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Roderick

Feminism

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It's actually quite recently that I decided that life's too short to discuss feminism, sexism, and other topics on the Internet, which is not to say I never do it (I'm in this thread, aren't I?), but it is to say that my energy levels and enthusiasm for explaining this sort of stuff to people who aren't well-versed in the issues and who therefore, through a perfectly understandable and not at all malicious place of ignorance, constantly spout unhelpful, patently misogynystic stuff at every turn under the guise of simply trying to understand why anyone would ever be really serious about feminism, is... diminished. It certainly doesn't help that I'm teaching an English class and my students are reading the Bible right now, and part of the reading we're discussing tomorrow is a part where a woman gets gang raped then chopped into 12 pieces and Fed Ex-ed to various parts of Israel, and then I look at the headlines and the best we've managed to do is make it to the point where gang rape victims aren't also dismembered. So when 2000+ years of "progress" isn't enough to stop this shit, my energy levels for trying to solve it with Internet posts is miniscule.

So instead of writing out a big long response, I'm just going to say that if you think the distinction between being harassed for riding a bicycle and being harassed for being a woman isn't about sexism but is instead about dudes being assholes then you don't know what the word "sexism" means and you haven't even the slightest clue what kind of connotations it has and what it means that our society today is sexist.

I think there's value in what you're doing, it's just that you're really only going to get responses from people who disagree with you. You don't see a lot "I agree with everything you said" posts on the Internet because they just clutter everything up and there's only so many ways to say it. Karma systems like reddit's kind of address that, but they have their own problems.

I haven't really contributed much in this thread because I don't think there is anything to add at this point that hasn't already been better stated. What I have taken away from it is a lot of good ways to further articulate the feelings I already had. So even when you're not getting much positive feedback, you should know that there are a lot of people reading what you say and taking it to heart.

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I think you'll have to qualify your false equivalency argument or I'll have to dismiss it as a distinction without difference. The point I made is that when people do bad things, it's difficult to establish whether they would have done the same thing whether it was a woman or not. I'm saying that sexism is real, it does affect the way people express their acts of dickery, and it might cause acts of dickery in itself, and it probably causes acts of dickery to be disproportionately expressed agains one group or the other. I will agree that sexism is a major part of your problems, I will raise an eyebrow if you claim that sexism is the root cause of your problems.

Speaking more generally, if someone feels wronged, the burden doesn't rest on her to prove that she's been wronged. That's unfair. If you blame something or someone else for you feeling wronged, the burden of proof rests on yourself.

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I suppose that taken out of context, the harassment story that I shared could be hand-waved away as just general assholery, but given the fact that I have had multiple experiences (like pretty much every woman), where strangers have called out fairly derogatory comments when I've been outside jogging or just walking around (one time a guy used some particularly colorful language when I wouldn't get in his car/acknowledge him and then proceeded to follow me in his car while I walked home to my apartment). When those you've had those experiences to the point where they're almost commonplace and mundane, it's a little difficult for me to separate harassment that's rooted in sexism vs. harassment that just comes from equal opportunity dickishness. Next time I'll be sure to supply the context!

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Hey, look, everyone:

Hahaha, this never gets old. :tup:

...when I've been outside jogging or just walking around (one time a guy used some particularly colorful language when I wouldn't get in his car/acknowledge him and then proceeded to follow me in his car while I walked home to my apartment).

Holy shit, that's scary!

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I'm still not sure you are not just trolling Luftmensch. Sure, conversation is good, but when you start with 'I get harassed on a bike as well' it is hard to take you seriously, and your wording (and emphasis) - "and [sexism] might cause acts of dickery in itself, and it probably causes acts of dickery to be disproportionately expressed agains one group or the other" - seems rather inflammatory.

Thanks!

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Misrepresenting ones own opinions like he does under the guise of getting responses is pretty much what the term bullshit was invented for. Not a troll; just a bullshitter.

