Feminism

I was directed recently to a website started by a postgraduate student in order to lay out her beliefs. Her slogan was 'hungry for change', and she was attempting to garner publicity for her 60-day fast (during daytime hours). She claimed to be a moderate feminist who was appalled at the sexism she saw all around her, including these points ('the icing on the cake'):

'-At dinner, a student brings up “gang rape” among ducks, to prove a point. When quietly informed that he has gone too far, he only becomes defensive and continues the topic.

-An entire research institute devoted to violent conflict has no past or present research whatsoever on gendered dimensions of conflict.

-A local newspaper reports rape as ‘sex’.

-A female student points out something sexist on TV. A male student insists it is only a coincidence and that she is reading too much into it.

-A group of students proclaim that because gender doesn’t matter to them, they see no reason to be concerned about women’s 7% representation in ministerial cabinet positions worldwide. (Ahah, then I must be the sexist one!)

-A male student corners a female student into a discussion about abortion, at a Halloween party. The man does not understand why pregnant rape victims do not ‘simply’ carry the foetus to term and then find it an adoptive family. I repeat: at a Halloween party.'

Talking about gang rape is hardly oppressive in itself. Supporting it and doing it would be bad, but surely feminists would welcome attention to what might well be an under-recognised crime? If she thinks that even mentioning rape might offend people, because it's an offensive thing, I wonder how she might justify why feminists like to raise public awareness of discrimination against women. That could certainly be an offensive thing, and yet talking about it is suddenly fine by them. She could also read my post on offence.
That this point is a stupid one is supported further by an observation I made whilst staying with my sister. She and her flatmate were idly watching television, and the comedian happened to start talking about how silly it is for people to think that natural is good, such as in the organic food industry, when giving birth or when claiming (against all evidence) that homosexuality is a perversion of nature. Amongst the various amusing comments that he made one really caught my attention: he mentioned that mallards typically mate through a process of gang-rape, and that according to the nature-is-good crowd we should therefore allow gang-rape. I have now found this fact about mallards quoted in other reputable sources.
So it appears that, far from being sexist, the man being quoted by my feminist might well have been arguing about something else entirely, a point which went right over this woman's head.

As for conflict, I'd have thought that feminists would be pleased about this. If women are not involved in the conflict, it could be taken to show how superior women are because they don't fight, or it could be used to show that in the conflict women are oppressed because they have no major roles to play. The assumption that somehow women are playing a different role in the conflict and that this is vitally important and stands independently of any other research area is itself sexist. Not everything revolves around women, and nor should an institution have research departments into irrelevant fields. Conflict and women (or 'gendered dimensions') are not so closely related that this is amazing. It is akin to expecting a physics department to have a group investigating paranormal abilities. Paranormal abilities will certainly need a physical explanation, but are not central to physics.

A local newspaper might report rape as sex because the trial and conviction has not yet happened, and thus rape is only an allegation. This could well be perfectly normal legal practice. Furthermore, given how offensive it is to mention rape (as we saw with the poor boy and his gang-raping ducks), perhaps the newspaper was just avoiding giving offence. Damned if you do, damned if you don't...

We have two conflicting opinions about what's on television and we are expected to assume that the woman is right and that the man is being sexist. That assumption is sexist in itself. We need more information, and not giving it but expecting what is written to be enough is the most sexist thing that we have yet seen in her writing.

Sex doesn't matter to me when it comes to my country's cabinet, and it appears not to matter to the country either. If sexism is more rife in other parts of the world, that's a problem, but not one that campaigns within this country can solve. Furthermore, when we start considering raw statistics such as this one, we need to be careful to consider other factors, such as the proportions of men and women actually trying to make a serious career in politics, and whether women tend to prioritise families over careers. It's not sexism if it's due to personal choices.

As for the Halloween party, this seems more like an example of religious fanaticism than plain sexism. The question of abortion in many people's minds has nothing to do with sexism, but about murder. Were it a sexist issue, people would allow abortion of one sex but not another.


This particular feminazi, as she describes herself (with regret) might not be representative, but some of her arguments are. I frequently hear from those of my female friends to whom it matters that such an action is discriminatory, or that this particular thing is sexist.
It is very easy to become sensitive to these things. Not every action in which a certain group of people suffer is specifically designed to harm that group. Not every system in which a certain group of people experience unequal outcomes is unfairly biased against them. The whole idea of institutional racism is an unnerving and dangerous one.
Would anyone agree with me if I said that people between the ages of 20 and 25 were unfairly discriminated against because they occupy 0% of all professorships in the department, 0% of cabinet posts (probably worldwide) and have extraordinarily high car insurance premiums?
Maybe they would for the last one. But the point is that discrimination (of the illegal sort which we do not want to exist) only exists if it occurs on the basis of irrelevant characteristics. If women happen to be under-represented in certain professions, it could be because they themselves choose not to apply. It could be because women tend not to excel at those things, whether by choice or biological tendency (for example, women tend not to be as strong and hence make worse manual labourers).
Women tend to take time out of their careers for family life. If 30% of women drop out for families, and another 50% take time out for families, then it will be no surprise when women are under-represented in top jobs, which take time to reach. Those percentages were mere guesses, by the way.

Men die early, commit much more suicide, suffer more prostate cancer (amazingly) and so on. Yet men are happy to admit that these have reasonable explanations and are not directly dependent solely on a person's manhood. It is these underlying causes that should be considered, and if necessary addressed. Why can feminists not follow the same line of reasoning?

It is the same line of reasoning that says that we should address poverty, not racial discrimination, because by far the biggest cause of racial inequality in this country is the economic status of black children, not active discrimination.

This country has given women equal status, and did so a long time ago. Maybe some of these changes are still filtering through to the top levels of professions, which take time to reach, but there is no reason to change anything further, except to benefit women unfairly. Feminists should focus on individuals or other societies, because their battle here is won.

Having said all this, I still have some gripes. Firstly, feminism nowadays justifies itself as being a campaign for equal rights for everyone. As I say, this has been achieved for women. So why is the name now feminism, except as further campaign material to continue enhancing the rights and attitudes of women? We have an equal rights movement and we have a wonderful organisation called Liberty who campaign about civil rights. There is no need for anything else.
Secondly, I am unsure why breast cancer is the most famous cancer in the country. Can it really be the biggest killer when it (almost entirely) can affect only half of the population? Why is a woman-only cancer so special?
Thirdly, the argument that society is based on male principles is a stupid one. Some feminists don't even believe in male and female traits. But if we take the traditional dichotomy of rational intelligence and cold, hard logic versus emotions and desires, we will find that rationality is far more appropriate for dealing with physical actions and systems, which follow cold hard rules. Objective considerations, almost by definition, are only things that unite great masses of individuals into coherent societies. We are forced into objectivity by having society and a physical world, and so it is hardly sensible to complain that this masculine. If, indeed, women are better at manipulating relationships and men at phsyical and objective concerns then it is simply a biological fact that society must necessarily be masculine. It does not preclude women from dominating in the endless network of individual social relationships that actually make society work.