Beware the Poisoned Apple of Feminist Ideology

  • Thread starter Thread starter edwest211
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I am not sure. The trouble is I think many people see any attempt at change, if it’s not immediately obviously bad to everyone, as “bashing.” When the truth may be more like, women are expected to do certain things that aren’t actually easy, and men are used to those expectations being normal and assume it’s just part of women’s nature. When it might not actually be easy for women at all. That doesn’t make the men who don’t notice bad, it just means they’re used to making assumptions that aren’t true (an example might be that women are all naturally good at being caring and handling emotions, while men aren’t and can’t learn).

From my own life - it’s not the guy who thought it was ok to sexually assault me that I think is the target of feminism. It’s all the men who told me, well, since I was alone with him I obviously couldn’t expect him to control himself, that’s just something unreasonable. Or who’ve told me that if I’m smiling and laughing and flirting, I can’t expect a man to understand that I don’t want to go further, because women say no and don’t mean it. I think you can’t just categorically sort all those men into “bad” - I think most of them would not assault a woman, but they’re also in a mindset where when a woman says she was assaulted, try to find reasons why it’s not really bad.
 
Change is okay if it is good.

I get what you mean about assumptions. Personally I do not like them, such as the belief that guys should be good at sports, etc. Not everyone likes sports and that is fine. People have various temperaments and interests. And you are right, not all women are good at handling emotions, and that men can learn to deal with theirs.

As for the men who told you what they did regarding the assault, I don’t agree with them. It wasn’t your fault, it’s the fault of the perpetrators. What they did was wrong. Even if a woman is in a public place and totally naked, no one has the right to assault her, ever.
 
Edward_H said:
Well in part that’s because we have a less rigorously educated people (than those who wrote the Constitution); today’s noisy activists don’t understand that a right exists because a duty is first given!

Rights exist to allow people to accomplish duties of various sorts.

If this extra bit doesn’t make sense to you, well that sort of buttresses my point.
Click to expand...
Do I get to say here that if only people were educated and understood feminism better, they’d realize that Katy Perry/Cosmo feminism isn’t real feminism?

You’re not making a great case here against the idea that feminism is an ideologically diverse movement with certain common features, not unlike, say, conservatism.
 
I’m not an “isms” guy. I reject most of them, decisively. Most come from slow sociologists, who couldn’t get into the sciences.
 
Last edited:
I think what shocks people more is that was what I was hearing in the U.S. less than a decade ago. And I’m not the only woman I know who’s heard such things.

I’ve actually been reading a very interesting piece on the concept of emotional labor, and a lot of it is talking about assumptions like that. Basically, women saying everyone just assumes they’re the ones that are keeping track of all the birthday cards and christmas presents and all, both for herself and her in-laws, or that while the husband helps do chores it’s her job to come up with what needs doing, or that it’s just assumed daughters and not sons take care of aging parents. And that by and large the men don’t think one way or another about what’s going on. (Many of the women also said, if those things didn’t get done, they and not the men were the ones who received blame - for example, calling the woman up because her sister-in-law didn’t get a birthday card.) It’s not a major example, but it’s something that a lot of people may have in the background that women do these things and not notice that there’s no real reason for it.

I’d also segue into an actual definition of “toxic masculinity.” It’s not saying that masculinity, by itself, is toxic, but that certain cultural expressions are. For example, the shaming of male virgins and expectation that men should show off their masculinity by trying to bed multiple women, or that a man who doesn’t want to look at pornographic images of women must be gay. And a lot of it hurts men too - for example, it’s also considered a major contributor to the higher rate of male suicide, because it’s “unmanly” for men to admit to depression or talk about their feelings, so men are more likely to keep trying to manage on their own until they can’t take it.
 
DarkLight said:
I think what shocks people more is that was what I was hearing in the U.S. less than a decade ago. And I’m not the only woman I know who’s heard such things.
Click to expand...
Speaking of things that are rather shocking and not that long ago, when I was in college in the early 90s, “No means no” was a controversial anti-rape slogan.