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That's more or less the perception bias I was getting at with the example. If it's hard to take my experience being harassed as a cyclist seriously because I compared it to an identical experience that was also sexist, it smells to me like you've made such a strong distinction that you can't conceive of both experiences being equivalent at all. I would argue that this is a problem because you're literally saying that one crime is worse than another because of the perceived reason it was committed. When I'm riding my bicycle and a car starts driving right next to me or riding my ass, honks at me, and the passengers flip me off, the thought doesn't cross my mind that I'm so lucky that I wasn't a woman or that'd really be a bad experience. That's not to say that women don't have more problems. I'm just arguing for keeping biases in mind.

If you took my language as inflammatory, that's just your perception. I called it acts of dickery because it's general enough to cover both actual crimes an just general indecencies, and it sounds kind of funny. If that strikes you as bullshit, take it how you'd like.

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That's not to say that women don't have more problems.

One of those problems might be that they can't lock their problem outside the door or keep it in the garage or just not be a cyclist 98% of the day, or 100% for that matter. Why are we talking about bicycles again? Because you made a stupid comparison and actually stand by it on the shaky grounds of superficial similarities. And you seem to agree that there is indeed sexism and it might or probably or even sometimes definitely does hit women a lot harder than men but you still argue because semantics or controversy or, ah yeah, you are "just arguing for keeping biases in mind."

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superficial similarities

My turn to call bullshit! Since the only concrete difference between the two events is 1) some asshole was trying to take a picture of her and 2) she's a woman, you'll have to prove that the similarities are superficial or that the comparison is unfounded. I'll just have to concede that you missed the point with flying colors; you practically make a caricature of the exact thing I was criticizing. If they're not with you ah shit he agrees with me don't wholeheartedly agree with everything you say, they're against you!

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Dude, you don't get to will the realities of society out of existence because you don't experience them.

You're almost there mate. So close. Just take it one step further.

I've never called anyone's experiences invalid. I've called everyone's perceptions completely subject to question. To be clear, this whole time I've been talking about anecdotal evidence. What the hell are you talking about?

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I think there's value in what you're doing, it's just that you're really only going to get responses from people who disagree with you. You don't see a lot "I agree with everything you said" posts on the Internet because they just clutter everything up and there's only so many ways to say it. Karma systems like reddit's kind of address that, but they have their own problems.

I haven't really contributed much in this thread because I don't think there is anything to add at this point that hasn't already been better stated. What I have taken away from it is a lot of good ways to further articulate the feelings I already had. So even when you're not getting much positive feedback, you should know that there are a lot of people reading what you say and taking it to heart.

Thanks, that's encouraging. People have said the same thing to me in other contexts, too. Another forum I post on just had two threads all about sexism, one about the #1reasonwhy tweets and one about the Dead Island dismembered torso, and I was fairly active in both of them (much more the #1reasonwhy thread) despite having recently decided that life's too short to be active in those kinds of threads (which gives you an idea of how good I am to sticking to my guns). But in both threads, after quite a bit of discussion, some people responded to me (and to others saying the same sorts of things as me) that they actually changed their minds, or that they really appreciate being able to read articulations of these kinds of arguments, because it helps them get their own views more in order and shows them that they're not alone and so on.

So really, as if we needed more evidence of how bad I am at sticking to things, I might actually be starting to reverse the "life's too short to argue about sexism" thing on the Internet. What I don't think I'm going back on is the idea that this shit could easily just stop if people like Luftmensch weren't just super duper ignorant of the relevant facts. If we had a chemical engineering thread where people were talking about what happens when you combine chemicals, I doubt we'd have anyone in there saying "combining those chemicals with a catalyst might cause a reaction in itself, and it probably speeds up the reaction" but who spends most of their time doubting that certain chemical reactions happen. Why? Because nobody knows what the fuck happens when you put chemicals together until they've studied it a bit, maybe read some Wikipedia pages or whatever. But with social phenomena, people who know nothing about psychology, sociology, the history of feminism, or the basic arguments for various positions love to think that just because they live in the "ostensibly" sexist society, they're an expert of whether that society is sexist or not.

