#WomenAgainstFeminism goes viral as people explain why they don't need feminism anymore - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Jackald;45568100]If you actually read my post, you'd realise I was using it as an example of the kind of shit that is not conducive to equal rights activism. I'm saying that acting like that isn't helpful. Are you refuting that statement?[/QUOTE] No, I know it isn't helpful. However nobody actually takes these people seriously other than other crazies and people out to try and discredit the movement using fringe idiots, so the impact is negligible. Finding morons on Tumblr who claim to be feminists then just go fucking bezerk is silly, then there's the fact a good number of these posts are from troll accounts attempting to make feminism look stupid.

[QUOTE=Jackald;45568138]I'd love to talk about the activist plight of feminists like Malala Yousafzai, but frankly I don't think anyone here would even know or care who that is.[/QUOTE] then why are you bringing up tumblr?

[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;45568113]holy fucking shit did you actually read his posts like this is why you guys get such a bad fucking rap on facepunch, [B]he even said there needs to be a distinction between tumblr feminists and feminists [/B]before you go throwing around this knee jerk shit, how about [B]actually reading the fucking post in the first place[/B][/QUOTE] "tumblr feminists" aren't really a thing. You've got idiots on tumblr misrepresenting feminism, sure, but they aren't a sect of feminism that's remotely of note or anything. Nobody listens to them but other idiots on tumblr, so they are basically of zero worth to the movement.

[QUOTE=Ownederd;45568126]hey let's not play the needless semantics argument again please[/QUOTE] [I]Needless?[/I] When people intentionally mutilate language, they manipulate humanities ability to understand reality. Declaring that one thing means another, to further an agenda, is [U]propaganda[/U] and [U]double think[/U]. [B]I won't stand for it.[/B]

[QUOTE=Kardia;45568168][I]Needless?[/I] When people intentionally mutilate language, they manipulate humanities ability to understand reality. Declaring that one thing means another, to further an agenda, is [U]propaganda[/U] and [U]double think[/U]. [B]I won't stand for it.[/B][/QUOTE] Oh boy, we got one of these guys floating about. Language is malleable, deal with it. Language today is nothing like language a century ago, a decade ago, or hell even a day ago in some cases. And we still understand the world around us about the same.

I wish people would post more examples considering all the talk of tumblr feminists on here. I want to see posts with problematic arguments and not just people who yell a lot or random anons.

[QUOTE=Kardia;45568168][I]Needless?[/I] When people intentionally mutilate language, they manipulate humanities ability to understand reality. Declaring that one thing means another, to further an agenda, is [U]propaganda[/U] and [U]double think[/U]. [B]I won't stand for it.[/B][/QUOTE] are you seriously comparing this to 1984 lol english isn't a static language

[QUOTE=Kardia;45568117]Calling feminism synonymous with gender egalitarianism is a [B]big load of bullshit[/B]. [highlight]The word is tied directly to "feminine", showing it's focus on women through literal definition.[/highlight] In terms of use, the word is used in a modern context to describe [I]any advocacy of female power[/I], not male power. I'd like to say however, that feminism and gender egalitarianism can both lead in the same direction. Towards the ideal equality of genders.[/QUOTE] Did you know that the term "slave" comes from "slav", because the slavic peoples were commonly forced into slavery during the middle ages? Of course by the 19th century slavery was seen by the western world as being primarily applied to black people. My point here is that semantics like that are pointless.

[QUOTE=hexpunK;45568154]"tumblr feminists" aren't really a thing. You've got idiots on tumblr misrepresenting feminism, sure, but they aren't a sect of feminism that's remotely of note or anything. Nobody listens to them but other idiots on tumblr, so they are basically of zero worth to the movement.[/QUOTE] yup, but guess who the people in the OP are getting their impressions of feminism from - the impression being perpetuated by morons every time someone on facepunch freaks their shit out about someone pointing out tumblr, someone else gets the idea of posting it again plus denying that they're actually feminists really means nothing at the end of the day - they probably don't think you're a feminist either. basically the moral of the story is: stop freaking out about tumblr. When you freak out about it, you bring more attention to it because it looks like you're dragging the rug over it.

[QUOTE=Zeke129;45567659]The cool thing about about being a feminist is that I can look at a bunch of women choosing not to identify as feminists and say "cool, that's their choice" instead of sprouting the biggest boner of my life because my side just scored a point.[/QUOTE] Thats the cool thing about being someone who's not retarded, not a feminist.

