…We hardly knew ye. Speaking of derailment, head on over to Pandagon and watch this thread on this post:
The Happy Feminist (giving me the sizzle of cheap irony) takes on the whole “feminism doesn’t make women happy” kerfluffle with her usual cut-the-crap-tivity that makes us love her so.
go immediately from this:
Ms Kate: Perhaps women are happier at home for the same reason that rates of asthma are low in jobs with extreme exposures – those who aren’t “happy” (or can’t take it) don’t stay there.
There is a second selection factor: people are generally happier when they get social support for doing the things they want to do anyway! In other words, women who want to be homemakers and thrive on it, are being supported socially and are thus happy at their vocation.
Of course, the vast overstated stupidity is that if SOME women like and are happy being home, then ALL women should be MADE to stay at home. Given that option and only that option, (and my brief stint as part-time grad student and full-time mom) I’d be loading my mom’s .22 while singing along with the Boomtown Rats of a Monday morning:
And the silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody’s gonna go to school today
She’s going to make them stay at home
Daddy doesn’t understand it
He always said she was as good as gold
And we could see no reasons
‘Cause there are no reasons
What reasons do you need to be told?
to this:
No, no, no. My girlfriend was telling me about a particular school of feminist thought in which all sex is rape. She’s had aquaintances who have believed such is the case. I’ve heard it from other sources as well. Recently, for example, a friend of mine was telling me about this feminism class his friend took where they discussed that all sex is rape. Anything penetration is invasion, and any invasion is violation. So why don’t we all build uterine replicators and become eunuchs?
and this:
I just have a problem in general with attributing all of the problems inherent in society to men, because, well, a) it’s inaccurate, b) it’s sexist against both men and women, especially in that it implies that women have no wills of their own and that they’re plagued by these negative man-forced attributes like aggressiveness and dominant personalities that they’re apparently just too weak to resist, c) it misses the broader scope of the problem, d) it’s self-defeating, and e) it’s doing the exact same thing and thinking with a near identical mindset/worldview/perspective/way of thinking as the very system to which it claims to be opposed.
The discussion doesn’t even hardly have time to get started before it’s swallowed up in the other discussion, the one that just won’t die. The transformation is as smooth as a flipbook. An endless flipbook of a scarecrow being walloped over and over and over and over.
Dear Antifeminists:
Please start your own blogs immediately with my blessing. It won’t cost you a dime.
Love,
Tired of This Shit, New Mexico
P.S. And if you’ve already got a blog? STAY there.
I had a really bad mental image of certain people being substituted for the scarecrow…
I’m not anti-feminist. I’m anti-the “everything is the patriarchy” mindset that will, I assure you, kill feminism, or at the very least keep it in a state of stalemate.
This is EXACTLY what ginmar’s been on about for the last week.
…And here he comes.
J Crowley, if you or anyone else here threatens to derail this thread onto either BDSM, “the patriarchy,” “sex is rape,” or “J Crowley is not/is too anti-feminist,” you’ll be off the thread. You’ve got a platform on pandagon until Amanda sees fit to oust you. You are not welcome here.
Thanks, everyone, for ignoring him.
You know, I sort of feel like someone needs to start a “Feminism 101″ blog, to be “taught” by rotating moderators, so that whenever someone who is rather new to the game tries to stop the Linear Algebra lesson for instruction in the multiplication tables, that person can be sent to the proper classroom.
I know of–albeit vaguely–a few feminism 101 posts for newbies. There’s one on Twisty’s blog, for example.
I’m not sure it would help. Generally speaking, the other commenters in the discussion do gently take whomever in hand and explain x y or z non-argument. It doesn’t work as a current, individually-tailored intervention, so why would it work as a series of one-size-fits-all links?
This is EXACTLY what ginmar’s been on about for the last week.
<sarcasm>So, does that mean Pandagon isn’t feminist for allowing antifeminists to comment?</sarcasm>
I personally welcome “Feminism 101″-type stuff, as it’s helped me a lot, but I’m just one dude.
I don’t think that’s quite an accurate way to describe Hugo and Amp’s commenting/banning policies.
It’d be anti-feminist if these comments were treated as though they served any purpose for anyone but the commenter, or if people weren’t allowed to call similar commenters nasty names. “Flaming douche,” for example. The day Amanda enacts a no-flaming-douche policy is the day I call Amanda a big fat sexist.
I think one of the problems is that you get people who ‘think’ they know something about what feminism is. These people tend to fall into two groups: those who realize that they don’t know everything and want to learn (this group includes feminist men like myself); and then those who ‘learned’ something feminism, don’t like it for one reason or another, and decide to try to vent their problems without actually realizing what feminism is (or the views of those that they are talking to).
It’d be like hearing that Greens smoke a lot of grass, going to a Green Party meeting and complaining that they don’t have stances on taxes without actually asking whether they did.
‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing’
Burying a discussion under a different, bigger, irrelevant discussion is stupid and frustrating. Especially when the derailer then has the nerve to tell his critics that they’re trying to stifle discussion.
Sometimes it seems like everyone who opposes feminism/feminists in one way or another believes it’s the very first time their argument was ever made, as if we haven’t heard and thought about it over and over and over again. We’re expected to address every complaint someone has about feminism as soon as it comes up, thoroughly, regardless of whatever else is being talked about, or else we’re being intolerant or sexist or “You feminsts are all alike” or blah blah blah.
I second ilyka. If you want to complain about or challenge feminism, start your own damn blog. Then you can write whatever you want, without having to worry about getting in everybody else’s way.
I also wish more posters would just ignore derailers’ arguments and stick to the original topic. It’s hard, but it can be done.
If people really wanted to learn about feminists they wouldn’t go to non-feminists for their information. Anybody who spouts some Coulterism about feminists isn’t there in good faith.
Why do they all think they’re so original? They all say the same things. The biggest, latest wrinkle, is for them to claim to be feminists themselves of former feminists or having been driven away from feminists by the mean old strawfeminists who didn’t appreciate their—-whatever.
There’s a blog specifically for The Patriarchy Hurts Men Too stuff at livejournal that gets very little traffic because the trolls don’t want to discuss this stuff amongst themselves. They want to troll feminist blogs. It’s interesting.
FYI, piny, that really was intended totally as a joke and not to be taken serious.
I’ve seen several other blogs today joking about revoking somebody’s feminist card (or quipping that their card must’ve gotten lost in the male) and it’s the end of the workday, so I’m a bit punchy.
Wow. Deja vu. It seems like I was just having this conversation earlier this afternoon.
You’re still totally banned.
Don’t worry about it. I was pretty sure you were kidding, but I didn’t want to assume just because, well, this discussion. I have zero interest in starting an interfeminist flame war still, some more, again. This is all about beating up on this guy.*
*/sarcasm.
You forgot the part where if you don’t allow them a platform for sexist bull you’re stifling dissent and censoring them.
Why do they think they’re so original? Do they see the printed word so rarely that it comes as a shock and they just accept whatever the Rush Newsletter says?
Banned in Boston…
If only it weren’t such a cliche…
Fine, then. I’ll just go back to posting Deadwood spoilers.
Oh, not with you.
And don’t you dare spoil Deadwood! I haven’t caught up yet.
I haven’t seen Deadwood, but I heard it’s pretty good.
I’d like to watch it at some point, but I still have to catch up on The Sopranos, of which I have also seen none, along with Lost, which I hear is also good. Which would you recommend: Deadwood or The Sopranos?
To: Moderation: Please don’t delete my comment this time. I’m actually interested in this. I promise I won’t question your approach to discourse again. :P
[...] the dumber sex of our generally dumb species–way too much credit. But hey, I’m an anti-feminist. (At least I don’t delete comm [...]
Oh, trackbacks are a bitch, aren’t they?
Yeah, you’ve got good faith coming out your ass. Sorry, but you’re still on ignore as far as I’m concerned.
Snkkt. Oh, that was well-timed. Thank you, internet.
Anyway, my apologies for derailing the thread. I was trying to discuss feminism as a whole, and why the way many people argue it isn’t successful, and why allowing sexualized definitions of characteristics will result in nothing but stalemate. It was a meta thing. I was trying to discuss HOW people think, and I believe that was misconstrued as an attack on WHAT people think. (I hope you went and read the part from which that was excerpted, by the way.)
My perception of the blogosphere, of late, has become as follows: “Topic!” *READERS ALL NOD* “Another topic!” *NODS ALL AROUND* “Another post!” *EVEN MORE AGREEMENT*
It’s been starting to irritate me.
I like the way my girlfriend argues, because she takes this postmodernist, self-self-referential approach to the whole thing, and plays devil’s advocate to challenge the things I think. But now I can see why she gets Cs from some of her professors when she writes papers in such a way. (She’s a huge fan of Derrida. Most people are not.) People don’t want to think about thinking about things–or, at least, don’t always see discussions to that effect in the way they were intended. It’s certainly not a default way of thinking, as most people only like to think about things as they are, and to overanalyze them on their basest levels.
Sure, we can all state and restate and rerestate the obvious and agree with each other and have a head-nodding fest, but what does that do for anyone? Certainly not mind-expanding.
So, again, sorry for derailing the discussion. I was trying to be different. My bad.
But, but, all he did was take ilyka’s advice!
He’s got another post in the moderation queue with the same crap. I’ll let you get that one, piny.
I am curious who is welcome to post here, and what the guidelines are for acceptable arguments and accepted evidence. Do you have an application or a FAQ?
