speaking plainly as egalitarianism.

So, ever since I began to develop these beliefs ("egalitarian anti-feminism") I have came across more interesting, more subtle and nuanced arguments from the feminists who do not belong to this vocal minority of feminazis. And many of them are fair, which is why I don't hate feminists but to be honest most feminists (well most people in general actually) are not really on this 'level' where they've really (and I mean REALLY) thought about there beliefs and in any case, I still respectfully disagree. What this argument boils down to is that 'feminism' is just a word. What the movement is really about, fundamentally, is equality. Feminists have worked alongside MRAs to help them achieve equality, as well as blacks, queers, transgenders and other disadvantaged groups. Feminists consider themselves egalitarians.

My problem with this is simple: words have power.

“Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-hyder ... 24786.html

Why do you think there is so much misunderstanding about this fact that feminists are supposed to represent equality? Or that those on the right who do understand deliberately misrepresent feminism? Or that there are a minority of feminazis that choose to push their own agenda? These groups can get away with it because of the semantics and etymology. And this confusion is what generates so much conflict between groups which is what has lead to the whole debate in the first place. Which is an obstruct to genuine equality. So my belief is that even if you're not aware of this or if it was not your intention to obscure genuine equality you cannot be a genuine egalitarian, i.e. someone that is actually useful for promoting equal opportunities in the modern world, UNLESS you have developed the awareness of self and others to realise this and actually know what impact the power of rhetoric can have on society.

What I'm going to say now is a hyperboled example but let's run with the thought experiment: let's say that it doesn't matter how feminists choose to identify because the label is 'just a word. If it was just a case of words, we wouldn't care what some right wing fascist fruitloop was saying on national tv about sending blacks and gays to concentration camps because after all, those are just words, right? Words don't have an impact on people's beliefs or actions. This guy could really be a feminist in action and what he's saying is just code words for equal rights and pays for ethnic minorities and the LGBT community.

Back to question of what limitations the semantics and etymology of feminism possess to genuine egalitarianism. Let's talk about how feminists cannot legitimately be representatives for many underprivileged groups:

- men from minority ethnicities religions
- transgender and gay men
- maybe women from minority ethnicities and religions (if they feel that their main problem is not being a woman but belonging to an ethnic minorities)
- maybe transgender and gay women (maybe if they see straight white women as more privileged than they are to begin with, or if transgender women remember what it was like being a disillusioned, gender confused male in society)
- impoverished/working class men and women

Ok, so you may argue that feminists can be egalitarians and support/represent all of these groups. However in reality, that is not the situation we see. What we see is more and more people becoming disillusioned by feminism, more and more people seeing it as an attack on morality, an attack on men and a way of supporting some women (e.g. middle class straight white women) who are actually quite privileged, have good paying jobs as feminist activists and just complain about the way things are without looking at the bigger picture (as I have tried to address).

Finally, by looking at that list of people whom - in my opinion could not be adequately represented by feminists - just goes to prove a point. This is that the problem is much bigger and more complicated than gender - it is an interconnected problem that concerns everything: race, religion, gender, economic class, politics, everything. If you want to defeat the problem, you have to destroy the roots of evil (inequity), not hack away at the branches. Call me a pedant but all of this is a problem caused by the semantics and etymology of feminism. It's a problem that's simply addressed by identifying oneself as an egalitarian. That wouldn't solve everything but it would solve a lot. It's time to stop shaming people who do not agree with feminism and it's time for feminists to stop seeing themselves as some sort of heroic martyrs in a world that is against them. They hold a mainstream belief in a society that practically bends over backwards to make them feel justified and self-righteous. The feminists today are not suffragettes in a world where a small minority of white aristocratic men owned all of the wealth, resources and women. They are not a silenced group. Funnily enough though (egalitarian) anti-feminists ARE being shamed and ARE being lumped in with a group of people (the alt-right, the chauvinists and the rape apologists) that we certainly do not agree with.

