How much of the negative aspects of feminism is actually because of feminists?

SnooBeans6591 · 2021-07-10T14:39:00+00:00

You don't mention the hypothesis that feminism is the cause of the divisive modern culture. I don't mean that I believe this to be the case, but it can as easily be that way around instead of the way you suggest. Maybe they are just generally intertwined - intersectionality and feminism seem to feed each other.

Maybe someone knows the history better, I don't know for sure.

DelightfulFronds · 2021-07-10T22:04:58+00:00

1 - It's a lot easier to fight for something when it is popular and powerful. Being a 'brave feminist' is the most establishment, safest position you can possibly take while still pretending to have a anti-establishment sheen. Essentially there is no risk to being a feminist anymore, in fact it's almost mandatory. So you can expect the number of vocal feminists to rise as the risk disappears.

2 - No movement that has reached its goals will just disband. It will instead look for new issues to fight, even if it has to make them up. These people have spent their entire life and career being feminists and they cannot suddenly say 'we won, lets disband.' moving in to more extreme idpol helps too. In an ironic way trivial issues are easier to get people on board with as they are easier to communicate, e.g. 'Manspreading'.

3 - Identity politics is easy. You just have to be a good person and that's it. It requires no real sacrifices, and no real thought. Solving poverty is a debate of massive, complex scope. Solving racism is, at most, being feisty on twitter. Do not mention that historical racism caused the current system of income equality and only fixing that, rather than 'anti racism' will fix it, because that's racist, somehow.

Feminism is the way it is because they won, and are now just furiously trying to run up the clock as much as possible.

lightning_palm · 2021-07-11T11:26:17+00:00

Patriarchy is not driven by men, but by the needs and requests of women. Feminism is a response to external threats becoming less, and now men are increasingly becoming the major (perceived) threat that is left. This reduced external threat allowed women to step outside the domestic sphere, and in turn also allowed men some freedom from their restrictive gender norms. However, I don't have hope that feminism, an evolutionary or societal response of women driven by their own self interest, will ever be able to free men of their harmful gender norms.

Women are not willing to let go of their victim-hood status, which is necessary if we want to see men as victims and women as perpetrators, where it applies. As long as women are not willing to sacrifice their life for their fellow men like men have done for women for many millennia, the feminist movement won't ever achieve true equality and freedom from toxic gender norms.

See for example the movie Wonder Woman (2017) - No Man's Land Scene (6/10) where Wonder Woman laments the treatment of "women and children" while at the same time brutally slaughtering enemy men. You see this pattern in a lot of modern movies.

Feminism wants agency for women, while retaining their victim-status. Feminists will help men, but only to the degree that it will help women.

Blauwpetje · 2021-07-10T19:56:44+00:00

I think a lot of it is true, but it's not a one-way street. I followed all kinds of discussions since, say, 2010, and feminism has been radicalized by different factors, but it has also been one of the radicalizing factors in society itself. 'Intersectional feminism' has more or less invented the concept of 'privilege'. CRT is in many respects a postmodern feminist theory. Big neoliberal corporations support this tendency, but if they could have supported more peaceful tendencies and make money out of it, they would have done so. Also, feminism doesn't so much despise the culture of 'former generations' as the culture of white men, even contemporary white men.

Consistent-Scientist · 2021-07-10T15:39:30+00:00

I think we have to be precise about what we talk here exactly. I am going to refer to feminism in western societies. It definitely will look somewhat different in other parts of the world.

There are disctinctions between different generations or waves of feminism that you hinted at. For simplicity's sake I just want to divide them in two different groups based on what they were fighting for. In the beginning the fight was mostly about equality by law. Being able to vote, own property, open bank accounts etc. I think it's a movement everyone who is reasonable can get 100% behind. The problems you mentioned mostly happened with feminism after equality before the law was achieved. It is now dealing mostly with much less tangible things like gender roles and empowerment. I think it's naturally much harder to form a cohesive action plan for things like that and get everyone behind it and it shows in multiple characteristics that developed and opened up the movement to a lot of criticism.

I think one of the core issues is the idea of unilateral oppression that is pervasive in pretty much all branches of feminism nowadays. Men are always the oppressors and women are the oppressed. And I can see why that idea is so enticing to a lot of women. It feeds into what psychology calls self-serving bias. Gender oppression acts kind of as a universal scapegoat that you can blame all your personal problems on. Everything you achieved is because you persevered against all odds and everytime you fail it's because (the patriarchical) society is holding you back. And this goes directly against the idea of empowerment and is ultimately something that holds these women back more than it helps them. So I'd argue feminism even should have a vested interest in counteracting that.

Not just feminism but also the left has a whole has gone the same way where it has largely rejected its previous focus on class issues almost entirely in favor of modern identity politics and has thrown aside its previous values like gender equality for a more group based morality where it matters more what group you a part of and not what you do.

Yes this is another issue. My theory is that it comes down to who the people are who drive modern leftist/feminist thinking. They're usually journalists, academics, writers, high income professionals. They're very privileged in general and taking up class issues would mostly go against their own financial interests. Because of how working conditions changed, most lower and middle class people simply don't have the time and energy to actively participate in political disucssion.

There is probably more that goes into it but these are the main things that are bugging me recently.

genkernels · 2021-07-11T01:13:46+00:00

Modern western politics, and to an extent culture, have also become increasingly polarized with an us vs them mentality going on an the middle ground disappearing at an alarming rate. This mirrors feminism a lot, not just in the usually "if you believe in gender equality then you're a feminist" but also in the whole anyone who criticizes feminism for any reason is a misogynist.

...Also the culture of millennials and Gen Z (my generation)

This is a very wrong way of thinking, because the problems with feminism were early, starting well before the Declaration of Sentiments. The us vs them concept of allyship began quite early also. It might not be completely wrong to link this to labour struggles which were pretty bitter and polarized themselves (think "which side are you on, boys, which side are you on"), but it may well be older than even the US labour movement. I'm not going to say that feminism didn't get it from some larger culture issues, but it certainly didn't come from anything recent. Rather the reverse, the recent polarization could be argued to come from intersectionalism.

Not just feminism but also the left has a whole has gone the same way where it has largely rejected its previous focus on class issues almost entirely in favor of modern identity politics and has thrown aside its previous values like gender equality for a more group based morality where it matters more what group you a part of and not what you do. Which I think may have also come as a result of the modern tribalism.

Similarly, "the left" (hate that term, but whatever) losing focus on class issue is something that has been happening for a while, slowly. Feminism split the US socialists in the early 1900s and was not picked up by the labour movement (which probably could be said to be more class-conscious than the socialists anyways). While this could be said to be more recent beginning around gamergate, I think this is reflected quite early and merely reached a tipping point recently.

Odd_Cow_5416 · 2021-07-10T21:45:21+00:00

Nihilism is the new communism.

Title	How much of the negative aspects of feminism is actually because of feminists?
Author	The-Author
Upvotes	17
Comments	22
Date	July 10, 2021 2:12 PM UTC (5 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/ohjfju/how_much_of_the_negative_aspects_of_feminism_is/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/how-much-of-the-negative-aspects-of-feminism-is.1060935 https://theredarchive.com/post/1060935

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