I remember reading mainstream 1990s arguments against “no means no” to the effect that sometimes no means yes, and how is a guy to know which is which and isn’t lack of consent sexier? At the time (because I was a naive college student) that actually sounded plausible. But now that I am a grown up lady, I’m pretty shocked by that. Here are a few reasons, in no particular order:

–it might get somebody pregnant or transmit an incurable or life threatening disease
–it’s very likely to lead to an abortion if the woman gets pregnant
–if it leads to pregnancy but no abortion, the baby is almost certain to grow up without a father
–fornication is wrong
–a default of “this woman I don’t know well and who isn’t married to me must want to have sex with me” is dumb. The default assumption ought to be “this woman I don’t know well and who isn’t married to me probably doesn’t want to have sex with me.”
–if she says no but means yes and you respect the no that she doesn’t mean, there’s no permanent harm done. But if she says no and means no and you don’t respect the no, you have committed rape and potentially traumatized her for years to come, not to mention put yourself in legal jeopardy. So respecting “no” is a no-brainer.

This all sounds so obvious now, but in the 90s, even just “no means no” was revolutionary. (Nowadays, I’m enthusiastic about enthusiastic consent.)

I also think people tend to assume that certain feminist ideas (like that victims of sexual assault should not be shamed or that women should be able to leave abusive homes) are easy and obvious, but that really isn’t the case. It seems obvious now, but it wasn’t always so obvious.
 
Here’s another idea that seemed plausible to me in the 90s, when I was a sweet young thing: the idea that male libido is like a fully-loaded beer truck headed downhill with no brakes, and that at some point, the guy is just so overwrought with passion that he cannot control himself, and so it’s the woman’s job to manage his libido for him.

Now that I am a grown up lady who has had the very same husband nearly 20 years and years of NFP experience, I think that theory is stupid, especially when combined with strong ideas of male leadership.
 
I think one thing a lot of people need to consider - it is the natural human reaction to feel attacked when someone says our behavior is a problem. We instinctively want to justify what we’re doing.

An example I think a lot of people will sympathize with: I’ve pointed out that, as a woman, if I’m out by myself going to my car at night, and a strange man approaches me and tries to strike up a conversation, it’s liable to make me nervous - especially if he seems insistent. Because, you know, as a petite woman I’m in the mode where dark parking lots are an excellent place if someone wished to do me harm and I am trying to watch to make sure that doesn’t happen. (I’ve noticed now that I’m at a late-night female-dominated workplace, it is very common for ladies to walk with each other to their cars for precisely that reason.)

Many men do not naturally think this way. It’s well intentioned. They know perfectly well that they would never do that to a woman. They’re just trying to be friendly. And they’re often quite hurt when it’s pointed out that they’re making me feel afraid, because why would I think that of them?
 
It’s honestly true though. In instances where I don’t even bring up feminism, I get called that as if it’s some sort of horrible slur (that or leftist). All because I said something like we should not blame rape victims for being immodestly dressed or something that should not be politically divisive!
 
True.

I don’t like modern feminism (in the West especially) since they are now just plucking things out of the sky and calling it sexism. When it comes to the ‘social’ part of the definition, we cannot have a clear idea of what the end state would be. We now have people thinking that every instance of disrespect is due to sexism or some other ism. That’s annoys me…

That being said though, I do feel like there are a lot of men, while they are not sexist, who are oblivious to what women might face. They are basically so used to the status quo, so to speak. So when we try to make our issues known, it just looks like we are complaining over silly things. I’m sure that there are many men long ago who would laugh at the idea of women voting and think that those feminists were going against God’s plan for women. They might not hate women at all, they’re just used to the way things are (that when it’s disturbed, it’s perceived as ‘wrong’).

I don’t think places like the US or perhaps even my country needs an actual movement like feminism, and instead, we just focus on mutual respect and equal opportunities. The stuff that are considered as a real form of sexism here should not be politically divisive anyway (eg rape). However the feminism movement is needed in other places (like India, Saudi etc) since it is a powerful movement that can cause actual societal changes. I just remembered an article that Malaysian ministers are saying that the uniforms for AirAsia were too sexy. Jeez.
 
