I would love a definition of Feminist

[Sandy]

Seriously, would somebody please define this term?

Let me first explain that I am a Fiscal Conservative, not a Social Conservative and want the Federal Government limited in all laws, leaving them with exactly what is called out in the Constitution.

The women got the vote! We also decided to head for the Universities and learn a trade to earn our own money if we had to. I am old enough to remember WW2 when so many men were killed in action. Then of course, Korea and Vietnam made many of us single mothers.

I for one, saw to it that my daughters got the same education as the guys and both are successful professionals. Does this make me a feminist?

When my husband left home I was made the bread winner and I had a terrible time trying to continue in this new category. I ended up doing alterations at home just to keep the home going. I was good enough to end up working for many actors who liked my work. Is this what makes me a feminist?

When I was 12 years old my drunken step father raped and beat me and I had a rough 8 months not knowing if I was made pregnant. I was not but it was only a fluke. For this reason, I have been pro-choice not only in the case of abortion but on all things that are not against the law. Abortion is not against the law and I want to keep it that way.

Does this make me a feminist? I have had to leave the Republican/Conservative for my stand on this issue as did millions of other women. Does that make all of us feminists? Do we hate men? Heavens! No!

[Sentinel]

Sandy, I mean no disrepect. You are not rebelling against the situation your step father and ex put you in. You are promoting such situations. They didn't teach you conservative values and you're likewise not promoting conservative values. Anyway, this isn't your question. Besides, what's your point about being pro-abortion for your suffering at the hands of men? Do you wish your mom aborted you?

In my opinion, a feminist is someone who wants women to have more rights than men. In regards to abortion, women get the choice to be responsible for a baby, even after the baby is conceived. If feminists really supported "reproductive rights," they wouldn't want to force men to support babies.

Men pay more for some insurance, such as car insurance. Women cost medical insurance companies a LOT more than men cost these companies, yet medical companies don't charge a penny more for women. Yet, a feminist is someone who whines that insurance companies are unfair to women. "Boohoo, women have more out-of-pocket medical costs..." "Boohoo, insurance doesn't want to pay for 'the pill'..."

Or, the old classive of equal pay for equal work. Women have long had that! Feminists want equal pay for LESS work for women. They love to quote those salary averages for various professions, totally ignoring that women in any profession often take even years off to have children and even if they're working but have children, they're running home at 5 while men stay late or taking a half day off to take a kid to the doctor while the man keeps working. This is the primary reason women average less pay in the same profession... they haven't put in nearly as many hours. But, this fact is irrelevant to a feminist.

If women tended to die younger than men rather than the other way around, you can bet that at every Democrat gathering, everyone would be reminded of this. "Oh, how women are so oppressed in our society. It's literally killing us!"

[garrett7855]

Sentinal-I find some of your arguements to be well-reasoned and put together very well, but I'm curious-is there some special reason you are following Sandy around? Almost all your responses seem to be aimed at EVERYTHING Sandy sends. Not complaining, just curious.

[Sentinel]

garrett7855 said:

Sentinal-I find some of your arguements to be well-reasoned and put together very well, but I'm curious-is there some special reason you are following Sandy around? Almost all your responses seem to be aimed at EVERYTHING Sandy sends. Not complaining, just curious.

Just coincidence. I think some of her posts were the most recent when I started posting here. And, whenever any subject line asks a question or requests something, as in this case, I'm more likely to respond.

[flossingofamerica]

Better check those insurance costs again, there...I pay almost twenty percent more for my health care premium than a male a year older than myself. Same plan, same company.

These women, in the studies of equal pay for equal work, did you talk to all of their superiors and ask them how often they were leaving work for their children? Just curious

I have a friend I'll use an example, because I hate statistics. She is three years older than her co-worker. She has more experience, six months more on the job, never been repremanded for anything, more education, has NO children to run home to, works the same hours and makes five grand less a year than her friend.

[Sentinel]

flossingofamerica said:

Better check those insurance costs again, there...I pay almost twenty percent more for my health care premium than a male a year older than myself. Same plan, same company.

I don't believe that the rate tables at the insurance company are higher for women than men (in spite of women costing insurance company much more). If this is true, I expect anytime now to hear of a lawsuit or settlement for discrimination.

