Is feminism inherently negative?

[MJW]

It can be stated in a postive (yay women) or negtive (f u partarcy) way. I agree that the only thing that is all negtive is nillism.
However, due to the media, they come off as ranting off against socity (sic, men are evil; which happens to be negtive). asshem thinks how most feminists think. He's wrong there are many feminists who are uncovered by the media. If the idea can not be promulgated than it might as well not exist. I understand some of the modrates and even some of the more extreme side's vision.

In a democracy anything that is againist the status-quo says that socity is wrong. This is because the people have chosen to be in a 'male-dominate' socity. So they think that feminism is wrong otherwise they would do its polices. The people are realtively a unfied whole that thinks together.

Asshem is not talking about weather or not feminism has a good theory. He is talking about the movemeant in genral.

[MJW]

Originally posted by MJW
Hmmm.... I think his real real point is that the feminists are not helping their cause. There helping India move away from them.

He might consider the bolded part bad...

[molly bloom]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Is feminism inherently negative?

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

No I'm not.

I'd say you are- if you seriously think that mass rape is done to propagate the species or establish the dominance of one country's set of genes, you're more of a callow youth than I already take you for.

Human beings aren't like chimpanzees, or lions, or dogs, or cats- they don't 'show pink' and the males can't tell when women are fertile just by smell or looking at them.

It also doesn't explain why women of non-childbearing age would be raped- and pre-teen females and elderly females are raped- nor would it explain rape followed by mutilation and murder.

Perhaps you need to spend more time in female company. Or human society... and do a lot more reading.

Those effects ultimately derive from the reproductive aspect of sex (and rape, particularly rape by an invading army).

Oh dear. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

Shame and rape are not dependent on whether a woman conceives, or conceives and miscarries as a result of rape.

The act of violation- even if 'only' instrumental, with a hand, bottle, rifle, knife, et cetera, is enough in many societies to bring shame on the woman, and more bizarrely, on the man- his manhood, his ability to protect the woman has been belittled too.

But don't take my word for it- just read the reports of mass rapes in East Pakistan and the subsequent repudiation of Bengali women by their husbands and families.

In Darfur, the possession and rape is occasionally signified by cutting the woman's leg.

Amnesty International also examines in this document the consequences of the violence perpetrated against women, such as social stigmatisation, the consequences on their economic, social and health rights, and the destruction of the social fabric of their communities.

[...]

The Sudanese women interviewed by Amnesty International in Chad were very reluctant to talk about rape, for fear of being ostracized by their communities and families.

[...]

In many cases the Janjawid have raped women in public, in the open air, in front of their husbands, relatives or the wider community. Rape is first and foremost a violation of the human rights of women and girls; in some cases in Darfur, it is also clearly used to humiliate the woman, her family and her community.

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engafr540762004

I don't think many animals have access to abortifacients, abortion clinics or the option of suicide- all of which human rape victims have used or tried.

Shame would also appear to be an alien concept for animals- the rape of women in front of members of their community or immediate family adds that little extra touch of humiliation to an already degrading act.

It's irrelevant.

It's nothing of the sort- it's part and parcel of the act of violent possession for many rapists- and hardly essential for conception or receptivity or conducive to oestrus.

[MJW]

That post is okay Molly Bloom. I just hope this thread does not turn into a "The Selfish Gene" or Sudan/Iraq flamewar...

Sorry aneeshm

I have to go now...

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by MJW
It can be stated in a postive (yay women) or negtive (f u partarcy) way. I agree that the only thing that is all negtive is nillism.

No it can't. A promotion of women's equality and rights neccessarily challenges patriarchy. "Yay women" and "f u patriarchy" are inseperable, insofar as they are meaningful.

As far as the media goes, proponents of a normative ideology must always "rant against society." It's true that some feminists use more abraisive language than others, but that has to be taken as part and parcel of any movement, whether "mainstream" or not.

In a democracy anything that is againist the status-quo says that socity is wrong. This is because the people have chosen to be in a 'male-dominate' socity. So they think that feminism is wrong otherwise they would do its polices. The people are realtively a unfied whole that thinks together.

Did you choose that? Did I? I certainly don't remember the referendum. Patriarchy is not a matter of democracy. It is a matter of culture and institutions, which are not voted on or majoritarian in nature. Nobody has chosen patriarchy any more than they have chosen to be racists. People are taught these things, and even when they "un-learn" them they find that patriarchy is enshrined within institutions and concepts. "The people" do not think together, but they are under the same body of institutions and cultural norms that affect them in similar manners. Patriarchy is not democratic; it is, in fact, inherently undemocratic, as it devalues one set of human beings relative to another group.

Asshem is not talking about weather or not feminism has a good theory. He is talking about the movemeant in genral.

I like this name "Asshem" and I may have to keep using it.

But he's not criticizing certain feminists, is he? He's criticizing feminism. I think he made it abundantly clear in his opening post that he is, indeed, talking about the theory, and he believes that it is inherently "negative." I don't really care about what he thinks of the movement in general, because I don't think anyone who labels feminism as negative is in a very good position to analyze feminist movements.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by MJW
That post is okay Molly Bloom.

Well thanks...

If the purpose of rape or the impulse behind mass rape was really to further one's own or one's country's gene pool, then capturing the women and ensuring they carry the offspring full term would be the sensible thing- like the Roman 'Rape of the Sabine Women'- where the women are first abducted, then 'conditioned' into marrying their new husband-rapists.

Mass rape in war is often carried out by an invading army on a defeated enemy's populace- in Belgium in World War I and in Russia and Poland and in China in World War II.

[Kidlicious]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Is feminism inherently negative?

Originally posted by molly bloom
I'd say you are- if you seriously think that mass rape is done to propagate the species or establish the dominance of one country's set of genes, you're more of a callow youth than I already take you for.

