Identity is a part of appraising the world and society because each person has an identity. No-one is the faceless everyman of classical liberalism.

We are white, black, gay, trans, philosophers, etc., etc. Circumstances which affect an individual constitute a life of somone within an identity. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Rejecting the ideal of the faceless everyman as an ideal looks like regress to me. If there is some "essence" in race or gender, then the racists and sexists are right. If you're only talking about personal histories informing one's worldview, then of course that's true. But don't we strive toward a sort of universality, away from our varied histories? If the transcendence of race/gender/sexuality in some kind of humanism isn't the goal, then what is? It seems like a historical accident that whites did so much colonizing. Or is there a "white essence" that is capitalistic and imperialistic and hates Gaia? Reading some quotes from that lecture, it's hard not to see some magical, utopian thinking.

The men in the "ally" group are far from embarrassing. They are secure enough in themselves to let women have authority in this context. If the women say they want to speak about something, they let them, without getting angry that they aren't the voice or authority of the moment. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This is what I was talking about in my last post, about how the social justice movement is just about increasing one's status. Expounding the virtuous nature of feminist men looks like another attempt to garner status when it comes from a feminist.

Umm, I tried to reply to your post but I accidentally hit "flag" and now I cannot un-flag :( Sorry about that!

But regarding "virtue". The anti-"regressive" crowd has popularized what almost amounts to a new kind of informal fallacy they call "virtue signaling". Virtue signaling is essentially whenever someone says or does something that is designed to give spectators the impression that the individual is very virtuous (and therefore has a more valid position), but does not necessarily address any specifics or content beyond the nature of their own virtue. It's very much a fallacious appeal to "virtuous character", but what makes it different from a regular appeal to character is that the "virtue" is applied to the individual themselves rather than being applied to any specific argument.

By applying "virtue" to one's own identity within identity politics, the audience will ascribe more inherent validity to the "experiences" of someone with virtue. For white males in the movement this is an especially important reality because without appealing to their own virtue, they have no way to justify standing shoulder to shoulder (in solidarity, or in debate) with those of oppressed identities. That is of course, if they can even make it through the progressive stack in the first place.

I try my best to ignore "virtue signaling" whenever I see it because you don't need to address it in order to win an argument unless the argument is whether or not the person is virtuous.. That said, with the particular (minority) brand of feminist we've been describing, it is important to understand it as an inherent feature of their rhetoric which stems from their focus on "identity" as a source of valid opinions. Virtue signaling is a defense to the standard intersectional feminist position which vilifies and denigrates non-victim classes by blaming them for all problems and further goes on to exclude their ideas on the basis that their identity invalidates them. It's pretty much necessary to do if you want to participate in their discussions as a white male.

Indeed, that's the point. Status is not, as you are imagining, something irrelevant to the question of social justice. You are treating like it's just postering over whether someone is a favourite. (that does happen sometimes, often to the detriment of talking about the status which matters-- see squabbling over who is a "true feminist" ).

Status is the key concern. All feminists have been concerned with it. The point if the movement is no give women more status: legal rights, education rights, working rights, reproductive rights, a voice over their own lives, to be respected as an authority in some relevant situations, etc., etc.

Praising the men who understand and respect feminist arguments is about status. It's to point out that, contrary to what the classic liberal masses will assert, that these men are not embarrassing cowards for allowing women to be the authortive voice on feminist issues.

The fact the classical liberal reads status as an irrelevant concern is an indictment on their philosophy. If the social concern is the rights, valuing and authority of individual, how can arguments about status be considered irrelevant? It's what we are supposed to be concerned about. The point has always been to increase the status of indivduals who belong to various groups in society.

Classical liberals can do whatever they want. I'm not particularly concerned with their philosophy. Your use of "classical liberal masses" is noted, however. Those low-status plebs!

Praising the men who understand and respect feminist arguments is about status —

And if you happen to be one of them, there's a nice status bump in it... For you.

That said, with the particular (minority) brand of feminist we've been describing, it is important to understand it as an inherent feature of their rhetoric which stems from their focus on "identity" as a source of valid opinions. Virtue signaling is a defense to the standard intersectional feminist position which vilifies and denigrates non-victim classes by blaming them for all problems and further goes on to exclude their ideas on the basis that their identity invalidates them. It's pretty much necessary to do if you want to participate in their discussions as a white male. — VagabondSpectre

If the door price is undergoing a lot of irrelevant posturing, then maybe the people in question are not worth speaking with.

