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Should men describe themselves as feminists, if they are supportive of feminism?

Johnny Vodka said:
Only semi-serious - but if you really wanted to fight gender roles, why couldn't you buy a 'boys' 'little monster' jumper for your little girl?
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With the best will in the world, you can't shield kids from external influences. (I was watching a disney 'princess' cartoon with a friend's 5-year-old the other day. It was pretty horrifying to me, extraordinarily conservative in its vision of a gender-typical world. She was utterly transfixed.) A girl may very well want the princess outfit, and you can't always sacrifice what your kids want for your own agenda.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
With the best will in the world, you can't shield kids from external influences. (I was watching a disney 'princess' cartoon with a friend's 5-year-old the other day. It was pretty horrifying to me, extraordinarily conservative in its vision of a gender-typical world. She was utterly transfixed.) A girl may very well want the princess outfit, and you can't always sacrifice what your kids want for your own agenda.
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Aye, my brother-in-law held out valiantly against buying my niece a doll but in the end all he was doing was depriving his daughter of something she really wanted. She loves her new doll.
 
Teaboy said:
Aye, my brother-in-law held out valiantly against buying my niece a doll but in the end all he was doing was depriving his daughter of something she really wanted. She loves her new doll.
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Kids want to fit in, don't they, to be the thing they think they should be? And they have massively rigid ideas about who is what. They grow out of those rigid ideas - but that takes time.

I remember when I was very young insisting on walking outside my mum on the pavement 'to keep my sword arm free'. :D :facepalm:
 
Johnny Vodka said:
I won't argue with someone else's personal experience, but I see no issue with arguing more abstractly about, particularly, why things happen. What happens with one gender necessarily affects what happens with the other and has wider societal implications. Also feminism often seems to reach its own conclusions about men, how men experience life and how men should be treated - as a man, I feel perfectly entitled to argue over these points too. :D You know, I actually had to explain to a young female colleague the other day that why, when it comes to selecting stuff for babies, it's no longer all pink for girls and blue for boys... I'm not at war with the pink for girls & blue for boys brigade, necessarily - it just amazed me that someone wasn't aware this is an issue.
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Bullshit.

You have argued with other women's personal experience on more than one occasion. In fact, you have repeatedly outright denied that women have the experiences they have had.
 
I have trouble describing myself as a feminist as a man because although I admire its achievements, I find it hard to identify with a fairly prominent section of it (the third/fourth waves) and don't particularly want to be lumped in with the kind of people who write clickbait on, for example, the Guardian's website. I think it's easier to just support equality between genders and races etc without labelling myself. TBH, the class struggle is more important to me anyway as a working class person.

Men can be feminists.
 
But not all women who fight for equality call themselves feminists, it doesn't mean a distancing at all, it means other people have different ways of describing politics that include the support for gender equality.

When I was politically active, ages ago, a feminist was someone who saw patriarchy as the main oppressive structure, others thought it was class and capitalism, that women's oppression was a part of that, not a different system. A feminist wasn't just someone who supported gender equality, but someone who had a theory about why and how women were oppressed and located it in patriarchy. I don't want to get into arguments about that, just pointing out that not everyone has the same analysis and not everyone identifies with feminist as a descriptor of their political position.
 
SE25 said:
I have trouble describing myself as a feminist as a man because although I admire its achievements, I find it hard to identify with a fairly prominent section of it (the third/fourth waves) and don't particularly want to be lumped in with the kind of people who write clickbait on, for example, the Guardian's website. I think it's easier to just support equality between genders and races etc without labelling myself.
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Indeed. As much as The Guardian is my news source of choice, I don't think some of the feminist cif pieces The Guardian publishes are good either for the image of The Guardian or feminism. For example, Julie Bindel's pieces often betray the fact that for some (not all) feminists there's something more sinister going on than a desire for gender equality.
 
Johnny Vodka said:
Indeed. As much as The Guardian is my news source of choice, I don't think some of the feminist cif pieces The Guardian publishes are good either for the image of The Guardian or feminism. For example, Julie Bindel's pieces often betray the fact that for some (not all) feminists there's something more sinister going on than a desire for gender equality.
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What's that then? Back up your argument with something more substantial than 'some' and 'something more sinister'.
 
Red Cat said:
What's that then? Back up your argument with something more substantial than 'some' and 'something more sinister'.
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Read Julie Bindel's articles yourself and decide where she's coming from. (Okay, my opinion is she's an old-fashioned moraliser who doesn't like men much and also wants to dictate to women how they should behave.) Even many feminists disagree with her; a good thing!
 
Orang Utan said:
Because you'll get a pasting.
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No, I've stated an opinion and I've stated a general reason for my opinion. It's not something I'm going to sit here arguing over all day. If someone wants to post why they think Julie Bindel is great, however, I will read it. :D
 
Johnny Vodka said:
No, I've stated an opinion and I've stated a general reason for my opinion. It's not something I'm going to sit here arguing over all day. If someone wants to post why they think Julie Bindel is great, however, I will read it. :D
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That's not what people are saying. They just want you to explain yourself, instead of making a bold sweeping statement without backing it up.
 
Johnny Vodka said:
No, I've stated an opinion and I've stated a general reason for my opinion. It's not something I'm going to sit here arguing over all day. If someone wants to post why they think Julie Bindel is great, however, I will read it. :D
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it would be nice if you could muster an argument.
 
Orang Utan said:
I don't know. Perhaps. Why are you talking about Bindel but quoting an article written by someone else?
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Why not? This is a woman Bindel disagrees with, who Bindel would dictate to. I'm sure there was a more commenty piece in The Guardian with Bindel up against Laura Lee.
 
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