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I'm intrigued by the general consensus that I must just be completely ignorant or just yanking your chain. I would never approach the same discussion from the skeptic's viewpoint if the discussion was with people I thought were inclined to dismiss sexism as rubbish that women make up to get attention (and I certainly know people who think that way). Because sexists don't need to be fed validation. I'd like to be able to say I'm the type of person who will stand up and tell people off, but in practice I'm really more the type to quietly change the subject. Everybody has their faults.

On the other hand, when I know I'm talking to someone who's feminist to the bone and knows where they stand, I'll be glad to argue or pick at semantics because it's an internally valuable discussion. Once everyone knows the data, understands the problems, and is just generally aware, then it's worthwhile to start to pick apart, "what could we be getting wrong?" As it happens, I value and read feminist literature a lot because I know I have a lot to learn and can never fully comprehend the experience of being a woman, or a transgender or intersex person, or an Asian-American raised in Dallas for that matter. So your assumption that I just don't understand? You're spot on. I don't.

I identify as feminist because feminism, as I understand it, matches my views and beliefs. I also read and find a lot of value in dissident feminists (sometimes I hear them called antifeminists but that seems a bit loaded). A lot of people feel like feminism itself has hurt them. Some people blame certain segments of feminism or particular feminist groups. Either way, the experiences these people have are still completely valid. I think the material might be somewhat counterproductive when it's just feeding the prejudices of sexist people, but for feminism itself they're still perfectly valid criticisms. That's important to remember.

So normally when I have these discussions, it's with friends who already know where I stand on feminism and I know are open to the thought. I skipped the step of garnering mutual respect and understanding, so likely that's the problem, though as with everything else in the world, I can't verify that's why the discussion went the direction it did versus it's usual course. It's unfortunate that you collectively dismissed my dissent as ignorance, but on reflection in context perhaps it was the appropriate or predictable response.

(relating back to the thread about Hitler I posted, that entire discussion was valuable because nobody in the thread was a Nazi sympathizer or thought that Hitler was a great guy. It doesn't work otherwise. It's not exactly the same thing, but noone is going to take the discussion as a launching pad to explain how Hitler was such a great inspiration or that sexism is a liberal media lie)

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I apologize for assuming you didn't know anything - the reason I assume this is because the first response of a lot of people to feminist ideas is to feel like they are personally under attack and that they have to fire back volleys of criticism explaining how feminism can't be all correct and how whatever they happen to be doing at the time is fine. Since I hang out online and talk with nerds, this usually turns into tedious semantic debates or arguments about how feminists haven't proven anything. Both of these are pretty much direct arguments from ignorance. The semantic debates ("I'm not a misogynist because I don't hate women") and the pseudo-scientific "prove it" debates would both be cleared up if they read enough literature to understand why and how these words are used and if they read enough literature to understand that a real problem exists, a problem that they can barely comprehend.

And it's not just nerds that drag feminists down with these tedious nitpicks - it's the entire world. More than the explicit arguments against feminism, all of society often subtly but strongly pushes against feminist interpretations of reality (and against minority interpretations of reality, and so on), because this is what the patriarchy does. It shapes us in ways that make certain things seem normal, inevitable, desirable, and unchangeable, and anything that pushes against these values is seen as obviously wrong, or somehow "off," of framed in the wrong way, or shrill, or off-topic, or focused on an unimportant side issue, or otherwise subject to dismissal.

So when you jump into a thread talking about women being harassed and you pull out an argument I still don't understand about how men can be assholes to women because the women are women but somehow this isn't sexism, I just assume that you're one of the infinite representatives of the omnipresent force of normality that is constantly pushing against the acknowledgement of outside views. I guess you're not that - I guess you're just extremely argumentative, to the point where it's more important to nitpick issues at the extremes rather than to get to the heart of the issue. It's just weird that you always happen to nitpick in the way that lets you espouse the most venomous and least useful positions and argue for what are basically the wrong conclusions. Like, feminism has enough actual devils opposing it that we can get by without any devil's advocates.

