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Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

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Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#141

Post by obstacle1 »

_bfhp wrote: post #136
obstacle1 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, are you saying that statement made you understand as in the statement is an explanation of some essential point of feminism? Or are you saying that statement made you understand that feminism often (not always!) has a tenuous grasp on reality, tends to make baseless or meaningless statements, and is purely ideological much of the time? Because that statement -- which btw is the standard "I don't want to have t…

It seems you need a bit more than dclowd9901. Perhaps "White Privilege and Male Privilege" by Peggy McIntosh and "Oppression" by Marilyn Frye are good places to start: http://www.iub.edu/~tchsotl/part2/McIntosh%20White%20Privile... http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/tbettch/Frye,%20Oppression...

I graduated from a feminist-oriented humanities department where I engaged with these issues critically for a long time.

Rather than linking me polemics from 1988 that don't address my point, consider that I disagree with the fundamental positions on a logical basis.

If you'd like to engage the points I actually made in my post, feel free.

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#142

Post by _bfhp »

ionforce wrote: post #77
rimantas wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> self-identified feminist as opposed to what? Certified feminist?

It calls into question one's worldview as a feminist if you are busy discriminating on gender expression. It seems logically inconsistent.

Much of "radical feminism" holds that gender isn't about expression, and that you can't switch genders as much as you can switch races. This makes people extremely uncomfortable, of course

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#143

Post by tomp »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #115
thenmar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great comment. If anyone would like to learn more about feminism, I can't recommend highly enough the book "Feminism is for Everybody" by bell hooks. I find a lot of commenters here and on other sites form (strong!) opinions about feminism and sexism despite not understanding basic concepts like privilege, oppression, and intersectionality. That book is an accessible primer on those topics.

Where I really crossed the threshold into understanding Feminism was in a class I took in college (as trite as it sounds). We were discussing gender-specific organizations, not unlike the one in this post, when someone asked why it's OK for women to have a conference, but if men did, people would flip. The teacher gave a long-winded answer, but what really stuck with me most was a single statement: "Because every oth…

I'd really like to ask your teacher which organizations, exactly, did (s)he mean. My experience is limited, obviously, and I'm not from the US, but I've only rarely seen an organization with only male members, and even most of these have welcomed women who wanted to join.

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#144

Post by mtrimpe »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #115
thenmar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great comment. If anyone would like to learn more about feminism, I can't recommend highly enough the book "Feminism is for Everybody" by bell hooks. I find a lot of commenters here and on other sites form (strong!) opinions about feminism and sexism despite not understanding basic concepts like privilege, oppression, and intersectionality. That book is an accessible primer on those topics.

Where I really crossed the threshold into understanding Feminism was in a class I took in college (as trite as it sounds). We were discussing gender-specific organizations, not unlike the one in this post, when someone asked why it's OK for women to have a conference, but if men did, people would flip. The teacher gave a long-winded answer, but what really stuck with me most was a single statement: "Because every oth…

In the end it boils down to the problem that it's very hard to explain the mechanics of culture to people who have little to gain from changing it.

When you've pulled the short straw in your culture, whether it's due to race, sex, orientation or something else, you have a lot of incentive to attempt to change culture and you logically end up spending a lot of energy on learning the intricacies of culture and cultural change.

If you're in the priviliged group however there's very little incentive to pay attention to these issues at all, since effecting cultural change would have little personal benefit.

A byproduct of those systemic forces is that it makes discussions between those two sides very difficult; quite like how discussing technical topics in politics is very hard.

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#145

Post by _bfhp »

hythloday wrote: post #78
danilocampos wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some radical feminists only accept 'born as women' to their conferences. And if transwomen are accepted, what's their definition of that. Really. That's interesting. I know... a few feminists 'round these parts who might be characterized "radical." Can't think of anyone getting their hate on against trans women. And I don't know why you would raise such a specter of exclusion with no basis.

Radical Feminism (one concept) is somewhat equivalent to separatist feminism, which takes it as axiomatic that women making decisions under the influence of men are not free to make decisions (they're the "all sex is rape" school). Given that, they historically[0] tended to see trans women as male invaders of a female space, which makes them de facto transphobic. Transphobia is not a typical property of feminists who…

Not all people who call themselves radical feminists believe that "all PIV is rape" (notice how you equate sex with penis-in-vagina intercourse). You forgot to provide a link to that [0], I'll give you one: http://againstallevidence.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/cant-we-a...

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#148

Post by _bfhp »

obstacle1 wrote: post #141
_bfhp wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems you need a bit more than dclowd9901. Perhaps "White Privilege and Male Privilege" by Peggy McIntosh and "Oppression" by Marilyn Frye are good places to start: http://www.iub.edu/~tchsotl/part2/McIntosh%20White%20Privile... http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/tbettch/Frye,%20Oppression...

I graduated from a feminist-oriented humanities department where I engaged with these issues critically for a long time. Rather than linking me polemics from 1988 that don't address my point, consider that I disagree with the fundamental positions on a logical basis. If you'd like to engage the points I actually made in my post, feel free.

So what you're saying is, you won't read either essay.

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#149

Post by mtrimpe »

tomp wrote: post #143
dclowd9901 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I really crossed the threshold into understanding Feminism was in a class I took in college (as trite as it sounds). We were discussing gender-specific organizations, not unlike the one in this post, when someone asked why it's OK for women to have a conference, but if men did, people would flip. The teacher gave a long-winded answer, but what really stuck with me most was a single statement: "Because every oth…

I'd really like to ask your teacher which organizations, exactly, did (s)he mean. My experience is limited, obviously, and I'm not from the US, but I've only rarely seen an organization with only male members, and even most of these have welcomed women who wanted to join.

The average board meeting would be a good example of such an organization.

Re: Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

#150

Post by hbags »

nawitus wrote: post #120
eevilspock wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you're a woman. The legislature that governs your country is more than 80% male, and that's after a lot of very recent gains by women. You feel this status quo is the direct result of historical as well as current bias against women, and bias for men. Much worse, since this legislature makes the laws and performs checks on the other branches of government, the inclusion or lack thereof of women in the legisla…

>Is it not rational, in fact extremely smart, to have a preference toward electing women into office, when all other factors are more or less equal or less important? If one assumes falsehoods, many irrational decisions becomes rational. For example, like the assumption that a male politician doesn't care about women's issues. In fact, I live in a country with 40% of the parliament being women, even though 60% of the…

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you lack empathy for the challenges faced by women in Silicon Valley because you're a white male whose local culture is globally famous for being tolerant and inclusive?

You haven't experienced the problems personally, and you probably haven't even seen them locally. But they're real.

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