I allow anyone who doesn’t irritate me (and some who do, primarily those with some sort of intellectual capital). This changes on a case by case basis, and frankly, I find you irritating.
Also, if you weren’t a dumbass, you might see the proclamation above the comments.
Okay, well thank you, I am sorry I didn’t read that proclamation first. Is the whole thing currently in force, I kind of get the impression the parts about no tongue lashings and no personal attacks, and courtesy are not really honored.
In terms of arguments, if you say a => b, is it okay for me to say I think that a => c, or perhaps so, but I think ~a?
You can say whatever you want, but we may not pat you on the back for “being different.”
Hey, mods? I know you’re not big fans or anything, but could you ship me Jerry’s e-mail address? I’d appreciate it. You can leave it on my site in the comments if you want. I’ll, uh, let you.
Thanks.
Okay, well I appreciate that then. I agree that this
The discussion doesn’t even hardly have time to get started before it’s swallowed up in the other discussion, the one that just won’t die.
is both annoying and frustrating, but I do not understand what you mean when you write:
a scarecrow being walloped over.
What do you mean by scarecrow and what was the scarecrow in question? (I do like the flipbook imagery!)
It’s strange, because there’s been a similar thing going on for a while with bloggers who claim to be Independents or Republicans who have been driven away or turned off from the Democratic party for various reasons, yet they parrot Republican talking points and take the Bush apologist position with such ease that I just can’t believe that they were ever actually Democrats.
It’s those dinner parties, raging red. They always convert at a dinner party with nasty ol’ liberals who fall silent when the Republican or Independent says something so sensible, but so, so SHOCKING to the liberals.
piny: I know of–albeit vaguely–a few feminism 101 posts for newbies. There’s one on Twisty’s blog, for example.
I’m not sure it would help. Generally speaking, the other commenters in the discussion do gently take whomever in hand and explain x y or z non-argument. It doesn’t work as a current, individually-tailored intervention, so why would it work as a series of one-size-fits-all links?
Talk about synchronicity. For the heck of it, I thought I’d give it a go yesterday. As piny says, there may not really be a place for it. But it was always good back on USENet to be able to tell creationists to stop derailing the science newsgroups and take their argument to talk.origins, for example.
I’m open for ideas, especially on the blogname which I’m not entirely happy with.
Ah, can’t do nested quotes I see.
Oh well, only the last two paragraphs of #33 are mine.
Lauren: I’m pretty new to this blog, so I have no idea if jerry has a rep of some kind or not, but I’m going to take his posts at face value.
I think he’s asking some legitimate questions, questions that I was curious about myself. There are clearly some strong feelings about certain kinds of comments, and palpable frustration with certain views which are not held by the core participants of this blog. Your response was not very helpful to someone coming from a different perspective who is interested in an exchange of ideas but who doesn’t want to inadvertantly piss on some fundamental belief system (and earn a rep as a troll in the process).
Something like the following, on the other hand, would be very helpful:
This is a feminist blog. We define feminism as ABC.
Our core beliefs are DEF. If you don’t agree with one or more of these tenets, you are not a feminist, and if you persist in arguing about these things, expect to be banned.
Most folks here think GHI. While we tolerate people who don’t agree, we don’t have a whole lot of patience with arguments about these things, and get very pissed when these topics are raised in threads where they don’t belong.
A lot of people here think JKL, but some don’t, and if you have something interesting to say about these things, please, by all means.
Something like this may be exactly what tigtog, Maureen, and piny may be referring to, although I do think spelling out what is and is not ‘beyond the pale’ for this blog would be important. I’ve read a fair amount of feminist literature, and it’s not always clear to me where the line between ‘fundamental tenets’ and ‘topics for more discussion’ is drawn.
I’m still befuddled as to why a post on someone who is an unrepentant, completely obvious tool of the patriarchy–John Tierney with his promotion of the idea that women are feeble-minded idiots who would be happier if they gave up trying to be more than contented cows–became a forum on why we should abandon that mode of critique altogether because someone is defensive about his or her sex life. I suppose it’s because my opinions on sexual behavior and why I’m on the whole not opposed to BDSM are pretty well-known, but I can’t think of a better way to convince me that BDSM-ers are too damn defensive than show up in my comments and demand that I give up fighting the patriarchy lest I hurt someone’s fee-fees in a drive-by. Luckily,I’m not that easy to piss off, but sheesh.
And heh, describing anti-feminists as “welcome” on my blog is like describing comedians who get pelted with tomatoes as “welcome” to a club. I call them “target practice”.
“Anti-feminists”? LOL! Who knew?
I know! I was reading, and reading, and then I was all, “Whoa, now, what just happened?”
I didn’t mean to imply that you coddled them, just that if he wanted to chatter, he could go back and chatter some more on the other thread he wanted to ruin. I just wasn’t in the mood for situational irony.