The fact the classical liberal reads status as an irrelevant concern is an indictment on their philosophy. If the social concern is the rights, valuing and authority of individual, how can arguments about status be considered irrelevant? It's what we are supposed to be concerned about. The point has always been to increase the status of indivduals who belong to various groups in society. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Status is always largely going to be earned. I think liberals value the rights/liberties of the individual. But what is this authority? Over whom? We can earn positions in economic/artistic hierarchies by winning the respect and admiration of other free individuals.

There will never be equality of individuals. Some are born smart, beautiful, healthy, etc. Others are not. Some use their freedom to become smarter, more beautiful, more healthy. Others do not. No one can fix that, unless we get Brave New World and create the Model T human to salve covetousness. We'd also need a direct democracy of clones, I suppose, but even in this outlandish fantasy the slightly differing environment would produce superiority. And these superior clones would seek one another out as worthy of friendship, partnership, marriage. They would paint stars on their bellies. (The Sneetches) Life is preference in action. The brain is like an evaluation machine.
We can piously fake an equal regard toward everyone that we do not have, but this implicitly confesses a preference for and the superiority of just that sort of pious person. And it's ridiculous. Who doesn't see the "damned" hanging around the city, broken in spirit

What we can do is strive toward equality before the law as well as economic conditions that allow even the poorest a chance to develop their potential and live like human beings in the meantime. IMV, one of the keys to maturity is to overcome the victim myth and the fantasy that one's past is crippling. Even if one's past was more crippling than usual, ignoring this is perhaps a good strategy.

I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to talk to racists and sexists who at least admitted their racism and sexism. What's creepy about this group is that they are one with their enemy, completely obliviously. The height of ignorance is perhaps belief in one's innocence and in the perfect guilt on one's enemy. As someone wrote somewhere, look for methodical cruelty in those who think they are doing the Lord's work. Some newfangled Inquisition comes to mind. 1984. But they create an equally rabid opposition by their extremeness, so maybe the world won't go mad, after all.

I use "masses" as a descriptive of the many, not as a reference to the lower classes. Many of the "classical liberals masses" are so called "elites." Some of them are even amongst social justice communities of the Left.

There is a status bump for the group in question. The response to this is telling. For women to have a status bump, is considered the most horrific or irrelevant outcome.

What exactly is wrong with women having a nice status bump? Is there problem with their voices being considered authortive on issues which affect them? Are we meant to trust arguments like VagabondSpectre has made in this thread, which rejects these issues have any relevance?

One of key points here is it is not always about you. Sometimes the status of someone else is more important than yours. In some contexts, others are aware of more than you. One does not automatically have the status of being a relevant authority.

With respect to radical and intersectional feminism, this is a major issue for many men. They cannot accept they are not the relevant authority. The reality of giving status to women terrifies them. To have what they think is important on hold for a moment is totally unacceptable. Those women are merely speaking irrealvance which has nothing to do what really matters.

That's the classical liberal myth. A just society is, supposedly, found in when everyone is entirely equivalent: the "free everyman" without a face. The utopian vision where people transcend difference to live in a world where status irrelevant.

Intersectionalist philosophy might have the appearance of utopian thinking in some cases, but it's direction of thought is the opposite. The story of solution is frequently rejected. There is oppression in many instances which cannot be resolved. Nothing can undo, for example, the horrors of colonialism on various indigenous people around the world. In the the modern world, the differences between individuals put the "equality" envision by classical liberalism beyond us-- to be the faceless everyman would be to destroy us as an individual. We couldn't be anyone. We would have no status at all.

"Equality" is not the concern of the intersectionalist. A number of them might speak of "equality" in terms rhetorical posturing, as in our society it has come to mean "just social organisation," but it's not an ideas of what society ought to look like. Justice is what is important to them. Not a status of fiction, but status in practice. In some cases "equality" can function (e.g. most laws, economic means), but in other situations status means being something other people are not-- a woman being trusted on the way society treats her over the men who disagree, the women with the right over men to choose when her pregnancy is terminated, etc., etc.

