TheFuckOffKid said:
Instead of a proposed hypothesis, we get categorical assertions from (some) feminists that posing nude is Definitely A Bad Thing, no questions asked, no discussion to be entered into. If you try and dispute this, you're treated as either an idiot or a traitor to the cause, or both.
Maybe in those cases, that's just more polemic as rhetoric but about other women's social awareness, and not actually aimed at addressing other women as it seems to be, eg. in as much as posing nude hurts feminism, some feminists' condescending comments about exhibitionists should hurt exhibitionists?
Maybe? or maybe not?
In any case all polemic is certainly not going to lead to an actual argument.
IronOrchid said:
while certain choices that women make are not feminist because they do not work to improve things for all women, we, as feminists, should not deny them the right to make those choices. For the fact that women can choose to align themselves in any position along a political spectrum is surely something that we, as feminists, should support.
I agree 100%. I don't think any feminist in the world argues that women should not be allowed to make certain choices.
IronOrchid said:
While we might be saddened or disappointed in the choices that other women make, we certainly should not condemn them simply because they have taken what power is available to them and have chosen something which goes against our ways of thinking. We can point out that their position is anti-feminist, but in doing so we should not imply that there is something intrinsically absurd about a woman choosing an anti-feminist position. Rather, if we want to convince people that feminist politics are the best choice for women, then we need to present good arguments in favour of feminism.
Agreed. I do happen to think it's, if not absurd, then regrettable for women to make anti-feminist decisions, and I find it infuriating when women or men make anti-feminist arguments in the name of feminism, though.
IronOrchid said:
This is not to say that I am in favour of fluffy cultural relativism. But rather that it is as important for feminists to recognize that if we believe in equal rights for all women, then women have a right to make choices that we would not make ourselves, just as we have the right to make choices which they would not make.
Towelly said:
The fact that women or men posing nude on this site is inconsistent with feminism (hypothetically, I disagree with Bitch Ph.D. on that)
I don't think I've stated a position on that, specifically. Just for the record.
Towelly said:
does not necessarily follow from the more general proposition that some intents and choices are more consistent with feminism than others, and some choices actively hurt women's further abilities to engage in choice-making. As such, you can agree with one while disagreeing with the other without being logically inconsistent.
Precisely.
Towelly said:
That being said, I do wish Bitch Ph.D. would be more clear about exactly what she's talking about when she's talking about the privileges of maledom. I say that in no small part because she seems to imply individual-level causation and perpetuation of gender discrimination when I'm thinking it's far more institutional bad faith, and very few men or women have direct control over the institutions governing social behavior in our society.
I honestly do my best. I agree that it's institutional far more than individual, and that is the argument I (believe I) consistently make. I'm pretty convinced that at least part of the inference that I'm accusing specific men is the result of unwarranted defensiveness and unrecognized identification with "men" as a privileged social class.
Towelly said:
As a lower-class male, I don't necessarily have to dress "sexy" to get ahead in the marketplace, but then again my future mating opportunities are defined and restricted by my getting ahead in the marketplace in a way that women's options are not. Like women, I didn't choose for that to happen, and I somehow doubt that there was any cabal of men who determined it to be that way. Rather, it's likely a byproduct of an economic system that encourages men and women to view the world in terms of rational self-interest coupled with a keen sense of dependency upon marketable items to determine status. Is it sexist? Hell yeah. Did men decide to make it that way? Not really.
I'm not so sanguine about this. I think that (some of) the disadvantages of lower-class guys are themselves an effect of sexism. I also wonder, when people talk about social class w/r/t men, if they are also considering the disadvantages lower-class *women* have as a function of both sexism and classism, or if they are thinking (again, in terms of that identification with "men" as a privileged class) strictly in terms of men v. men, ignoring the things they have in common with (and the ways they differ from) women of the same social class.
Towelly said:
As a lower-class male, I don't necessarily have to dress "sexy" to get ahead in the marketplace, but then again my future mating opportunities are defined and restricted by my getting ahead in the marketplace in a way that women's options are not. Like women, I didn't choose for that to happen, and I somehow doubt that there was any cabal of men who determined it to be that way. Rather, it's likely a byproduct of an economic system that encourages men and women to view the world in terms of rational self-interest coupled with a keen sense of dependency upon marketable items to determine status. Is it sexist? Hell yeah. Did men decide to make it that way? Not really.
I'm not so sanguine about this. I think that (some of) the disadvantages of lower-class guys are themselves an effect of sexism.
It sounds like you are agreeing, not disagreeing. I guess you are disagreeing about causation...ie Did men create this problem for themselves (or each Other) because they invented artificial class identities or did men create this problem because they created artificial gender identities. What if the answer is men created this problem because they invented artificial identities (period) ? To say that an identity has been created about men that is relative to other men without capital and to women can be accomplished with one single identity. Is it sexist to express sexism as an issue that is related to other problems? I'm not really sure how other people would respond to that.
TheFuckOffKid
NEWSWIRE
Australia
JUL 25, 2007 09:27 AM