If you're thinking of specific male, then certainly there are other variables. Maybe his deductable is higher than yours.

If you want to talk about society as a whole rather than specific examples which may not be representative then you have to use statistics.

Feminists like to compare average salaries without controlling for any variables (except maybe occupation). But, that is dishonest because it leaves out many significant variables. They're being dishonest because their basic claim is a lie. Men are not paid more for the same work, even if you can find contrary examples.

In fact, if a women can prove that she is being paid less because she's a woman, it is very easy for her to win a bag fat award. The same is not true of men.

[George Moresby]

Paintballs, Postholes, and Dunking Tanks

by Captain F. G. Moresby
18 July 2003

Somewhere near Las Vegas, grown men somewhere near my age are paying ten thousand dollars to hunt naked girls with paintball guns. Very near this same Somewhere, naked girls are swindling middle-aged men out of twenty-five hundred dollars to get them to chase them through the desert and miss them with paintball guns. And because of this Questions Are Raised.

That’s not really true. Questions aren’t really Raised, but rather Fussbudgets Are Mad. Yes, the Fussy, the Snitty, and the various species of Pious are simply and impotently angry. Again. Impotence and Umbrage – they are so very often in direct proportion. But why are they mad? The Men want to pay the ten grand and the girls want to take the two-point-five grand. They are both poor specimens, in spirit and purse, so why not let this mutually beneficial, if not zero-sum, game go on?

Well, I knew it had to be coming: The Game cannot go on because Noisy Woman Commentator-types don’t like it. They say it “encourages violence towards women.” They say the paintball “really hurts.” They say that from paintguns “it’s a small step to cooking, cleaning, home ec courses, secretarial work, making coffee, handguns, assault rifles, and death camps for women.” The Safari Outfitter, a Mr. Burdick, says it’s “good clean fun.” The Noisy Woman Commentators say that these girls “don’t know what’s good for them.”

They are all Swindlers and Liars. Mr. Burdick is a Swindler: $10,000 to play, but the quarry gets only $2500? It doesn’t cost seventy-five hundred dollars to supply paintguns and rent some desert. Fair is fair, I say it should be pure zero-sum-minus-overhead-and-a-reasonable-return. Mr. Burdick is also a liar: shooting girls with paintballs is certainly fun, it’s also certainly good fun, but it’s decidedly not clean fun.

The Noisy Women are also Swindlers and Liars. Why? Because they tendentiously call themselves “feminists” when in any reasonable lexicography a feminist would at the very least be feminine. The real feminists are the girls in Budapest who’d wear miniskirts and high-heels on icy sub-zero streets – anything to catch a meal-, roof-, ride-, and bauble-ticket. The Noisy Women are nothing more than jobbers; like the rest of the Race, Sensitivity, and Panic industry, they are making a living by making nothing. They’re the legendary Chinky-Chinky Chinaman Sitting On A Fence.

But the bigger lie is that they don’t really care if these would-be lap-dancers, jello-wrestlers, and waitresses do what’s not good for them. Not at all. More likely a dab or two of paint would spruce these failed fellatrices up a bit. The Noisy Woman Commentators are seething – “raising questions” in the active voice – because of Taboos: the problem is there are GUNS involved and there are NAKED GIRLS involved, and both of these words are powerful Taboos and thence superstitions in that Domestic-Animal-Who-Would-Be-Feral we call Woman.

I paraphrase Conrad: Women are frightened of firearms, not from personal cowardice, but almost superstitiously. In woman there is rarely Reason, but very frequently Instinct. A billion years of tidying up caves, tents, wigwams, and hovels have left women ignorant of Weapons of Individual Destruction. To women, weapons are the unknown and we all fear the unknown. It’s just that a woman’s ignorance makes the unknown infinitely vast. Hence likewise her limitless fear.

As for Naked Girls, well, this is not the unknown at all. A woman’s own nakedness and its allure weighed against her congeners’ is the one and only thing a woman really knows – and she knows it instinctively, profoundly, and rightly. If we men ever experience anything like this, it is the short-circuit that ignites and sparks when another man gets too physically close to us. When a woman imagines another woman’s naturally finer charms it looses the same surge in her that we feel when that wattage lights up our Fight Circuits. Thus, when these Soup-Chicken Commentators picture the kind of chick that would constitute a game bird, the only thing – the only thing – that goes through their hard-wired little poultry brains is the knowledge that they themselves are Fowl Fit Only For Boiling. All those years at Harvard and … for what? This nasty Boy Scout haircut and … for what? These ugly shoes and … for what?

