Feminism - where are the threads?

[weltweit]

It made me wonder if I’d misunderstood the whole thing to be honest. I do fundamentally think that men should protect and provide for women and children, and that the biological role of women with respect to being pregnant and caring for small children makes us vulnerable and needing that.

In Britain today women can earn as much or more than men so they can clearly "provide" for their needs, while they need sperm to "procreate" it is less certain that they need maleness for long. As for the "protect" part of it I am less sure. My feeling is that the traditional male might in certain circles be becoming redundant.

The main difference between the genders is that only women can conceive carry, deliver a baby and breastfeed it. That might seem a dull truism, what I am saying is that for everything else there can be equality - if people want it.

I also think predominantly women’s work (caring work) is undervalued and want to discuss that. That’s feminism for me, not arguing there are no biological differences between men and women.

I agree that caring work is underpaid and that is is predominantly women who do it, but even there there is movement, at the birth of my son our midwife was a man. Initially we were a bit surprised but it was fine.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Lulz. On a thread about feminism a man is talking about men. Go figure.

Let me make this about me for a bit...

I think that's fair enough to be honest. My impression of that vid was it's about men/masculinity anyway so it makes sense to me the conversation would also focus/lead that way.

 

[Edie]

How do you reconcile wanting equality for women in terms of pay etc with wanting men to provide for women and children?

I never said that?

 

[Edie]

Full disclosure...I couldn't watch past 4 mins or so where he was discussing men mostly doing the war stuff and had a black and white pic of a muscle-man solider up...it reminded me of the Athena poster I had up on my wall as a young teenager and just how innocent and naive my thinking was then. The idea of a big strong bloke being ideal because as I am a girl I needed protecting and cherishing that because of my gender I needed to conform to what the patriarchy told me my worth and qualities were. That there was no point in being or seeing things differently because things 'just are'.

For me that is the level of analysis in this vid Edie that of an adolescent, someone as we all were looking for answers, a sense of belonging and wanting to fit in. Sure there are biological differences and in context they will present commonalities in terms of what roles/responsibilities men and women assume. And of course our socialisation and experiences will influence the people we are/want to be. I am not sure in who's interests his position is though, most men I know don't want to be solely defined on the patriarchy/macho scale just as most women don't want to be defined by a scale that comprises everything men aren't supposed to be.

View attachment 241953

Thing is tho, you’ve not watched it so you’ve not really heard his POV.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Thing is tho, you’ve not watched it so you’ve not really heard his POV.

Admittedly yes I only made it to 4 minutes because that's all I could stomach as the intro/premise he was building his arguments on seemed very juvenile.

 

[Edie]

Admittedly yes I only made it to 4 minutes because that's all I could stomach as the intro/premise he was building his arguments on seemed very juvenile.

Okay. So the central idea is that male and female are biologically determined by the size of gametes, females produce large resource intensive eggs, and males produce small cheap sperm. There is female choice, and male competition. There’s diamorphism between the sexes on pretty much every level, genetically and hormonally, and by extension physiologically, and behaviourally. Male roles include procreation, protection, and providing. Female roles include caring and nurturing. That male and female gender roles are to a pretty significant extent (even today), biologically determined. (Not every woman, not every man. But as generalisations over time and space).

I was interested to discuss this and how it fits in or doesn’t with modern feminism. I just wanna think about it.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

On that video he claimed that Andrea Dworkin was a supporter of incest and paedophilia. That's an extraordinary thing to say.

 

[Edie]

On that video he claimed that Andrea Dworkin was a supporter of incest and paedophilia. That's an extraordinary thing to say.

That bit definitely sounds dodge. There are lots of bits that are bollocks I reckon.

 

[kabbes]

Okay. So the central idea is that male and female are biologically determined by the size of gametes, females produce large resource intensive eggs, and males produce small cheap sperm. There is female choice, and male competition. There’s diamorphism between the sexes on pretty much every level, genetically and hormonally, and by extension physiologically, and behaviourally. Male roles include procreation, protection, and providing. Female roles include caring and nurturing. That male and female gender roles are to a pretty significant extent (even today), biologically determined. (Not every woman, not every man. But as generalisations over time and space).

I was interested to discuss this and how it fits in or doesn’t with modern feminism. I just wanna think about it.

Can you not see that this line of reasoning is:

1) Steal underpants
2) ???
3) Profit

 

[kabbes]

... and the rest is begging the question on an industrial scale

 

[Edie]

Can you not see that this line of reasoning is:

1) Steal underpants
2) ???
3) Profit

I don’t understand

 

[tufty79]

It's a reference to a south park episode featuring underwear stealing gnomes, and coffee. That's all I can tell you..