Human beings aren't like chimpanzees, or lions, or dogs, or cats- they don't 'show pink' and the males can't tell when women are fertile just by smell or looking at them.

It also doesn't explain why women of non-childbearing age would be raped- and pre-teen females and elderly females are raped- nor would it explain rape followed by mutilation and murder.

Perhaps you need to spend more time in female company. Or human society... and do a lot more reading.

Burn!

Sorry Kuci.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by aneeshm


Very, very bad. Just how bad Europe will realise too late.

You can't stop changes in demographics. The're caused by development of society. Part of that development is liberation of women. You can't have a developed society with out free women.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


Ok, this comment is directed at arrian, kidicious and Imran.

Do you sincerely believe that a woman who chooses of her own free will to care and look after her children rather then working outside the home is the equal of a woman who chooses to work and make top dollar?

I agree women should not be discouraged from staying at home and looking after their children, just as they should not be discouraged from choosing their career to come first. I do believe that many women will be very happy if they choose to stay home with their children.

However, I would also argue that western society does not believe what they are saying. They believe that women should not stay at home, that they have an obligation to work, and that if they do not do so, they are not equal to their husbands.

I believe that women who choose not to work choose to be dependents, and dependents are not equal.

[Arrian]

To answer Ben's question, quoted above, yes I think that a woman who chooses to be a housewife/stay-at-home-mom is equal to a career woman.

However, I would also argue that western society does not believe what they are saying. They believe that women should not stay at home, that they have an obligation to work, and that if they do not do so, they are not equal to their husbands.

Believe that if you want. I don't believe that. In both cases, we're making observations about a rather large & complex thing ("western society").

edit: as pointed out below by Drogue, a "stay at home" mom works. Just not for wages.

-Arrian

[Drogue]

Originally posted by Kidicious
I believe that women who choose not to work choose to be dependents, and dependents are not equal.

As do women who work, who choose to be dependent on an employer. Women who raise children are working, they're working for their family though, as opposed to for an employer.

To illustrate this, take the example of a family with a family business. Say a shop of some kind. The man runs the business and does all of that side, whereas the woman runs the household. Or vice versa. Both are jobs that need to be done, and both are working for the family. Were the woman to work, a carer may need to be employed, again illustrating that childcare is valuable employment.

The husband is also dependent on the wife, if he works and she looks after children, as both are jobs that need to be done, and without both, it does not work. Or vice versa, obviously, as the man may decide to look after children and the woman work.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I think that as a commie (is Kid still a commie?), he wouldn't disagree that women working in the world are dependant on their employer and thus not equal to them.

[aneeshm]

Quite interesting.

The West sees a problem - inequality of women resulting from financial dependence on the man - and tries to solve it by making the woman into a man, or equivalent. This approach accepts the implicit assumption that the man is, in fact, superior.

Ideally, what should be done is to remove the dependence without turning a woman into a copy of a man. One method of doing this is to have classes of wealth which belong exclusively to women, and cannot he inherited by the men in a family, only the women. This is a concept known as stri-dhana.

To elaborate further how this works within the traditional model - the woman has two sources of this wwealth (let's call it that from now on, instead of the more Indic stri-dhana) - one is inheritance, and the other is what her husband provides her with.

It can be a tradition that the husband gives a certain percentage of his income after all expenses are met to his wife (as was the custom a long time ago). This wealth then became exclusively the woman's. She could choose to use it or save it. If she chose to save it, the husband could no longer lay claim to it, even if she died - it would pass to either the nearest female relative, or to any other female specified in the woman's will. Note that it is her choice whether or not to make that into wwealth in the first place - the caveat being that if she does, only women can inherit it or lay claim to it.

In cases of divorce, even if the woman is far richer than the man, the man cannot lay claim to wwealth.

As time goes on, (in around three generations) this little wwealth grows in size, to the point that within a few years of marriage, the woman is financially independent. All this has been achieved using non-coercive means, without the assumption of superiority of the man and the work he does, and without moving anyone out of their traditional role.

Of course, women can always choose to work if they so with, and to put their earnings into their wwealth, but ideally, it should not be a necessity.

[aneeshm]

Just one more thing, which I found interesting and quite comic.


As engineering students, we are expected, in the first year, to be acquainted with basic workshop technology. As I've already mentioned somewhere, there are more girls than men in our batch.

Now, today we had "basic threading" practice (the automated stuff comes for students of mechanical engineering, not for first-years), where we were expected to manually create the threads on a pipe. It required you to lubricate one end of the pipe, and push (hard) on the tool used to create the threads, and then manually (and forcefully) move the thing clockwise using the lever arms provided so that it cut grooves into the metal.

People were arranged in alphabetical order and paired into twos.

When it was a pair of two guys, there was no problem - they could do it easily. When it was a man and a woman, it was a given that the guy would do the work (proving that chivalry is not yet dead ), and the woman would watch. Most women didn't even try it unless the man asked her to - and no man would be caught dead trying to do that.

The problem arose when it was two women. They just didn't have the strength required to do the job!

Now there are a number of conclusions which could be drawn from this, by different people:

a) That women are not suited to engineering or work requiring more than a certain amount of strength
b) That the entire engineering course is sexist and that all things which require physical strength, such as work in the workshop, should be removed
c) That women, on average, lack strength, and should thus not be assigned tasks requiring it, or should have some male assisting them in such jobs

It was comic because after finishing the job, at about the time I was leaving, there was this duo of two women trying to get the tool to take and failing miserably. Both of them were quite frail and it was quite obvious that neither was up to the task.




What do the feminists say should be done in such a situation?

[Jon Miller]

What does working in the workshop have to do with engineering?

Jon Miller