This, the above, is Gender Identity Disorder. Wanting to have an operation to look like a woman is not; it is just plain Crazy and should be treated with the Spinning Cage, the Revolving Bed, or Trepanning. Demanding that I, as a taxpayer, pay for it, is not Gender Identity Disorder, it is Suicide and should be treated with the Gallows. The Noisy Woman Commentators have genuine Gender Identity Disorder and if they don’t know it, then they also have Attention Deficit Disorder. I recommend that they be drugged, spun in the cage for a month, given another month of revolving respite on the bed, set to ironing shirts, studying cookbooks, and scrubbin … what the hell … hang ‘em.

So, are the Noisy Woman Commentators swindlers? Yes, because every Noisy Woman I know would happily pay a buck to throw a ball at the bullseye if I was sitting in the Carnival Dunking Tank – and that’s all this Paintballs and Postholes badlands hootenanny is: it’s a Carnival Dunking Tank, and the paint is no worse for the Peddlepusses than the cold water would be for me.

The Noisy Woman Commentators are Swindlers because if N.O.W members held a fundraiser featuring N.R.A. members on the Dunking Tank perch, they’d all pay their buck. And if they thought that alimony and child-support judgments had only kept up with inflation, they’d ask for ten thousand bucks-a-throw, but wouldn’t even dream of giving the gun-nuts their twenty-five hundred. Because they’re Liars and Swindlers.

www.themoresbyreport.com

[garrett7855]

Why is this important? Especially in light of the revelation that it was a all a publicity stunt to sell videos of at best marginal value?

[AgentOrange]

Feminist aka FEMINAZI are ugly women who are angry that they have to sit down to urinate.

[RubyRedSlippers]

A femenist is not nessecarily an ugly woman, or a golddigger, or hairy, actually; to contradict some of the more clueless posters. A femenist, in my opinion, is a woman who is not afraid of the opposite sex, or her own, and will go to lengths to defend her rights AS a woman.

No, we are not all hairy... we're not all angry, cynical, loud, and butch. Some of us are, yeah. Just as some conservative men are mysogynist, uneducated, and violent. That doesn't mean that all of us are that way, and it doesn't mean all of them are that way. A lot of femenists are well educated, feminine, and optimistic. But they want to make sure that their rights as citizens of any country in the world are protected, because there HAS been a history of violence and antipathy toward women, whether some of you like to admit it or not.

For centuries, women were sold, raped, beaten, and worked to death, because they were considered to be personal property of only their assigned worth. Over the course of many, many years, and through the strength and endurance of many remarkable women, we were able to regain many of the fundamental rights we had lost. (The losing of such rights is another story altogether, and is complex and highly objectionable to some.)

I believe that women and men are different - but not in a generic fashion. They are seperate as both genders and individuals, but equal in every way... Any (esp. psychological) inequality that may occur between two individuals IS individual, and not the fault of the sex of the individual (as it is not the fault of the age, race, etc.) Now, many will argue and say that sex, age, and race play a part in a human's individuality, and I agree. My point is that, for example, being a woman, I am not more prone to emotional damage than a man BECAUSE I am a woman; as I am not less strong, physically, than a man BECAUSE I am a woman. I may be less strong than SOME men, but that is because myself and that man are different, and he is, as an individual, stronger than I am.

I also believe that each human being is equal in their right for personal choice. Meaning that no man OR woman has a right to determine what I do with my life. Abortion, for example: I veiw abortion as a medical procedure that, being emotionally and physically stressful, would not be my FIRST choice. But, in an unwanted pregnancy, whether i was a victim of assault, or merely unable to support a child, a first term abortion would be permissable. This is MY personal choice, because, at that stage, I beleive that the small cluster of cells is part of my body, and I choose to remove it. Yes, it has the potential for human life; but so does every cell of sperm and every egg, and those aren't always USED to create life...