The intersectionalist's destruction of utopian thinking is what brings them most into conflict with classical liberals. Classical liberalism "equal regard" for the value and speech of everyone is revealed to be a pious fake. The group of men sits there (e.g. many in this thread) saying: "Everyone is entitled to have their voice heard. All opinions are equal and relevant," while dismissing the woman's voice about her place in society has any relevance.

And it's ridiculous. Who doesn't see the "damned" hanging around the city, broken in spirit

What we can do is strive toward equality before the law as well as economic conditions that allow even the poorest a chance to develop their potential and live like human beings in the meantime. IMV, one of the keys to maturity is to overcome the victim myth and the fantasy that one's past is crippling. Even if one's past was more crippling than usual, ignoring this is perhaps a good strategy. — Hoo

The classical liberal doesn't see. (particularly evident in responses to description of black oppression in the US. The way the social system discriminates against the black community, whether justly or not,
is considered irrelevant because it's just the "equal" law being applied).

They ignore them to hold everyone is free and equal. Their utopian vision protects itself. Society becomes a question of aiming to eliminate difference rather than to respect the ones which are there as much as possible. Question of social justice get reduced to things which can be made equal (e.g. laws money), as if that were the extent of improvement which was possible. Descriptions which identify failings and actions to make improvements, not to "perfection" but to "better," in some areas are dismissed.

The intersectionalist doesn't have a victim myth. Oppression is descriptive, not causal. Any crippling is a feature of the present (i.e. how the world exists now), not a necessary outcome of what has been done to someone in the past. People should ignore their oppressive past with respect to making their future. It doesn't define their future. The only limit is present situation.

Indeed, it's for this reason that "overcoming" description of past oppression has no relevance in maturity. To say: "X oppressed me in the past" enforces no limit on one's future. It only describes what happens in the past. Intersectionality certainly has "victims" in the sense that it describes many people as oppressed in the present. Sometimes it even has "victims" in the sense of demanding repatriations. Neither of these a limits on anyone's ability to get out of oppression. The former is just describing something which is occurring, the latter is a recompense for injustice.

That's the classical liberal myth. A just society is, supposedly, found in when everyone is entirely equivalent: the "free everyman" without a face. The utopian vision where people transcend difference to live in a world where status irrelevant. — TheWillowOfDarkness

No. I believe I stressed that status variation or hierarchy will always be with us. My vision is hardly utopian. To the degree that I take politics seriously (considering that it's most just fashion, unless one has billions to spend on elections), I'd like gender and skin-color and sexual preference to not be problems for folks. Maybe it'll get better, but we'll probably never escape it altogether. If we leave this planet at some point and meet other intelligent species, that might do the trick. But as a rule we seek out-groups to project our shadow on. For instance, the "colonizer" is an easy shadow projection of a speaker who has a sort of colonial condescension toward the sacred victim. Look to the person who dominates the space with her voice. Politicians and moralizers almost never admit to wanting attention and power. Their motives are altruism and justice, pure and simple, right?

Question of social justice get reduced to things which can be made equal (e.g. laws money), as if that were the extent of improvement which was possible. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Beyond equal laws equally enforced and some kind of economic safety net (also equally distributed), it's hard to imagine what you have in mind if not institutional racism or sexism, etc., justified in terms of a 'benevolent' ideology that others correctly perceive as a threat.

Oppression is descriptive, not causal. Any crippling is a feature of the present (i.e. how the world exists now), not a necessary outcome of what has been done to someone in the past. People should ignore their oppressive past with respect to making their future. It doesn't define their future. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I agree. But is this really the message that's being communicated? We see demands for trigger warnings, etc. Having-been-victimized is currency. I can imagine a person unhappy that nothing sufficiently terrible has happened to them yet. "Well, X was raped and Y survived incest, but I'm just a little square white girl..."

Indeed, it's for this reason that "overcoming" description of past oppression has no relevance in maturity. To say: "X oppressed me in the past" enforces no limit on one's future. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I sort of agree and sort of don't. Oppression that doesn't affect one's future shape is hardly worth mentioning. But, yeah, we can work out the kinks in our soul by acknowledging that the harm done to us wasn't deserved. It was the bite of a dog, human nature, reality. Justice is something we try to carve into this chaos, and our flickering images of it vary --which is much of the chaos, as we bark our fevers at one another.

So far, this exchange has looked like this:

Me: "The social justice movement is composed of people who want to increase their own social status by advertising that they have the right opinions."