_______________________________________________________

EDIT:
I wanted to add something about the recent trends in feminism that have been designed to combat sexual assault (and rightly so) and what I think is wrong with those - not so much the goal but the way feminists have been going about trying to achieve that goal, the means to an end so to speak.

First of all, I really hate the twitter #notallmen hashtag because it misses the point which is that feminists, the good variety - not the feminazis, are not trying to villainise all men but simply point out that sexual assault for women is a very real problem and actually worse for women on the whole. Also, these guys make more sophisticated anti-feminist rebuttals look bad!

The problem is that there is also a very real problem where guys CAN be falsely victimised and made to look like sexual predators and they are not. This is the point, I think, that MRAs are trying to make. It's just that the whole argument has been badly phrased and made anti-feminists as a whole look dreadful (which is an easy thing to do, it seems). But a lot of (not all!) feminists have also done a really bad job of convincing their more reasonable ideological opposition that this whole campaign is a good idea by villainising pretty much anyone and everyone who believes to the contrary, labelling people who don't agree essentially as rape apologists and sexual predators themselves. More people would be in ideological agreement with this campaign if they aknowledged some of the grey areas and I don't mean about "no means no" but the grey areas a guy faces, for example if he wants to approach or flirt with a woman, respectfully.

In UK, feminists did a really good job of publically ridiculing their opposition by interviewing a complete idiot who said something about how guys can be clumsy when flirting with women sometimes, e.g. with a 'pat on the bum', and that women should be more understanding about this. In response to this, many feminists have effectively been labelling these sorts of arguments as the 'only opposition' on their media platforms:

[youtube]TMfStd3v330[/youtube]

What does this mean? It means that feminists can manipulate and distort logic by effectively painting a strawman of what more sophisticated opposition believe.

For example, a man can approach a woman on the street, perfectly respectfully, not physically attempt to touch her and maybe not even say anything about her appearance explicitly or implicitly and that woman can attempt to twist the situation to make it look like he harassed her, shame him for approaching her. Even stopping a woman to tell her she's beautiful is not that bad really, or while talking to her a guy could gently touch her arm or tease her about hair in her face but these things could still potentially go wrong for a guy, especially in the current climax where so many women are freaked out about sexual predators they're not even trying to acknowledge the possibility some guys can be rendered an aggressor falsely.

With the whole 'affirmative consent' movement, you don't hear very many feminists talking about a woman who might deliberately try to manipulate a man in the bedroom, e.g. by playing games, saying "yes" and then "no" and then "yes" again, not because she is shy or unsure about the situation but because that is just her personality: ruthlessly manipulative. But a lot of feminists don't really want a reasonable discussion, which would actually HELP their agenda by separating the men you can't trust from the men you can, therefore giving society a better idea of who to penalise. Instead, these same feminists freak out about any idea that could threaten the mere possibility of challenging any of their own and they resort to what I've talked about: manipulating their opposition, ridiculing guys with legitimate complaints about their campaign and rendering them as rape apologists and sexual predators.

So my question is, do feminists actually want a constructive debate or do they just want to villainise the opposition?
Last edited by Sceptic on 10 Feb 2018 21:08, edited 1 time in total.
#14888172
I think you are working from a false premise

Sceptic wrote:To begin with, it was necessary for sufragettes to win the vote for women


One could argue that the suffragettes' acts of terrorism set back the cause of votes for women by undermining the legitimate and persuasive efforts of the Suffragists.
#14888484
bestkeptsecret wrote:I think you are working from a false premise

One could argue that the suffragettes' acts of terrorism set back the cause of votes for women by undermining the legitimate and persuasive efforts of the Suffragists.


Whatever way you look at it, it was necessary at one point for women to fight for the right to vote, from my perspective at least (and from modern day feminists' perspectives).
#14888508
Sceptic wrote:Whatever way you look at it, it was necessary at one point for women to fight for the right to vote, from my perspective at least (and from modern day feminists' perspectives).


