Any feminists whose work you like / find interesting?

Dorkfarces · 2020-01-27T18:13:02+00:00

Alexandra Kollontai, dog although in her day feminism was a bourgeois movement

Leaving it to the bourgeois scholars to absorb themselves in discussion of the question of the superiority of one sex over the other, or in the weighing of brains and the comparing of the psychological structure of men and women, the followers of historical materialism fully accept the natural specificities of each sex and demand only that each person, whether man or woman, has a real opportunity for the fullest and freest self-determination, and the widest scope for the development and application of all natural inclinations. The followers of historical materialism reject the existence of a special woman question separate from the general social question of our day. Specific economic factors were behind the subordination of women; natural qualities have been a secondary factor in this process. Only the complete disappearance of these factors, only the evolution of those forces which at some point in the past gave rise to the subjection of women, is able in a fundamental way to influence and change their social position. In other words, women can become truly free and equal only in a world organised along new social and productive lines.

However, in their demands for political equality our feminists are like their foreign sisters; the wide horizons opened by social democratic learning remain alien and incomprehensible to them. The feminists seek equality in the framework of the existing class society, in no way do they attack the basis of this society. They fight for prerogatives for themselves, without challenging the existing prerogatives and privileges. We do not accuse the representatives of the bourgeois women’s movement of failure to understand the matter; their view of things flows inevitably from their class position. ...

The feminists see men as the main enemy, for men have unjustly seized all rights and privileges for themselves, leaving women only chains and duties. For them a victory is won when a prerogative previously enjoyed exclusively by the male sex is conceded to the “fair sex”. Proletarian women have a different attitude. They do not see men as the enemy and the oppressor; on the contrary, they think of men as their comrades, who share with them the drudgery of the daily round and fight with them for a better future.

check it out

5th_Law_of_Robotics · 2020-01-27T18:49:55+00:00

I find a lot of them interesting.

But not necessarily helpful or good.

Tmomp · 2020-01-27T23:54:09+00:00

People who have called themselves feminists at times whose work I like:

Warren Ferrell
Cassie Jaye

mewacketergi · 2020-01-27T20:10:59+00:00

I am a fan of both Cathy Young and Camille Paglia.

Lady_Coraline2 · 2020-01-27T21:36:14+00:00

Self Made Man by Norah Vincent

Devon Price

Innuendo Studios, Pop Culture Detective

Kaitlin Prest

genkernels · 2020-01-29T09:43:26+00:00

John Rawls has a bunch of good things to say about social equality. In fact, he continues to be taught as one of the foremost philosophers on the ethics of social equality in universities for good reason -- I think it hard to define "egalitarian" in detail without reference to his work.

Karen DeCrow (of the NOW of all things) had at minimum some great moves towards gender equality:

DeCrow raised eyebrows in 1981 when she served as defense counsel to Frank Serpico, the former New York detective and whistleblower, in a paternity suit. Serpico claimed the plaintiff had used him as a “sperm bank” and lied about being on the Pill while knowingly trying to conceive, and asserted that he had a constitutional right not to become a parent against his will. (The family-court judge, a woman, ruled in Serpico’s favor, but he lost on appeal.)

DeCrow, by then a lawyer in private practice in Syracuse, New York, endorsed Serpico’s argument on feminist grounds. “Just as the Supreme Court has said that women have the right to choose whether or not to be parents, men should also have that right,” she told The New York Times, calling this “the only logical feminist position to take.”

...DeCrow also championed men’s rights as fathers, arguing for a “rebuttable presumption” of shared custody after divorce. She worked with the Fathers’ Rights Association of New York State and joined the board of the Children’s Rights Council, a pro-joint custody group. More recently, she was on the board of Leading Women for Shared Parenting. (In an ironic twist, one of her fellow LW4SP board members was her old nemesis Phyllis Schlafly...

...There were other heresies, too. DeCrow, who started her feminist journey by fighting sex discrimination in the workplace, contributed a foreword to Warren Farrell’s 2005 book, Why Men Earn More, which argued that the pay gap is due largely to men’s and women’s different workplace behavior and career choices; understanding these patterns, DeCrow believed, could help women’s advancement.

...DeCrow herself was increasingly at odds with the organization she had once led, though she never broke with it.

2020-01-27T22:40:06+00:00

I find a lot of insight in a good deal of groups I disagree with, though not to sound like a sage above being biased, but people can be right in one area and wrong in all others.

LeftNatTay · 2020-01-27T23:05:34+00:00

Dr. Angela Davis and her advocacy for prison abolition is my pick

yoshi_win · 2020-01-28T02:46:05+00:00

If you can check your habits, make it so that it’s natural to have counterhabits, that’s a big step. [...] A couple of generations feeling that they have to appear non-racist at all times, and the third generation will grow up non-racist in fact. So play at being non-sexist, and keep playing. Think of it as a game.

-Simone de Beauvoir

John Stuart Mill also is one of my heroes, mainly for his writing on utilitarianism and political theory but also for arguing in favor of women participating as equals in the economy. In the (US) civil war era.

omino23 · 2020-01-27T18:04:41+00:00

nope, well... I suppose that paranoid schizophrenic, attempted mass shooting murderer, and feminist icon Valerie Solanas might qualify as interesting, if only for her refreshing honesty about her misandry and terrorism.

fcsquad · 2020-01-27T23:38:07+00:00

Doris Lessing was a brilliant writer whose early work is strongly associated with feminism. In her latter years she was critical of some its more idiotic permutations.

Title	Any feminists whose work you like / find interesting?
Author	GaborFrame
Upvotes	12
Comments	26
Date	January 27, 2020 5:34 PM UTC (6 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/eur6o9/any_feminists_whose_work_you_like_find_interesting/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/any-feminists-whose-work-you-like-find-interesting.1064102 https://theredarchive.com/post/1064102

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