You: "No, you're wrong. Not only are you wrong, but people who have the same opinions as me are more secure and virtuous than everyone else, and people who don't have those opinions are insecure and terrified of change."

I rest my case.

What exactly is wrong with women having a nice status bump? Is there problem with their voices being considered authortive on issues which affect them? Are we meant to trust arguments like VagabondSpectre has made in this thread, which rejects these issues have any relevance?

One of key points here is it is not always about you. Sometimes the status of someone else is more important than yours. In some contexts, others are aware of more than you. One does not automatically have the status of being a relevant authority. — TheWillowOfDarkness

So you're essentially saying "we should not trust Vagabond's arguments because his penis makes him less aware".

Nobody should "trust arguments"; we use logic and reason to appraise their soundness, their validity, and their strength. That's what philosophy tends to look like. Do I really have to point out that it is fallacious to say "This person's position is more correct because they have X genitals and Y skin color and Z sexual identity"?

In order to perhaps facilitate a better discussion, pretend that everything I say is generated by a room filled with a million monkeys on a million typewriters. That way you cannot possibly try to assassinate my character by appealing to my gender or race as if it is some sort of flaw in my argument.

Alternatively, you could pretend that I am a gay black woman, (I assure you there are gay black women out there who do agree with my positions on the gender pay gap in the west, rape culture in the west, and sexist micro-aggressions in the west), but that might prove more difficult for you, since you feel that the identity of a speaker makes their words more and less true and given that gay black women have the most "authority" on the issues which we're discussing. I really do feel like it would be more productive to speak with you if I outright lied about my gender and race and sexual identity so you simply could not derail the discussion by making it about whether or not I have hidden and internalized misogyny, or the like.

If you would like to discuss "rape culture" or the gender pay gap, I would be happy to; I believe that these two issues do not aptly describe western society. We can get into why I hold these positions, or if you like you could just say that I hold these positions because of my penis, and am therefore wrong.

Ad hominems and motte-and-bailey arguments are the bread-and-butter of the social justice movement. Sanctimony is liberally applied in both cases.

You've misunderstood my point then. I agree people are trying to increase their own social status, either in terms of a social movement (e.g. trying to improve or respect some issue which affects a particular group) or in terms of their own argument (e.g. we should listen to someone who knows about an issue when they talk about it, rather than just dismissing what they say because we think something else).

My point is this is a good thing. To be concerned out status in these terms is to understand that individuals have a place in society, that human social relationships are not just a matter of saying "everyone's free and has a wise opinion when they speak."

SINCE everyone may not be familiar with motte-and-bailey arguments, here is a brief discussion (This is at "Practical Ethics" an Oxford University site.)

From this page there is a link to an amusing discussion of motte-and-bailey arguments by a poster at Landover Baptist Church.



Green Alert: The site is satirical.

There is something similar about the threatening, edgy, hostility of right wing religious zealots and status-seeking, intersectional, oppressed, colored, female gendered, colonized zealots. There's a If you are not FOR us... (and we'll decide how "for us" you are, and whether you even can even count as "for us") then you are AGAINST us which you almost certainly are if you happen to have a penis, especially a white one.

Status is always largely going to be earned. I think liberals value the rights/liberties of the individual. But what is this authority? Over whom? We can earn positions in economic/artistic hierarchies by winning the respect and admiration of other free individuals. — Hoo

That seems to assume that people are "ideal adjudicators," where they'll judge people on merit without bias. I don't think it's the case that everyone is an ideal adjudicator, though. Lots of people have biases, and those biases can be against women just because they're women, or against blacks just because they're black, or against police just because they're police, or whatever.

(I actually don't believe that people can be without bias period, but not everyone has biases against types/categories, such as biases against women, etc.)

My approach to difficulties with what 'feminism' means, and whether one agrees with whatever that is, is my usual approach of rejecting the use of 'isms' and instead focusing on the beliefs themselves. So rather than think I am in favour of feminism, I instead think that I am in favour of specific policies, like universal free access to family planning, abortion on demand, equal pay for equal work and, in less developed countries, equal rights to things like attending school, dress, permission to drive, permission to work, ownership of property etc. If somebody asks me whether I support feminism, I'll reply that I don't know what that means, but if they'd care to ask my opinion on a specific policy that relates to gender I'd be delighted to answer.