Part of it is, there’s what I like to call the “internet loudmouth theory.” Basically, the internet gives everyone a voice. What happens is one person on whatever side says something silly (or that could be interpreted as silly). Someone else shares it as “look how crazy these people on this side are!” And what ends up happening was that what in previous generations would have been one person mouthing off to their drinking buddies, becomes a thing that everyone knows about.

I think this is one issue where one’s personal upbringing will vary one’s reaction. Mine was certainly very gendered, and in many ways I feel I needed exposure to feminism to allow myself to develop into a godly woman - simply because that meant stepping outside of the role that I’d been assigned. Between that and my own experiences with sexual assault, and with harassment, I do think there’s some work to be done, and I think a lot of time feminism’s going about it the wrong way.

Honestly, as far as disrespect, I suspect it’s often the case that disrespectful people reach for the nearest available ism. One obvious example - calling a woman a “slut” for turning a man down doesn’t even make any sense. The guy’s just reaching for a word used to hurt women. The trouble is that there’s a certain social push behind those words.
 
Oh sure. Same here. I am thankful for the general movement bc I think I needed to hear that, rather than sticking to what my culture thinks of women.

I think the problem with discussions nowadays is that we dismiss what the other has to say bc it is congruent with a side we hate. And instead of looking at the points, we look at the ‘side’ (which then affects how we listen to the argument). I would love to have a conversation where it’s about two people of different sides trying to understand why they believe something rather than two people insisting that their side is right without paying attention to what is being said. I admit I am guilty of it sometimes.
 
DarkLight said:
I think one thing a lot of people need to consider - it is the natural human reaction to feel attacked when someone says our behavior is a problem. We instinctively want to justify what we’re doing.
Click to expand...
We have had conversations on CAF with guys who feel really offended by the idea that prospective dates don’t want to be walked to their cars or homes by a guy they’ve just met or that lavish expressions of affection from a recent acquaintance make a lot of women uncomfortable.

I guess the idea is that somewhere, out there, there are Bad People who do Bad Things, but I’m a Good Person and I would never do Bad Things, so why doesn’t every woman trust me completely (even before she knows anything about me except that I’m bad about boundaries and taking a “no”) with her personal safety?

https://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger’s-rapist-or-a-guy’s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/

The truth is, a lot of the smartest thinking on women’s safety comes from feminists. A lot of purely conservative/non-feminist writing on the subject is less helpful. For example:

–There’s the assumption that total strangers are the only dangerous class of people, whereas for women, people we know and spend time around are much more dangerous (the stats are different for men)
–The advice is directed 100% to women–there’s nothing directed to men about how not to accidentally rape, assault or frighten women.
–Women are totally responsible for preventing themselves getting raped, whereas men “just didn’t understand.”
–The advice to women is primarily “avoid strangers!” (which is not even the problem) and “don’t be alone with men!” The latter has a certain amount of utility, but then we run up against the issue that a lot of perfectly nice men get all huffy about it when women practice basic personal safety. Like, no, it’s not a good idea for a first date to walk me home to my door. On the other end, once you have a relationship going strong, “don’t be alone” gets to be problematic. Is one really supposed to marry a guy one has never spent 5 minutes alone with and that one doesn’t know if one can trust? That in itself is dangerous.
–A big problem here is that men and women traditionally get very different messages. I think it would be helpful if we all got on the same page, and more guys realized that being very insistent about walking women home does NOT make them feel safer, and that large, lavish gifts can feel threatening.
 
Eesh yes! I think every woman knows at least one lady with the story of the guy she wanted to break up with, but then he kept showing up at her door and just won’t go away. And all of us are familiar with men who think gifts are essentially a way to buy favors from the woman - hence the reluctance to accept lavish gifts. A lot of men think if a guy buys X gift, she owes him sex or continued dates or something.

On another note, women tend to be socialized to be more affectionate and open in general than men are, while men are often trained to act in that way only with their romantic partners. I think this can cause a lot of confusion, especially for young men. (I actually suspect the women have the right of it here - it’s not good to train men that their romantic partner ought to be their sole source of emotional support.)
 