These are just a sample of the thoughts behind femenism. There are "militant" femenists, there are "feminine" femenists, and then there are the "mild" femenists, which you might consider yourself to be. More power to you.

Great women to check out: Susan B. Anthony, and others of her time; Alice Walker, and other breakthrough femenist authors; Kathleen Hanna, and powerful women who emerged through the voice of music.

--RubyRed

[Jason]

Hello ranters on Feminism. I come bearing a definition from an actual feminist whose opinion, I surmise from her civil and engaging dialogue with other feminists and women's issues, might actually have some bearing on this discussion for the sake of rounding out the statistical talk. Her name is Chris Weedon the book is called "Feminst Practice and Poststructuralist theory."

First we have partiarchy, which is the focus of their attack, and the nature of how they perceive patriarchy leads to specific types of feminism. Let me define patriarchy.

It is a system of practice and privilege that situates power and the perceived actual reality by judging and naming difference against an unproblematic male standard. For example, this norm has privileged men by providing the rationale for their natural aptitude for specialized professions, leadership positions, and, other roles that entail some form of important decision. Some of the bases for this reasoning fell on natural grounds: men are better at making crack decisions, men are naturally born better leaders, men are physically better adapted to this form of labor, men think more rationally and tend not to be swayed by their emotions. Some of these you may have heard, you may espouse, and these arguments are very old. Thus, we tend to receive them as the natural grounds on which to judge the social world and not as opinions treated like social currency--they are useful and advantageous for you to employ them.

The feminisms Weedon outlines:
1. Liberal – This group aims for full equality without transforming the present social and political systems.

2. Radical – This group wants a new social order and wants to achieve autonomy through separation.

3. Radical socialist – This group believes that patriarchy is tied with class and racial oppression; they believe feminine is a construct socially produced and historically reproduced.

These categories are by no means exhaustive, but represent three major divisions of the social movement.

The author also reminds the reader that feminism is both a politics and a theory (or a way of generating knowledge about the world). So it is both an ontology (a discourse for constructing being or existence), which I think serves their political discussions (we have to have entities in a representative democracy), and an epistemology (a way of generating claims to truth), that is, feminists also practice a form of 'science' that creates the claims that feminists and other activists groups use to critique the current political, socioeconomic, and cultural situation.

Knowledge to think about: one could recognize how male bias drives certain areas of knowledge production: for example (Google this one) drug testing often never included female test subjects, arguing that adding a variable to the test population would unduly complicate the testing process. A very dangerous and shortsided practice indeed.

I will shut up at this point. I talk too much, and besides you will agree with nothing that I said. But please at least recognize how and why feminists, as a distinct political interest group--and not just any " "-Nazi that disagrees with you--are reacting in a variety of ways and why they do so.

Their motivation is not jealousy. That would just close off the discussion, and it would reveal the ignorance of those who belive this is the sole motivator for their actions. Their motivation is a deep sense of inequity with the way the social world is divided down to the very level of our discursive reality (that which we call the truth) in favor of some groups at the expense of others. This is a diverse social issue that isn't erased or bettered by name calling, although I have found ways to sneak in my own variety.

I hope this doesn't close off the debate but rather stimulates more.

[moleonparole]

Feminism, or let's give it a less explosive term--women's rights, or equal rights, certainly had a need at one time, a serious need. I can imagine the frustration of a woman seventy years ago--she finishes college, she's really bright, and her only options are teaching or becoming a nurse. Then, after women proved themselves able to take on many non-physical positions like the law, architecture, engineering and the like, they had a very difficult time getting parity in the workplace in re: salary, promotions,and being taken seriously. but the world has changed quite a bit, and rights for women seem to have gone awry. Women now want to be fire fighters, police officers, and construction workers...and quite often carrying huge hoses up a burning building is a bit much for a woman, as most women are physically weaker than men. Stephanie Gutman wrote a book about women in the military, outlining all the issues in the "equal time" military. They've had a very difficult time keeping up with the men in the training, and there have been a host of pregnancies, for instance on Navy boats, and that sort of thing. Then, we get back to equal rights...although the Equal Rights Amendment was defeated, women today quite often are paid the same amount of money for doing the same jobs as men...but they're offended still, because jobs defined as "women's work" pays less than "man's work." A friend told me that she thought it was outrageous that a plumber made more money than a nurse. These things are decided by the market. Perhaps there are more nurses than plumbers, or there aren't many good plumbers...but they are in serious demand, and they charge a lot, and they get what they charge...because the work is very hard, and quite specialized. And as of yet, there aren't many women plumbers. I think women erroneously see themselves as similar to blacks and gays in discriminatory practices, and I don't believe it is so anymore...
[e-mail]

[rightwingconspiritor]

Good point mole. Though this board started out on a quest to define feminisim, I see that some of our liberal friends have stopped our journey and turned this into a descrimanation debate.