My daughter, who is very passionate about these issues, strongly disagrees with me and asserts that it's important to identify and support the 'feminism' label itself, and hence the passionate arguments about what the word means are essential. She thinks I'm a cop-out by deprecating labels.

I'd like to understand her position better, but it's hard to do that with one so passionate (don't get me wrong. I love that she is so passionate about important issues). If anybody in this 'safe space' could explain why some feel the label is important, rather than the policies themselves, I'd appreciate the opportunity to learn about that.

BTW : thanks for the link on motte-and-bailey arguments. I'd heard the term before but didn't know what it was. Now I do, and I think it's a really helpful concept. I doubt their use is correlated with a concern about social justice, as has been suggested, but that's a separate point.

My approach to difficulties with what 'feminism' means, and whether one agrees with whatever that is, is my usual approach of rejecting the use of 'isms' and instead focusing on the beliefs themselves. So rather than think I am in favour of feminism, I instead think that I am in favour of specific policies, like universal free access to family planning, abortion on demand, equal pay for equal work and, in less developed countries, equal rights to things like attending school, dress, permission to drive, permission to work, ownership of property etc. If somebody asks me whether I support feminism, I'll reply that I don't know what that means, but if they'd care to ask my opinion on a specific policy that relates to gender I'd be delighted to answer. — andrewk

These are very good points, and I agree for the most part. When you claim some broader "ism," different people often have different things in mind regarding just what views it refers to--usually hinging on just what authors they're familiar with. In their mind, they'll assume you agree with the whole package as they conceive of it, so you often don't know just what it is you're taken as agreeing with.

The only reason I say "for the most part" is that sometimes it's handy to apply an "ist" term to oneself (or even a bunch of them) when you're trying to quickly convey some of your general views--like when you're introducing yourself on a site like this. But on the downside, that can be more trouble than it's worth if you're subsequently going to have to spend a bunch of time trying to fix mistaken first impressions.

If anybody in this 'safe space' could explain why some feel the label is important, rather than the policies themselves, I'd appreciate the opportunity to learn about that. — andrewk

Speaking for myself, I identify as a feminist - a male feminist - and I think it's important if only to normalize the term, to make it absolutely pedestrian; that is, if one believes in the sorts of things you do (family planning, equal pay, etc), then why not call yourself a feminist? I remember in class once, a tutor asked us - who here is a feminist? - and while alot of people put up their hands, I didn't. I wasn't made to feel guilty about this or anything, it was simply a survey kind of question in the context of a class reading of a feminist text. But I asked myself afterwards quite seriously what it was that prevented me putting my hand up. I couldn't think of any good reason other than that, well, it felt kind of 'girly' to call myself one. I figured this was not quite a good enough reason, especially given that it was clear that my classmates who did identify as feminist and I were more or less in agreement about our views on women, and while I hesitated for a good few years after that class, I'm now comfortable calling myself a feminist (I'm not saying this is the only reason why people don't call themselves feminists - they may be other, perfectly valid reasons - I'm just explaining my own route there).

And that sense of 'comfort' I think is something that ought to go along with that label; the idea of feminism often arouses discomfort, if not hostility, and a big reason is that it is and can be discomforting and hostile. But if you can 'own' that label, and if, as far as you know, you're neither a hostile nor a threatening person (in general!) then so too can feminism be a perfectly 'normal' thing. The label is 'open' to everyone, and if one despairs at some of it's practitioners, all the better to take the opportunity to give the label a better name. Especially so if 'they' are fighting for the same general things that 'you' are. This doesn't automatically mean one will be a 'good feminist' - I still catch myself harbouring prejudice all the time - but trying to live up to that self-imposed label works nicely to remind oneself that one can do better than one is currently doing.

In this sense taking on the label of feminist turns back an 'external division' ('us vs them'/ feminists vs. the world) into an internal one: it becomes a matter of asking how I can be a better feminist than I am. But the more important part is that taking on the label normalizes it. It can show the world that feminism doesn't have to be something scary, something 'other people' do, a monolith that imposes. It makes it comfortable, something close to home, something that belongs to you as much as anyone else. It also makes it imperfect, and something to struggle with, but that's OK. I don't know if this is the 'right' answer to your question, but it does reflect 'my' answer to it. Feminism should be everyday, pedestrian, uncontroversial and 'ownable' by anyone. Anyway, that's my 'if I can feminist so can you' speech.