DarkLight said:
I’d also segue into an actual definition of “toxic masculinity.” It’s not saying that masculinity, by itself, is toxic, but that certain cultural expressions are.
Click to expand...
The problem is the general population don’t bother looking into that and take things at face value. It can be time consuming and we live in an age where slowing down or taking a moment to think clearly aren’t encouraged. You’d think the wordsmiths would realize this. I’m not great at it myself but when trying to make a point, shouldn’t one try to be as clear as possible?
Personally, the term ‘immoral behaviour’ would suffice and is better than ‘toxic masculinity’, which, predictably, is so easy to think of something else but we live in a post-morality age. We reap what we sow.
 
Last edited:
“Immoral behavior” doesn’t quite get the whole idea. The concept is that certain forms of immoral behavior are specially encouraged as aspects of manliness, often in a way that masks the problems from the men engaging in it that behavior. Plus the term can also apply to behavior that isn’t immoral per se, but has a strong tendency to cause problems.

I don’t think there’s really any way to distill that into a term that isn’t going to be misinterpreted and doesn’t require people to actually read and try to comprehend what’s going on.
 
I quit using the term feminist a long time ago when It got hi jacked by a bunch of angry women yelling into their computers about how men don’t think they’re pretty. I prefer to use the term equalist.

Honestly I think the biggest issues women face right now is we’re getting so many mixed messages (both men and women) that we don’t know what we’re supposed to do. As women, especially Christian women, we hear feminism is bad, it means being pro-choice and anti-family, but then does that mean that our only place is in the kitchen raising kids while our husband provides for us because we couldn’t handle the big scary world on our own? Because if we listen to some people it is scary. For example if I was to be invited out for drinks after work with my co-workers, but I was the only female, does that mean that they view me as an equal, or is it because they want to gang rape me? But what if they didn’t invite me? Is it just because I’m a women? Are they sexist? Are they afraid that I think they just invited me because they want to gang rape me, and I’m going to accuse them of sexual harassment just for inviting me, because how dare they think that, I’m not that kind of person… So it can all start getting confusing real quick. We want to be treated as equals, but nobody’s quite sure what that means. And I really feel at this point both men and women are equally at fault. I’ve had jobs where I was the only women, and my coworkers are always walking on eggshells around me at first because they feel like they can’t act the same way when I’m around as they do when it’s all men. But I hear women talk all the time about how it’s almost impossible to succeed in male dominated fields, but how many of them really try? Because I don’t see a whole lot of women in my field, and it’s not because they just can’t get hired.
 
Last edited:
The antagonist messages and slogans of radical feminists are the most often quoted. The strong effort to portray immoral behavior between men and women are constantly being portrayed on TV and in movies as good, normal or average. And the wordsmiths who write the scripts know exactly what they’re doing, and the actors and actresses just go along with it.

Dysfunctional living is the new template, and “Hey. What’s the big deal?” is the implied mindset. Just be indifferent to it all. Celebrate deviant sexual behavior, otherwise, certain people would feel bad. Sure, let’s do a TV show where the lead character, a female doctor, picks up a guy at a bar, has an anonymous sexual encounter and life goes on. Other female characters just approach whoever and engage in more immoral sexual behavior. But don’t you dare complain. That’s what’s wrong. Pope Benedict identified Indifference as a threat we all face.

No standards means others become automatic suspects. Who knows what that man or woman is really like. So, people keep their distance and too many live as islands. That’s not community. That’s not healthy. But don’t you dare try to “impose” any standards or expectations. So nobody gets to create a relationship with anybody, with the possible exception of family members. That’s not healthy for society as well.
 
Last edited:
I’ll give you an example. I recently saw a headline in one section of a major, daily newspaper about “The Male Dominated Meat Cutting Industry.” OK. If a woman wants to cut up animal carcasses for 40 hours a week - go for it. I would never put that on my list of job choices. But ‘let’s create an uproar.’ Let’s not have a rational discussion. Those men have got to get the “message.” Another one telling gyms to watch out for an invasion from women. Yesterday, no one noticed that there were fewer women than men at gyms, so women were getting their marching orders: “You’re not going there to get fit. You’re going there to show those bad, bad men that women have as much ‘power’ as men do.”

O… kay.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top