Someone gave an example pointing out that they pay more for insurance than a man a year older. Since we've sunk to the level of examples, I'll give you one of my own.

Back in the early 90's my father, who worked in a warehouse, was up for a promotion against a black woman. After being strung along for a week, with a wife and two small kids to feed, his supervisor told him he was not going to get the job. After asking why he was told that Amaco, the former oil giant, had to fill a quota.
He had the choice of running boxes around the Amaco building, a lower paying job, or running boxes around the Amaco building.

My point is: One possible reason for a supposed "salary gap" is that you have, thanks to affimative action, less qualified people working in jobs simply becuase a company might look racist or sexist because they don't put x number of women or a particular race in high level jobs.

[Jason]

Hello me again.

I guess our outstanding examples of the man with kids who loses his job to the black woman, the haphazardly pregnant Navy woman, the equal pay to woman in the workplace has not only evened the playing field but has tipped it in the other direction--against the men.

So say those here on this forum.

One thing that is missing in the last few posts is the other's perspective. Our pregnant Navy woman is to blame for her pregnancy, and our woman firefighter is to blame for her dogged persistence in the face of her inabilty to carry heavy hoses up ladders.

I think that the physical argument is a pretty ironclad argument. Nonetheless, it is the fundamental claim of difference that has led to divisions of labor going back to prehistory. But the perspective of the argument always goes to the person for whom the difference doesn't seem to matter--the guy with no womb or the guy with strong arms. Might we feel discriminated if a group of people in power had three legs. We would have to buy three shoes, try to but never be able to operate 3-pedaled machinery. Blah, blah, blah...

Difference is leveraged in the service of those for whom the difference, having been institutionalized into the very nature of the work, doesn't exist.

OK, let's erase quotas and put two individuals--mole's father--and the black (or pick another outsider color) woman in a contest for the job. Let's also assume they are equally qualified for the job. Let's assume that absolute equality exists in the social world. How do we quantify equal? Same education, same years of experience, now what do we have? Mole's father has children, hmm, that might cost the employer in undo insurance costs. Black woman has one fewer child, hmm, might cost us less insurance time, but dammit if women don't have to do the care-taking duties when kids are sick... That's lost time. We employers need someone who can shut their home life out as soon as they hop in the car for their morning commute. Family is pathologized by the economic considerations of the workplace. A new distinction crops up.

But then I have swerved off the road here.
The moral: difference cannot be flattened into not mattering.

Equal rights cannot be gained by laws and quotas. Quotas don't keep women from being assaulted at night, or from fearing being in a public place at night alone. Women just aren't free to do that. Quotas don't keep black men from being, at the very least, inconvenienced by the police for driving a nice car in a nice neighborhood. Of course, having recently been a teenager, neither does being a juvenile on a bike at night in a small midwestern town allow one the same treatment by the law.

The initiatives of equality are placed on those at the ground level--the firefighter, the navy cadet, the workers up for promotion--creating unfair winners and discriminated victims. Unfortunately, since these initiatives never make it all the way up the organizational chart where all the CEOs of the big companies are white men. No policies exist for these folks, and very few criminal actions by them are punished to the level that the average stereo, jewelry, or purse thief gets punished. Two types of crime, two types of sentencing, and two types of prisons. Seprate but are they equal?

OK, you have the floor...

[remedios]

To those who argue that women should be paid less because they have to leave work (for days/years) to take care of children, I ask: would you prefer that we simply stop having them? Because we will . . . I mean, we have, in growing numbers.

So keep on making your ignorant argument. Pretty soon men will discover that if they want to have little copies of them running around, they're going to have to do a hell of a lot more than sympathize with our discomfort during pregnancy.