Thank you StreetLight. Very thought-provoking.

That seems to assume that people are "ideal adjudicators," where they'll judge people on merit without bias. — Terrapin Station

Well, I doubt either of us believe in some fixed vision of merit or absence of bias. Legislating against sexism and racism is obviously good. The use of free speech against sexism and racism is also great. But 'benevolent' sexism (and racism) casts an obvious shadow. I'm guessing there are some reasonable defenders 'good' sexism/racism out there, but I'm sure there are crazies out there too. I've read them in their own words.

One negative reading of "idealist" is as a person who does what is 'right' without calculating the consequences. If improvement were really the point, I'd expect the language to be more inclusive, less scapegoating. Problem-fixers suggest realistic alternatives, not devils to blame and exorcise. They don't build a persona that depends on the continuation of the problem. Where would some of these folks be without a victim to rescue and an oppressor to accuse?

The emptiness of "who is a feminist" or "true feminism" also comes out in the conflicts over "man-hating", "extremists" or "TERFs." People want to say they "are not really feminist" to make a politcal point, but do not consider the breadth of postion involved.

Any "man-hater", "extremist" or "TERF" is most certainly a feminist-- they are concerned about protecting and advancing the rights of women. On some issues, they just aren't very good. But such failures do not amount to an absence of feminism.

Indeed, some times they are better feminists than many others. Consdering I fall under the trans* umbrella, you might think my ultimate enemy would be TERFs. Surely their hatred of trans women would mean their feminism was nothing like mine? But it's not true. In many respects, our understanding aligns when talking about the oppression of women.

Philosophically, I have more in common with a TERF than many of the mainstream liberals who discuss (or rather dismiss) feminism. In many ways, TERFs care about women's rights just like me, despite their abhorrent understanding of trans women and biological essentialism.

Given the earlier discussion of those who say "men can only be allies," it's worth pointing out how the substanceless of "who is feminist" means it has no impact on a man's feminism if he has one. So what if some feminists say "I'm only an ally" because my body is AMAB? How does that impact on my feminism? I don't become any worse or better as a feminist just because some people say I'm "only an ally." It simply isn't relevant to whether or not a qualify as a feminist.

The controversy over men "only being allies" is really about whether men get to dismiss what feminists say, not whether they can be feminists.

Satire has been as oxygen to me of late, especially with respect to the current topic of discussion. Of course, that is eminently due to the fact that I'm a racist and misogynist. :)

That article actually helped me to understand the motte and bailey a bit more clearly, when I googled it I found myself at "The Rational Wiki" which gave the following definition:



Seems like the rational-wiki has a slightly politicized description of the motte and bailey. Nominative irony?

Any "man-hater", "extremist" or "TERF" is most certainly a feminist-- they are concerned about protecting and advancing the rights of women. On some issues, they just aren't very good. But such failures do not amount to an absence of feminism. — TheWillowOfDarkness

But that's exactly why many women are ambivalent about the term. They don't want to be confused with man-haters. It's obviously why some men are ambivalent about the term.

I looked up TERF and found this quote:

transgender woman are in fact men using an artificialy constructed feminine apperance to exert patriarchy from the inside of feminism and believe it or not, to gain access to womans bathrooms in order to rape them. — Brennen

(Those aren't my misspellings.)
This "patriarchy" is like the devil. Men are the witches (excepting maybe those who cheer from the bench). Is there actually a patriarchy? Well, maybe, but who can use such a sullied word now? 'Rape' is also being smeared around like mayonnaise. If everything is rape, nothing is rape. If everything is patriarchy, nothing is patriarchy.

Only a tiny segment of the population is this twisted, thankfully. I don't take it any more seriously than Stormfront or end-of-the-worlders hiding out in caves or Alex Jones' morbid porn self-righteously purveyed as hidden truth. I don't take politics terribly seriously, either, though. I think we improve our lives more directly by eating well, spending our money well, choosing our friends well, working hard. But then we crave religion, and resentful ideologies look like religions. We've got something on the cross and evil spirits like "patriarchy."

Greetings StreetlightX, fellow male feminist here!