[QUOTE=Jackald;45568195]OKAY So my point is that tumblr feminists need to chill out about non-existent issues, and we should focus on trying to make society more equal. [b] Is anyone actually disagreeing with me in this argument? [/b][/QUOTE] the question is why did you even bother to bring up tumblr in the first place?

[QUOTE=Pvt. Martin;45567554]No. It's not like that at all. Why would you even think that? We're talking about an ideology here, not race.[/QUOTE] I'm 25% Muslim on my dad's side.

[QUOTE=Ownederd;45568202]the question is why did you even bother to bring up tumblr in the first place?[/QUOTE] because it's in the 2nd line of the article???

[QUOTE=hexpunK;45568035]Probably because a lot of them think [B]nobody[/B] should be forced into registering into military service. Even if it's a time of emergency, if someone doesn't want to fight, forcing them to isn't going to help.[/QUOTE] Strange. You would think that a gender equality movement such as feminism would make this a pretty major issue. The MRA movement is a reaction to feminisms failure to address sexism against men which has also been mixed up with conservative values that are against the accomplishments of feminism.

The word will change over time I'm sure, like all words. Etymology is a beautiful subject. But people claim feminism is defined as X and I'm annoyed by that. I may be going against the tide with my view, but we are all metaphorical H2O particles. Every particle has an effect.

[QUOTE=Rangergxi;45568233]Strange. You would think that a gender equality movement such as feminism would make this a pretty major issue. The MRA movement is a reaction to feminisms failure to address sexism against men which has also been mixed up with conservative values that are against the accomplishments of feminism.[/QUOTE] the MRA movement is also one of the largest running jokes out there, filled to the brim with people who endlessly go "woe-is-me" and try really hard to hide the fact that they're basically closeted reactionaries. the difference is that this is mainstream in the MRA movement

This is so dumb. People's kneejerk reactions to some sort of "tumblr feminism" are so unbelievably ridiculous. All this dumb hashtag proves to me is that we need feminism more than ever because people are misinformed about the values of a feminist and use a stereotype based on an idea that tumblr is some sort of evil hivemind.

[QUOTE=Furioso;45567828]Why is this getting so many dumbs? I think there's pretty good reasons to dislike both modern feminism [I]and[/I] men's rights activism, namely because they pick and choose issues instead of actively addressing the root of the problem: gender roles. This video presents a decent examination of gender roles, their place in modern and historical society, modern feminism, and it also touches on the reactionary birth of men's rights activism as well. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp8tToFv-bA[/media][/QUOTE] I think everybody understands that; when they pick and choose smaller issues they're not somehow blindly skipping around the massive looming shape of the issue of gender roles. It's just that you can't talk about gender roles as a concept and expect to be able to meaningfully break it down, discuss it and figure out solutions without bringing in examples from culture, because culture is pretty much the biggest (or only) thing driving it. Culture drives society, society drives culture. When you see people complaining about a negative portrayal in a video game or movie, they're not being nit-picky or doing it because they hate that specific developer, writer or actor. They're doing it because all negative portrayals of women/races/non-hetero sexualities) validates and reinforces that specific negative opinion in the minds of people who are exposed to it. Sure, the effect of one video game is be minimal; 'why pick on that specific movie', 'why single out that sexist thing that one actor said', etc. But like pollution, the effects of all the little bits come together and we get what we have now: a culture that, by and large, places men in a dominant position over women. Culture is the only platform we have for spreading ideas and opinions (essentially 'this is how you ought to live your life'), and it's only by talking about how culture negatively effects women that we can start to make a difference. You can't talk about all of culture at once; your head would explode. Without specific examples to talk about, you have no basis for discussion, and therefore no way of effecting change. By picking a popular media product and talking about how it negatively effects women/etc, we have examples that people are familiar with and that makes it easier for them to understand the concepts. We say 'this should be considered a negative opinion', and we encourage people to question the validity of that opinion. Ideally, this makes those who hold that damaging opinion start to question it. Bear in mind that there are a whole lot of little opinions that we can hold that, while not explicitly saying that 'men should dominate women' or similar, generally equate to the same thing - and as in wider culture, these little opinions come together to influence what we do and say and do have a real effect on the world. I catch myself having sexist opinions about a whole range of things, and it's important to question yourself when this happens. For people who aren't digging any sort of feminism and/or have an MRA fedora on their hat stand: I know it's hard. It's hard when behaviors and beliefs you've been taught by your parents, your friends, your favourite stories, your favourite teachers, get questioned. We've all been socialised into believing certain things, and we've built our idea of what it means to be a man (and, therefore, our own sense of [I]self worth[/I]) around these ideals. And then we get older and find feminism and suddenly that whole sense of self worth comes into question. It's not easy; the past few years of introspection that I've gone through has been tough. Anger is natural, rejection of the ideas you're hearing is natural; it's easy to feel that you're own self worth is being attacked. But once you let that instinctive reaction simmer down and get some objective perspective on it, you'll find it's well worth the effort, for yourself and the women you love. And it also means that if you're a more feminine dude, one this whole social mess gets sorted out you'll be able to be who you want to be, express emotions, talk about your pain etc etc etc without being told to 'man up', and that sounds pretty great, right? tl;dr: The root issue of gender roles is too big and nebulous to talk about as a distinct thing; you gotta talk about specific aspects of it. Changing what you do and changing the portrayal of women in individual media products is like pollution; if errbody pick up a little bit of rubbish and put it in the bin, earth gets happy. If everybody drop all their rubbish on the ground world get sad.