And the Suffragists did just that, via legal means. The Suffragettes were terrorists. Do you also condone the actions of paramilitaries in Ireland? Would you condone it if the Scots set up a paramilitary group to try to achieve independence through terrorist acts, rather than solely relying on legal means?
#14888510
bestkeptsecret wrote:And the Suffragists did just that, via legal means. The Suffragettes were terrorists.


Please explain to me what, if anything, this has to do with the main topic of the OP, or if you even read past the thing about suffragettes because I find this conversation to be totally inconsequential.
#14888581
Sceptic wrote:Please explain to me what, if anything, this has to do with the main topic of the OP, or if you even read past the thing about suffragettes because I find this conversation to be totally inconsequential.


You go on to talk about second wave feminism and questioning its validity

Then you talk about coming across "more interesting, more subtle and nuanced arguments from the feminists who do not belong to a vocal minority of feminazis."

It seems to me that you are only considering nuance very selectively, and that is distorting your perceptions. It is important to know the difference between suffragists and suffragettes, if you are to understand that very little has actually changed.

Suffragists are what we would now label Feminists and Suffragettes are what we now label feminazis.

If we then consider your question,

Sceptic wrote:So my question is, do feminists actually want a constructive debate or do they just want to villainise the opposition


Feminists are about securing and maintaining equality for women via constructive persuasive debate and peaceful protest.

Feminazi's are about securing and maintaining equality for women where it benefits them, without wishing to accept the downsides of equality, and that isn't really equality at all. They try to further their cause through aggression, shaming, attacking everyone that doesn't agree with everything they say, including other women. They do not seek constructive debate. They undermine feminists in the same way as the suffragettes undermined the suffragists.
#14888596
bestkeptsecret wrote:...


So, in a nutshell my response to your post is that it is feminism I am primarily addressing. In fact I'm not even interested in feminazis because from my perspective they demolish their own arguments with their own words and behaviours. Hopefully you will have a better idea of what I'm trying to say once you've read this.

You go on to talk about second wave feminism and questioning its validity

Then you talk about coming across "more interesting, more subtle and nuanced arguments from the feminists who do not belong to a vocal minority of feminazis."

It seems to me that you are only considering nuance very selectively, and that is distorting your perceptions. It is important to know the difference between suffragists and suffragettes, if you are to understand that very little has actually changed.


Ok, so now I see where you are coming from a (little) bit better although respectfully I still disagree with the conclusions you've drawn out. That's because it's different time periods we're talking about. There may have even been a place for militarism and radicalism during a period when women did not have the vote, which I consider to be a basic right. We're not talking about basic rights anymore and speaking about feminism more generally, I believe the movement is undermining the fight for genuine equality in a much more covert, though perhaps unintentional, manner. I will expand on this.

[="bestkeptsecret"]Feminists are about securing and maintaining equality for women via constructive persuasive debate and peaceful protest.[/quote]

Suffragists are what we would now label Feminists and Suffragettes are what we now label feminazis.


In my post I criticised feminists and feminazis. I actually by and large ignored feminazis as part of a 'vocal minority' and went on to critique 'subtler arguments' from feminists. My argument against feminist apologia was threefold:

For example, I addressed the argument that feminism, the dictionary definition, is about equality:

What this argument boils down to is that 'feminism' is just a word. What the movement is really about, fundamentally, is equality. Feminists have worked alongside MRAs to help them achieve equality, as well as blacks, queers, transgenders and other disadvantaged groups. Feminists consider themselves egalitarians.

My problem with this is simple: words have power.

...

Why do you think there is so much misunderstanding about this fact that feminists are supposed to represent equality? Or that those on the right who do understand deliberately misrepresent feminism? ... These groups can get away with it because of the semantics and etymology. And this confusion is what generates so much conflict between groups which is what has lead to the whole debate in the first place. Which is an obstruct to genuine equality. So my belief is that even if you're not aware of this or if it was not your intention to obscure genuine equality you cannot be a genuine egalitarian, i.e. someone that is actually useful for promoting equal opportunities in the modern world, UNLESS you have developed the awareness of self and others to realise this and actually know what impact the power of rhetoric can have on society.