I too wield the sensical and uncontroversial definition of feminism and liberally apply it to myself, not only because it reflects my true positions, but because like you I naively cling to the hope that doing so will encourage some other feminists to clean up their (f)acts. That said, it is idealism to believe that the ever evolving and diverging world of socio-moral/histrionic blame-rendering politics is ever going to converge toward the uncontroversial when controversy is the very fuel which sustains it's growth and existence. This does NOT mean that controversial subjects cannot be important and valid or important to consider, NOR does it mean that "blame rendering" does not have it's time and place, but it does mean that in order for "controversy-finding/blame-rendering politics" (again, not in and of itself a bad thing) to continue to exist as it has in the west, it MUST find controversy.

When we set out with the intention of finding presumably existent sexist oppression in the west (adopting a thick feminist lens) we are inherently biasing ourselves toward finding it. Not only are we made more likely to over-inflate the gravity and proportions of controversial issues that we do find, we're also more likely to completely miss or undervalue examples of "oppression" which might apply to men more so than women.

As sexist oppression against women has subsided in the west, so too has the need and urgency for justice seeking movements on their behalf. The need for our feminism in the west, has subsided. And yet, there are a group of inexplicably vocal "feminists" proliferating across the west whose primary focus is to address injustices in the west. It's simply the nature of all justice movements that the more outrage (their fuel) the stronger their support. And while these new "feminist" movements by no means represent a majority of society at large, they are the one's who are currently growing simply because they are generating the most outrage.

Because of this, the new (re)definition of various words and labels, including feminism, is important in that they are a means-to-outrage in and of themselves. From outside the "safe-space" your answer makes complete sense, and there's really no good reason for anyone to disagree with you, but disagree they will; disagree they must. In the hunt for fuel to burn, specific issues must become magnified and broader issues must also be invoked. This just happens to be the most recent news article returned after a google search of "feminism":

“Then I started discovering Audre Lorde and Angela Davis and all of these intricacies of feminism that were not being presented to me by these white feminist ‘icons.’” she continues. “It was only then that I realized how deep it is and how it’s more about undoing these walls that we have built around marginalized people — it’s not just about women and men. It’s the fact that the walls for me are different than the walls for Amandla [Stenberg].”

Because of this discovery, Blanchard’s definition of feminism has broadened. It’s not just working towards equality between men and women, but also “undoing patriarchal structures against marginalized people.” She stresses that when we talk about women, we must include women of color, as well as those who are LGBTQ and disabled.

The only thing I would point out about the above quote to make my point more clear is that when it says "we must include people of color as well as those who are LGBTQ and disabled", by "we must include", I think that in practice they mean "we must focus on...". Without this broadening of social injustice and the ensuing outrage, "feminism" would simply be an obsolete or much weaker social cause in the west. The only people that "intersectional feminism" seems to not want to include in their fight for justice are non-elderly able bodied cis-gendered (not transsexual) straight white males, because we are the only people who apparently are not a marginalized group. As such we make handy patsies when an enemy is called for who are both literally and figuratively morally obliged to always be at the back of the line.

Undoing patriarchal oppressive structures against ALL marginalized people sounds like a great political platform, but it is too broad to pragmatically come under one ultimate social theory to explain and rule them all. It creates a stronger social movement to unite disparate groups facing their own unique challenges and with their combined grievance have it's voice be heard, but this comes at great cost to the efficacy with which these different subgroups have their individual issues and their unique causes actually addressed and remedied. Individual societal issues become blurred and inter-conflated. The diversity of their sources and causes get boiled down to the single external factor which intersectional-feminism's own definitions explicitly exclude from it's fight; supremacist white patriarchy.

It is with great reluctance that I write these posts. It's really not a popular position to come out and oppose the agendas of any "equal rights movement" because it's not as if "too much equality" really seems like a bad thing... Right...? And yet, the pendulum of equality swinging away from the all-privileged white males can only swing so far before it begins to favor the opposite side. Right now about 60% of western university students are female, and while women's scholarships are not at all uncommon, the only "men's scholarship" that I currently know of was started by an MRA provocateur who is routinely censored, slandered, and otherwise silenced by the very same rabid brand of social justice campaigners that have been, at length, described in this thread. So called "mens rights talks" are routinely protested (rabidly) on the grounds that they are just anti-woman misogynist circle-jerks when in reality there are a host of societal issues facing men which really ought to be talked about and which people should have every right to talk about. Things like the prevalence of suicide among males, deaths in the work-place, a legislative and penal system which routinely and disproportionately afflicts men in both family and criminal law, the acceptability of violence being applied to men, and homelessness, all afflict men disproportionately. Regrettably something tells me that "intersectional-feminism" is not an appropriate lens through which to explore, understand, and address these problems.