 

[Edie]

It's a reference to a south park episode featuring underwear stealing gnomes, and coffee. That's all I can tell you..

Oh.

 

[kabbes]

It means there is a gaping big hole where the evidence and argument should be. It means you can’t start by stating a fact and then leaping to the conclusion you’d already predetermined without doing some proper work to connect the dots.

Men and women having different gametes doesn’t just leap to “women are caring”, for example. Male and female turtles have different sex gametes. So what?

 

[Edie]

It means there is a gaping big hole where the evidence and argument should be. It means you can’t start by stating a fact and then leaping to the conclusion you’d already predetermined without doing some proper work to connect the dots.

Men and women having different gametes doesn’t just leap to “women are caring”, for example. Make and female turtles have different sex gametes. So what?

Sorry yes I didn’t put all the intermediate arguments. Sexual selection leads to sexual dimorphism, which leads to (or determines, to a debatable extent) sex-influenced behaviours.

I may be wrong but I feel as if a lot of feminism seeks to claim there are no differences. And I’m not sure this has always been to women’s advantage. For example, I’d like to see more emphasis on improving pay and conditions for ‘women’s work’ (caring) than just trying to get women into STEM. (I think it’s great women work in STEM if they want to). I’d like to see young women (and men) paid to stay at home with their children as another example.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

But wouldn’t it be dangerous to pay men to stay at home with their children if they are not genetically predisposed to be caring or nurturing.

 

[weepiper]

I don't think feminism has ever tried to say there's literally no differences between men and women. What feminism says is that we shouldn't treat women as lesser people than men simply because they are women. Saying that we're genetically predisposed to be better at wiping arses or washing dishes and men just genetically happen to be aggressive and violent is straight out sexism from the MRA handbook though and pretty much the opposite of feminism. Feminism expects better for women and men.

 

[weltweit]

..
I’d like to see young women (and men) paid to stay at home with their children as another example.

I found it bizzare government would subsidise us sending our son to a Ofsted approved nursery, they almost paid for it, but they wouldn't pay me to look after my own son at home instead. Pay other people but not the actual parents!

eta, well there are some child tax credits I suppose.

Also there is certainly a whole unpaid work issue going on, mainly done by women.

 

[BristolEcho]

It made me wonder if I’d misunderstood the whole thing to be honest. I do fundamentally think that men should protect and provide for women and children, and that the biological role of women with respect to being pregnant and caring for small children makes us vulnerable and needing that. I also think predominantly women’s work (caring work) is undervalued and want to discuss that. That’s feminism for me, not arguing there are no biological differences between men and women.

Sorry yes I didn’t put all the intermediate arguments. Sexual selection leads to sexual dimorphism, which leads to (or determines, to a debatable extent) sex-influenced behaviours.

I may be wrong but I feel as if a lot of feminism seeks to claim there are no differences. And I’m not sure this has always been to women’s advantage. For example, I’d like to see more emphasis on improving pay and conditions for ‘women’s work’ (caring) than just trying to get women into STEM. (I think it’s great women work in STEM if they want to). I’d like to see young women (and men) paid to stay at home with their children as another example.

In regards to caring work I agree, but then in another thread when I was talking about exactly that and the value of work not being linked to it's pay rate or formal employment you sneered at that as lefty nonsense. There are all kinds of work, both paid and unpaid that certain elements of society don't respect and don't want to recomponsate financially. The majority of this work is, or has traditionally been done by women and I don't think it's a mistake. It definitely should change.

 

[8ball]

It’s delivered by a teacher at Eton- so you can see why I immediately thought it a good idea to post here.

That made a bit of tea come out of my nose.


As a small aside, the mentions of Dworkin in the vid involve a scorched-earth approach to a whole lot of context. They’re not something I agree with (and relate to a fairly esoteric debate around patriarchal control of the boundaries of meaning in terms of the erotic), but regardless, they have been cherry-picked (I think probably lifted wholesale from a completely different argument from the annals of the Eton debating society), and made to look like something very different to what they are in aid of an establishment conservative agenda.

edit: the video still doesn’t seem such a terrible initial outline for one side to take in debating such things if the idea is that the other side is able to outline their own ideas and attack the stance taken. I’d wonder about how that would go down in an elitist school for boys only that is grooming them for the establishment, though.

 

[tufty79]

In regards to caring work I agree, but then in another thread when I was talking about exactly that and the value of work not being linked to it's pay rate or formal employment .... There are all kinds of work, both paid and unpaid that certain elements of society don't respect and don't want to recomponsate financially. The majority of this work is, or has traditionally been done by women and I don't think it's a mistake. It definitely should change.

Does this tie in with the second shift?