[QUOTE=Jackald;45568213]Because the article is about women refuting a tumblr feminism campaign entitled "I need feminism because" by stating "I don't need feminism because". The news article is literally about people doing stuff in response to tumblr.[/QUOTE] why are people so convinced that tumblr exists in a vacuum? if websites existed in a vacuum, r/theredpill wouldn't be an issue

Also re: 'tumblr feminists', bear in mind that the extreme and illogical screengrabs you see around are posted for shock/humour value and ignore the fact that a whole lot of the discourse on tumblr is reasonable and legitimate. The idea of a 'vocal minority' exists on all levels It makes me sad because all of the discourse I get into regarding feminism is on tumblr, and all the kind hearted people that took the time to explain the more difficult to grasp and uncomfortable/painful-for-a-guy-to-accept concepts important to feminism spoke to me there

Wow guys look how this thread went. Made some good progress today.

[QUOTE=Maloof?;45568289]Also re: 'tumblr feminists', bear in mind that the extreme and illogical screengrabs you see around are posted for shock/humour value and ignore the fact that a whole lot of the discourse on tumblr is reasonable and legitimate. The idea of a 'vocal minority' exists on all levels[/QUOTE] This, and people never take into account the person on tumblr who is actively on the other side of their argument. People always will ignore that when it comes to these (clearly satirical) screengrabs. If tumblr was some sort of "feminazi" hivemind these posts wouldnt exist in the first place because these satire blogs would have nobody to reply to. Like, honestly. [url=http://sadvaporwavebabe.tumblr.com/]Do people think this kind of shit is genuine?[/url]

I've mentioned it before but the specter of the "tumblr feminist" is a fascinating piece of internet culture. On almost no other topic is there such widespread outrage against something that is so nebulously difficult to define but simultaneously covers an entire ideology who's history extends long before Tumblr or the internet was ever created. More still, the continued use of this generalization is defended because "tumblr feminists" are somehow the loudest, when in reality they would be completely irrelevant if it weren't for the people who already have a chip on their shoulder, either over genuine feminism or "tumblr" feminism, actively seeking out what basically amounts to the same silly people you get all over the internet for any given topic. Obviously generalizations over every topic occur where we like to accuse all gun owners of being armed psychos or all Call of Duty players as 13 year old assholes, but it's really not as pervasive as this "tumblr feminist" trend where individuals on a website are cast as the de facto figurehead of hundreds of years of social equality

[QUOTE=Maloof?;45568289]Also re: 'tumblr feminists', bear in mind that the extreme and illogical screengrabs you see around are posted for shock/humour value and ignore the fact that a whole lot of the discourse on tumblr is reasonable and legitimate. The idea of a 'vocal minority' exists on all levels It makes me sad because all of the discourse I get into regarding feminism is on tumblr, and all the kind hearted people that took the time to explain the more difficult to grasp and uncomfortable/painful-for-a-guy-to-accept concepts important to feminism spoke to me there[/QUOTE] Glad you posted this, most of the discussion on feminism i've seen on the site has been pretty positive.