In the same way that I am a "feminist" I am also a "men-inist"; more broadly I believe we should strive for a fair and egalitarian society. Give me two minutes with any westerner and I could have them assenting to this position without breaking a cranial sweat. But these are not the definitions that make any headlines, get any re-tweets, or inspire any blogs. I really cannot express how unfortunate and disappointing it is that these select few but passionate, vocal, and media-play-getting movements have become so focused upon portraying certain broad identities as victims while establishing other broad identities as aggressors, not because this portrayal accurately reflects reality or is useful to understanding contemporary problems, but instead because the state of victim-hood and the virtue of fighting against oppression are being used as the social and rhetorical currency which drives their internal ideological economy of outrage.

Hi Vegabond, I appreciate where you are coming from but in truth, I find discussions such as the one you're promoting unproductive. My feminism means focusing on issues that affect men and women with respect to gender disparities, and focusing on issues like 'social justice warriors' and 'outrage overreach' is a displacement of energy onto issues which are tangential and tactical. There is always a place for critical self-reflection, but given the overwhelming tendency of discussions about feminism to resolve into self-referential loops about feminism itself, rather than 'the issues' as it were, I simply have no desire to contribute to those discussions.

Here in this thread, yes, we're having a conversation about feminism itself rather than feminist issues, but you must understand the point I am raising: It's unproductive to broadly blame "white supremacist patriarchy" for all gender disparities just as it is unproductive to focus on the gender, race, or sexual identity of speakers as a source of legitimacy for someone's position. It is distinctly not productive to focus on identity, be it that of the victim or the oppressor, precisely because it obfuscates "the issues" which you would like to invest your energy in discussing.

Two of the main issues whose prevalence and magnitude in the west I am skeptical of are the "gender pay gap" and "rape culture", and while this is not a thread created to get into the specific complexities of these issues, I completely disagree with your assertion that this discussion is unproductive. This discussion describes a problem that requires correction, which is a collection of good-intentioned movements which are headed in a host of unreasonable and sometimes harmful directions.

The issues you raise are important, but they belong as much to feminism as they do a critique from without. What I find unproductive is not your raising of these issues, but your framing of them. You seem to take them as strikes against the very idea of feminism itself, whereas I would locate them as belonging to debates that ought to be conducted within feminism's ambit - as they regularly are. That your contribution to a thread on feminism has been almost exclusively focused on it's faults and it's controversies is anything but an innocent by-product of information sharing, but a pointed decision on your part. And there is very little reason to entertain such moves.

"White supremacist patriarchy" is descriptive not causal. Certain gender and racial disparities themselves constitute "white supremacist patriarchy," not some shadow actors in the background. It's not a force of conspirators which act to constrain the world to particular social organisation.

It's blamed in the sense that, to be rid of it, our society would have to cease being in a state of "white supremacist patriarchy." A question of removing states of the problem themselves, rather than attacking some pre-exisitng causes that making the world into that state.

Undoing patriarchal oppressive structures against ALL marginalized people sounds like a great political platform, but it is too broad to pragmatically come under one ultimate social theory to explain and rule them all. — VagabondSpectre

The only people that "intersectional feminism" seems to not want to include in their fight for justice are non-elderly able bodied cis-gendered (not transsexual) straight white males, because we are the only people who apparently are not a marginalized group. — VagabondSpectre

Intersectional philosophy is "exclusive" for exactly that reason. Trying to understand the oppression of the disabled, black trans women in the terms of the straight able-bodied white male will not work. One will become equivocated with the other, rendering the experiences of the other invisible. If we think about oppression of the able-bodied straight white male, we'll miss all the stuff related to being disabled, black and trans. On the other hand, if we try try the reverse, issues relating to the straight white man will be invisible (e.g. incarnation rates, lack of social support for white men in poverty, shifts in the economy which have destroyed the livelihoods of a short of straight white men, etc.,etc.).