With #GamerGate floundering, the Internet Douchebag Squad whips up a #Shirtstorm

My oath, I’m glad I slept late and missed this clusterfuck of pretending rabid anti-feminist (which is, bluntly, anti-women ) people are really feminists deep down inside. Fuck that shit.

Right now postmodernism seems to be mostly “Do you want to assert a belief that makes no damn sense at all? Just throw a vague reference to Foucault in there and yay, postmodernism!”

Minds made of swiss cheese, I swear.

I, also, would not touch swiss cheese with a ten foot pole. Team cheddar!

@kirbywarp

Oh oh oh oh oh oh!

“Pacific Rim”

Oh oh oh oh oh oh!

“Pacific Rim”

This looks suspiciously like the guy getting the girl to me.

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140405165007/pacificrim/images/e/ea/Mako_and_Raleigh_rescued.jpg

Puddlegum:

Well, not really. One can have beliefs about equality and not be a feminist. Egalitarianism is a thing. Gonna echo Cassandrakitty here; actions speak louder than words.

Yes, one can have beliefs that are feminist without being a feminist. That was the point. As I said, I don’t consider Sommers a feminist, a statement that CassandraKitty ignored. And neither did Grumpy Old Man, which was also ignored. CassandraKitty said prove she has any basic feminist beliefs — not actions. The belief that women should have equality to work and be professors is a basic feminist belief and a relatively new one in our lifetimes. (And it’s a belief that is still often challenged, including by legislators — it’s interesting how quickly we’ve taken it for granted and believe that it’s safe when it is constantly being threatened. Women professors are still less likely to be hired, promoted, granted tenure and make it into administration than male professors, for example.) That Sommers has stated that she believes that women should be equal under the law is also a feminist belief. Sommers can in fact have feminist beliefs while not being a feminist and in her particular case, working against feminist efforts.

Feminism is an idea that has lead to several movements at different times. It is not limited to one movement. A person can be a feminist and believe in the idea without also being an activist. A person can be a feminist and not want to call herself a feminist. Women of color often do not like to be called feminists or identify with the feminist movement because of the racism they experienced from white feminists in the past and because they feel feminist activism is still dominated by those white women. Young women believe in the equality of women, but are reluctant to call themselves feminists because they believe feminists are only a particular group that hates men and promote division in their actions. Conservative women may believe in the equality of women but disagree that certain problems of discrimination exist or require legal action.

Words are actions, and while actions are certainly an indicator of things, there is the issue of how and who judges the actions. When Emma Watson spoke for the HeForShe program, many felt she was a feminist helping the call to action. Others think the HeForShe program and Watson’s speech were damaging to feminism, reinforcing that men should decide what constitutes sexism for other men, etc. There are some black people, conservatives and liberals among them, who believe in respectability politics as a strategy for activism — that black people should not use violence, be model citizens, invest in education, etc., and use some strategies that worked for them somewhat in the 1960’s. There are other black people who believe that’s just a form of racism and victim blaming, and other strategies are needed that are angrier, more aggressive or confronting, etc. The Catholic Church says Catholics should not use birth control to be Catholics. Ninety-eight percent of them take the action of using birth control and still consider themselves to be Catholics.

Black conservatives don’t have to join the KKK. They can just join the Republican party (which has some members and politicians who were in the KKK or have had white nationalists on their staff, as we read in the news.) Those black conservatives may be firmly against racism and believe in equality but also work in and support a political party aggressively working against racial equality — actions which the black conservative may not see as doing that. If a white liberal tells the black conservative that he’s a self-hating racist, which is the bigoted action — the black conservative working against legal equality protections or the white man saying he’ll define racism for the black man? Both are, basically, at least perhaps in our judgments.

So, while I agree that I don’t find Sommers to be a feminist, in my opinion, and to be, in fact, a damaging activist against feminism, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have feminist beliefs at all. Nor does it mean that people who are actively feminist don’t have some beliefs that are anti-feminist, consciously or unconsciously. It does not mean that these situations are always cut and dried and simplified, which is what Grumpy was wondering about.

Take Taylor and his shirt. I would assume, if you asked everyone in that agency if they are feminists, that most of them would say yes, they were, including Taylor. And yet, Taylor committed a sexist action. Others committed a sexist action not making him change the shirt. Women were discriminated against into keeping quiet about the shirt by sexism — they couldn’t be activists. The female reporter who interviewed Taylor didn’t start screaming into her microphone about his sexist shirt.

So by their actions, ye shall know them, doesn’t work very practically in many circumstances, or at least not in a simplified manner. And people’s awareness of the racism, sexism, etc. we’re all steeped in can change, as I’m sure that it’s done for Taylor. Sommers has obviously chosen a different path — but even she has feminist beliefs, and is marked by the advancement of the idea of feminism from the past. And that’s a good thing for feminist efforts, even if Sommers is not. There’s nothing wrong with looking at that contradiction — that she holds feminist beliefs and yet works against feminism as her career. We’re not going to be able to do much about what she’s trying to sell if we don’t look at it and consider where it comes from.

Splaining–not just for dudes!

If someone decides to wax pedantic about how Coulter is also expressing feminist ideas on a deep spiritual level or whatever I may end up turning to drink.

Fuck it, I’m going out for a drink anyway. Or I’m going to try, depends if I can find a place with people I know. If I’m successful, I’m getting a cider, hopefully Sommersby or Magner. What’s your poison?

I have a nice bottle of sake in the fridge but honestly, if this keeps up I think I’m going to need something stronger.

Vodka for me. Straight.

Bloody hell, this might be the most fucked-up thread I’ve ever been in here.

Bina – to any reasonable person, signing a statement that you will not rape anyone should have the same emotional impact as a statement that you will not eat the giraffe. Why would you be distressed by affirming that you won’t do something you wouldn’t do anyway?

That is assuming that the underlying premise is, in fact, correct.

Exactly. And that, I suspect, is where our trolly interlocutor falls on his ass. Assuming that this even happened (and for the record, I deeply doubt it), why be offended by being told not to do something you have no intention of doing anyway? Did he get this touchy when the Driver’s Ed instructor told him to stay between the lines, keep to his lane, and obey the road signs? Do “Don’t Drink and Drive” PSAs offend him this much, too? If he owns a gun, did he bellyache about having to get a hunting licence and firearms registration? And so on.

There’s a great meme making the rounds of Facebook lately: If you’re sitting in a deck chair beside a pool, and the lifeguard orders some rowdy kids nearby not to horse around, do you take offence? Because this is what that amounts to. The huffy-defensive “Not All Men/Help, Help, I’m Being Repressed” reaction is pointless and melodramatic.