[QUOTE=Duck M.;45568322]Like, honestly. [url=http://sadvaporwavebabe.tumblr.com/]Do people think this kind of shit is genuine?[/url][/QUOTE] otherkin are real. this one sounds a bit too much like satire, but otherkin are real and annoying as are the people who demand pronouns such as xe/xim/xeir

[QUOTE=hexpunK;45568005]People who "hate feminists" love to [b]call themselves "egalitarian" in an attempt to look better than feminists, in reality it's just a meaningless term[/b] for them to hide behind so they don't have to associate with "those awful tumblr faggots" or whatever.[/QUOTE] I dont think you are really being fair here. There are plenty of people who prefer the term egalitarian who also support feminist ideals. Egalitarian is just a broader term, while feminism focuses on inequality between genders, egalitarianism also includes things like wealth inequality, racial inequality, and inequality between regions (rural vs urban access to education for example). Maybe it is an argument of semantics, but there is still a distinction to be made.

i dont think these women really know what feminism is. or maybe they don't know inequality exists outside of their white middle class neighbourhood.

[QUOTE=Rangergxi;45568233] The MRA movement is a reaction to feminisms failure to address sexism against men which has also been mixed up with conservative values that are against the accomplishments of feminism.[/QUOTE] No it's a reaction to feminism combined with the general idea that society has or is about to breach some sort of political-correctness threshold because of liberalism, progressivism, or social equality. Most MRA's seem to be incapable of actually delineating issues men have in current Western society and instead focus on how progressives have made things worse. Note that I said progressives and not feminists because regardless of where you stand on gender issues, there will always be an MRA to your right eager to throw you under the bus to satisfy his world view. Man, woman, progressive, moderate, it doesn't matter. You are a liberal mangina white knight and it's all your fault. The only two points I see brought up is child custody (a trend that started reversing itself in the 70's after feminism pushed women into the workplace and away from being the default guardian candidate) and male circumcision, where the criticism has existed far before and from far better groups than the MRA movement. [editline]1st August 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=imptastick;45568405]I dont think you are really being fair here. There are plenty of people who prefer the term egalitarian who also support feminist ideals. Egalitarian is just a broader term, while feminism focuses on inequality between genders, egalitarianism also includes things like wealth inequality, racial inequality, and inequality between regions (rural vs urban access to education for example). Maybe it is an argument of semantics, but there is still a distinction to be made.[/QUOTE] Calling yourself an egalitarian is okay. Shooting down feminism after it has accomplished so much for society around the world because it's not as good as "egalitarianism", which as an effective movement is more or less non-existent, is just intellectual masturbation. Again though, semantics argument. Most egalitarians by default would agree with core tenants of feminism, and feminism is an inherently egalitarian movement. [QUOTE=Bobie;45568430]i dont think these women really know what feminism is. or maybe they don't know inequality exists outside of their white middle class neighbourhood.[/QUOTE] Pretty much this. Much in the same way that unions have come under increasing fire over the years, there is just a general feeling that we no longer need these interest groups in society because we happen to be better off now than we were 25/50/75 years ago, either in terms of labor regulations or gender equality.

[QUOTE=Raidyr;45568441] Calling yourself an egalitarian is okay. Shooting down feminism after it has accomplished so much for society around the world because it's not as good as "egalitarianism", which as an effective movement is more or less non-existent, is just intellectual masturbation. Again though, semantics argument. Most egalitarians by default would agree with core tenants of feminism, and feminism is an inherently egalitarian movement. [/QUOTE] I would agree that using egalitarianism as a way to act superior to feminists is pretty dumb. I just did not like his wording. It seemed as if he was labeling the majority of self proclaimed egalitarians as anti-feminist. Which is just as silly and inaccurate as the people labeling self proclaimed feminists as anti-men.

[QUOTE=imptastick;45568494]I would agree that using egalitarianism as a way to act superior to feminists is pretty dumb. I just did not like his wording. It seemed as if he was labeling the majority of self proclaimed egalitarians as anti-feminist. Which is just as silly and inaccurate as the people labeling self proclaimed feminists as anti-men.[/QUOTE] I think it's in reply to the very recent trend in these topics of people saying they are egalitarians, or support egalitarianism, and then taking shots at ideologies they disagree with for not being sufficiently "egalitarian" as they define it. It's a bit of a generalization I agree but it's a symptom of labeling yourself as something that covers such a wide swathe of topics. I'd consider myself an egalitarian but this is the second time I've ever actually posted that on FP because it's a difficult word to gauge precise positions on.