Are You a Good Feminist or a Bad Feminist?

redsteakraw · 2014-09-26T08:19:06+00:00

[permanently deleted]

2014-09-26T09:46:15+00:00

Video game development.

Bad feminist either way, unequal opportunity.

Underweight.

Most of these women are just healthy, save some lazy exploitation of female privilege.

Elevator.

Neither is acceptable.

Video game tropes.

Nope, fantasy is fantasy.

False accusation.

So, the victim doesn't matter?

Nice closing argument though!

Gawrsh · 2014-09-26T12:38:26+00:00

A lot of good feminist-bad feminist talk is simply feminists trying to maintain control over gender discourse.

"Come back to the fold, lost lambs, it was really those bad feminists leading you astray. Let the good feminists lead you now."

Of course, this ignores that feminist theory encourages and nurtures those bad feminists.

And to be honest, many 'good feminists' are only that way because they have to play nice in order to spread their message to the masses.

BarneyBent · 2014-09-26T06:57:21+00:00

Mostly a good video. However, there are a couple of points I take issue with.

First, prostitution. While I'm pro-legalization, there are arguments that making prostitution a legitimate industry will only encourage women in desperate circumstances to turn to it when they otherwise wouldn't. However, this is more an issue of economics than feminism. It's just a little bit disingenuous to characterise the "against" argument as "sex for money is rape".

Secondly, when he mentions male rape, divorce law, etc, he misrepresents the "it's also patriarchy" argument by suggesting that all feminists blame men for patriarchy. While some do, certainly not all do. Patriarchy is culturally entrenched, nobody consciously perpetuates it, nobody is at fault for it, so when men suffer at the hands of it, it's no more their fault than it is a woman's when she suffers. We all buy into it, to varying degrees, and it's all our responsibility to dismantle it. Now, you may disagree that it exists at all, and that's fine, that's another argument. Point is, you can put these things down to patriarchy and still be a good feminist. This guy has just misunderstood/misrepresented what the modern conception of patriarchy actually is.

Third, the "use force to take money from women and give to men" argument is more relevant to wealth redistribution, and is more an economic argument about how best to address equality. Being pro-wealth-redistribution doesn't make one a bad feminist. Stuff like alimony and child support are short-term methods of addressing inequality, while more long-term methods are developed, the idea being that once equality is reached, they'll no longer be necessary. However, "when equality has been reached" is a difficult thing to determine, and certainly, the current laws are out of date given the much greater financial power women yield compared to previous times. However, that doesn't make the original implementation of these laws "bad feminism", even if you might argue it's bad economics.

Finally, while the Zoe Quinn criticism was bang on, he exaggerated a bit with the Anita Sarkeesian part. While she certainly exaggerates her videos to drive home a point, and clearly has an agenda, so does pretty much every person advocating for any issue ever. While certainly she deserves to be called out when she does it, that she has become one of the most hated figures in the gaming community is excessive. Furthermore, while yes, keeping death threats under wraps until the police say it's OK is the better option, hers were particularly misogynistic. It wasn't so much the death threats themselves, but the NATURE of them, that she wanted to shed light on. That said, she's certainly handled the situation far from perfectly. She's certainly not a perfect feminist, but this guy, and the gaming community in general, have been quite rough on her. (Zoe Quinn seems like a total scumbag though; her taking down TFYC was indefensible).

Also, the tone of this video is unnecessarily condescending. The content is mostly good, but does he really think he's going to convince anybody to examine their own shitty behaviour by talking down to them like that? Really?

Edit: Oh, one last thing, "mansplaining" and "check your privilege" are terribly overused, and encourage people to dismiss dissenting opinions purely on the basis of gender/race/whatever. And that sucks. However, their initial use was legitimate: men talking about women's issues as if they had equal experience in these issues (for example, "I'd love it if a woman cat-called me! Stop complaining!") is a legitimate case of mansplaining. "Privilege" more generally is something that can blind us to the perspectives of people who don't share that particular privilege in that particular context, so "checking" it was about reminding people of this. However, they are grossly misused, which is unfortunate (but entirely predictable). Just, don't label someone as a "bad feminist" just because they happened to use these terms, judge whether the use is legitimate first.

Title	Are You a Good Feminist or a Bad Feminist?
Author	Shironekosama404
Upvotes	33
Comments	11
Date	September 26, 2014 3:43 AM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/2hhwnh/are_you_a_good_feminist_or_a_bad_feminist/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/are-you-a-good-feminist-or-a-bad-feminist.995313 https://theredarchive.com/post/995313

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