The Second Shift - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Linking as a placeholder because it's a term I'm aware of but haven't really read up on.

 

[kabbes]

Sorry yes I didn’t put all the intermediate arguments. 1) Sexual selection leads to sexual dimorphism, 2) which leads to (or determines, to a debatable extent) 3) sex-influenced behaviours.

1) Steal underpants
2) ???
3) Profit

Or, to be more specific, 3 is your claim that”sex-influenced behaviours” includes being caring.

Even the concept of “caring” is massively complex, being highly culturally embedded. The claim that such culturally-specific, environmental, social behaviour is in turn determined through some unknown mechanism straight out of a couple of gametes is preposterous, let alone unproven by just stating it.

I may be wrong but I feel as if a lot of feminism seeks to claim there are no differences. And I’m not sure this has always been to women’s advantage. For example, I’d like to see more emphasis on improving pay and conditions for ‘women’s work’ (caring) than just trying to get women into STEM. (I think it’s great women work in STEM if they want to). I’d like to see young women (and men) paid to stay at home with their children as another example.

Have a read of that Top Girls paper I posted a few pages ago. There was indeed a subversion of feminism to serve the needs of capitalism, but I don’t know why you think it was feminists that did the subverting.

 

[kabbes]

I think I need to expand on that top point.

Human behaviour is highly unusual in the animal world. Our key evolutionary strategy has been plasticity, the ability to adapt — the very opposite of mastering an environmental niche. We have lived in jungle and tundra, primitive camps and modern cities. You can’t have innate responses to master all those environments. So instead, we have a unique defining characteristic, which is culture. We pattern our behaviours, thoughts, beliefs using cultural tools (such as language), cultural scripts (such as what to do when we reach a traffic light) and cultural values (such as the idea that individual attainment is the best measure of success). Culture provides us with a toolkit to navigate without even needing to think about it in a world that would be otherwise utterly overwhelming in its complexity. Nobody could rely on evolved responses to tell us how to behave in a work meeting, as would be evident if you’d ever seen Kevin eating in one. Even just trying to cross a road would be impossible, let alone being able to operate within a social network.

What you are calling “caring behaviour” is similarly a pattern of highly complex cultural scripts, cultural behaviours, cultural values and so on. It varies from culture to culture, demonstrating just how cultural it is. And in the full sense of what you would mean by “caring behaviour” (such as worrying if others are okay, having empathy for somebody’s concerns and so on), it doesn’t exist at all in the animal kingdom (notwithstanding that animals follow much simpler behaviours that direct their protection of their offspring until it is viable).

If you’re going to suggest that such highly complex, culturally-mediated behaviour is not only directly derived from genes but specifically derived from one particular source (i.e. sexual dimorphism) you really need to do a lot more than just claim it is obvious.

 

[Winot]

I’m interested in what people find threatening about the idea that gender is a construct.

 

[Poot]

I’m interesting in what people find threatening about the idea that gender is a construct.

If you have been given a role and played it all your life, it's very difficult to accept that it was foisted upon you rather than being your lifelong destiny. 'But what have I been doing all my life in that case!'

I find it interesting that they thought that the best person to give this talk at a boys' school full of privileged young men was a man.

 

[purenarcotic]

I’m interesting in what people find threatening about the idea that gender is a construct.

That it will liberate women. And lots of men too. Can’t be having that now, can we.

 

[kabbes]

In Victorian times, it was obvious that being a woman involved being weak and helpless. Of course, this was also a cultural construct and, as with all such things, was taken as obvious only by those to whom it applied, i.e. rich white people who had the power to make the construct hegemonic. As Sojourner Truth neatly punctured with her 1851 speech:

Well, children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter, I think between the Negroes of the South and the women of the North - all talking about rights--the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this talking about? That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps me any best place. And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm. I have plowed (sic), I have planted and I have gathered into barns. And no man could head me. And ain't I a woman? I could work as much, and eat as much as any man--when I could get it--and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne children and seen most of them sold into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman? ...

These essentialist ideas about what being a woman means — well, the meta-construction of the feminine construction is as culturally embedded as the feminine construction itself.

 

[Clair De Lune]

Thanks for the trigger warning edie as this was the first thread I found on waking. I think ill start my Sunday in a nicer way

 

[TopCat]

How do you reconcile wanting equality for women in terms of pay etc with wanting men to provide for women and children?

My ex wife had this kind of confused thinking.

 

[Red Cat]

It's a bit daft this social construct vs biology dichotomy. All human experience is cultural and social.

I think people find the idea that gender is only something social threatening because life is frightening and unpredictable and often brutal and we like to have anchors and clear roles. It also implies we've been duped, robbed of something, that we might not be who we believe ourselves to be. Lots of reasons.