But I think I'm still a little fuzzy on where we stand - regardless of how much you do or don't understand about the issues, you clearly don't understand some very basic things if you think getting harassed for being a biker is the same as being harassed for being a woman. It's just... those are so different that it's hard to understand why you would draw the analogy. People harass bikers for things they perceive bikers to have done or for the people they perceive bikers to be. People harass women because they think it's okay to harass women, because they think women like to be harassed, because they've been raised to believe that harassing women is the right thing to do.

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you jump into a thread talking about women being harassed and you pull out an argument I still don't understand about how men can be assholes to women because the women are women but somehow this isn't sexism

I figured I'd let this thread cool down and come back before I responded, which it has, so I'll explain the point: The point I was getting at here is that that particular example is an example of sexism (I said that already, but I'll clarify since you quoted my straw man), but unlike the glass ceiling, or rape, it's not completely caused by even though it is expressed as an objectification/degradation of her sex. Which may or may not be that important to the discussion, but, even it it just sounds argumentative and petty, I think it's an important distinction to be able to make, especially if you believe the severity of a crime is a function of its intent (or to be more general, that intent is an argument in the function that defines severity. That's kind of muddy to say).

Addressing my hypothetical straw man, you suggest:

you think getting harassed for being a biker is the same as being harassed for being a woman.

Which of course I'm not saying, but I do say there's enough meaningful similarities between these two experiences that it's a disservice to say they're completely separate (in programming terms, I would call them instances of the same class). I also don't buy the idea that just by experiencing something, you inherently understand the cause and intent of your experience, any more than someone with a bellyache is inherently certain if they just ate something that disagrees with them or if they're in the early stages of stomach cancer. Sharing anecdotes is valuable for telling an emotionally convincing story, not for diagnosing and solving a statistical problem.

So maybe in retrospect I wouldn't make the same argument since it might not be worth making, but I hold my original opinion. I think the positions have all be stated and all hold, so I guess that's all there is to say. Es todo.

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I don't understand what you're saying. The glass ceiling and rape are caused by sexism, whereas men harassing women on the street isn't? And the reason you think this is that you get harassed on a bike, so clearly the same thing is causing bike harassment and street harassment, and since you are a dude, it can't be sexism causing bike harassment? That just all sounds wrong to me. The stuff causing people to harass you on a bike is a perception that you're fucking up their driving by biking on the road where cars belong or something. The stuff causing people to harass women is a climate that says that this sort of thing is normal and acceptable and expected from men because women probably like it when you complement them so why not?

Since you say something about intent in your post, I guess you mean that the intent behind street harassment is not "sexism" but rather something else. But that's irrelevant to whether it is caused by sexism. People are unconsciously sexist, and in fact that causes not just street harassment of women but also the glass ceiling and rape. Nobody actually sits down and says to themselves "gee I think I won't promote any women to CEO because I'm a male chauvinist" and nobody says "gee I think I'll go rape some poor woman because I'm super sexist."

Heck, nobody sits around and says "gee, I hate women, I'll go harass some on the street." Straight up "sexism" hasn't been a real motive people would cite as a justification for their behavior for a while now.

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Welp, Luftmensch, you lost me. I don't understand what you're saying either.

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Like I said before, I'm distinguishing between anecdotes and trends. Since you started your statement with "gee, I don't understand what you're saying" and then proved it with three paragraphs of rant, I think all that can be said has.

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it's a disservice to say they're completely separate (in programming terms, I would call them instances of the same class). I also don't buy the idea that just by experiencing something, you inherently understand the cause and intent of your experience

He wasn't ranting, he was laying out why the quote above is complete nonsense - he deals directly with the 'cause and intent' which you use as the basis of your trends vs. anecdotes.

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The difference between an anecdote and a trend is that the first happens once and the latter happens a lot. So I'm glad we got that cleared up but I'm not sure we needed any of your posts to do that, because I've never met anyone who thinks an anecdote is a trend or vice versa.

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