I also touched on the topic of whether it's justified to have a woman's rights movement based on the fact that women are marginalised in society and in order to have true equality, primarily we need to promote women's rights. I did this by pointing out that women and men are both marginalised in society and to a roughly equal degree. We are not in a position to say who's worse off, so promoting women's rights primarily is not going to have a positive effect on the strive for genuine equality.

The reason why now I don't think there is a real basis for modern feminism in egalitarianism ... but in fact purely due to the limitations of feminist activism and the way it's restricted by it's own etymology. There are a few - the feminazis - that will openly and vocally marginalise and deny the existence of men's issues, such as prison rape, the fact it is mainly men that have to work 9-5 menial blue collar labour type jobs, the fact that men are more likely to be victims of violent assault, the fact that men will have such a hard time getting paternity leave, the fact that men will be shamed by society for trying to open up to their feelings or seek therapy, etc., etc. Of course, it's possible to see why they feel so emotionally about this, after all women have a hard time too! My point in all of this is that working class men and women in this era still have things equally tough, so why make this about 'feminism' or 'men's rights' or whatever, why not try to solve men's and women's problems by speaking plainly as egalitarianism.


My final argument was very much a pragmatic one about representation and that even with the best intentions to serve other groups and minorities, feminists cannot because said groups and minorities do not even want to be represented by feminists and it would generate much less controversy for feminists to simply refer to themselves as egalitarians when attempting to represent marginalised groups in society.

Back to question of what limitations the semantics and etymology of feminism possess to genuine egalitarianism. Let's talk about how feminists cannot legitimately be representatives for many underprivileged groups:

- men from minority ethnicities religions
- transgender and gay men
- maybe women from minority ethnicities and religions (if they feel that their main problem is not being a woman but belonging to an ethnic minorities)
- maybe transgender and gay women (maybe if they see straight white women as more privileged than they are to begin with, or if transgender women remember what it was like being a disillusioned, gender confused male in society)
- impoverished/working class men and women

Ok, so you may argue that feminists can be egalitarians and support/represent all of these groups. However in reality, that is not the situation we see. What we see is more and more people becoming disillusioned by feminism, more and more people seeing it as an attack on morality, an attack on men and a way of supporting some women (e.g. middle class straight white women) who are actually quite privileged, have good paying jobs as feminist activists and just complain about the way things are without looking at the bigger picture (as I have tried to address).


Those were the three main arguments, the core of my anti-feminist apologia if you like.

So with that in mind, when you say,

bestkeptsecret wrote:Feminists are about securing and maintaining equality for women via constructive persuasive debate and peaceful protest.


I respectfully disagree.

Feminazi's are about securing and maintaining equality for women where it benefits them, without wishing to accept the downsides of equality, and that isn't really equality at all. They try to further their cause through aggression, shaming, attacking everyone that doesn't agree with everything they say, including other women. They do not seek constructive debate. They undermine feminists in the same way as the suffragettes undermined the suffragists.


Which is why for the most part I disregarded feminazis in the OP:

The reason why now I don't think there is a real basis for modern feminism in egalitarianism is not just based on the actions and opinions of a radical minority feminists ('feminazis')


Or that there are a minority of feminazis that choose to push their own agenda?


There are a few - the feminazis - that will openly and vocally marginalise and deny the existence of men's issues


As you can see from the above, I have mostly addressed what I consider to be feminist apologia and left out or disregarded feminazi rantings. I even justify feminists on the grounds that they genuinely believe they are about true equality and genuinely want to see a positive change in the world. I just think that what they see as positive change is misguided.

Hopefully this will elucidate my stance and bring us closer to a more informative discussion.

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