I disavow the ignorance displayed in the statement that “Feminists always think women are better than men.” But felt important to share how well received such a message is received on this site.
Previous posts in this series:
- epic ratio: https://lemmy.cafe/post/9597634
- lemmy is a worse platform for women than reddit was: https://lemmy.cafe/post/4821164
—bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody
i really love this and also the amount of jpg distortion going on showing how loved and re-distributed this post was
Yeah, it was the least potato version I could find lol definitely well loved…
I agree, but wouldn’t hold my breath lol
Though I don’t doubt at least a couple have already commented elsewhere on this thread, and are trying to hide their anti-feminism (aka misogyny) behind the thin veil of pretending it excludes them, and that we must refocus thousands of years of feminist struggle on to them and call it “egalitarianism” otherwise they have no reason to join our fight for equality (which they conveniently ignore means equality for everyone, which is why they need to make up excuses to reject it, because, going back to the meme I posted and why they downvote it - they don’t want equality, they want to hold on to superiority at all costs, and their fragile egos don’t like having that mirror held up to them).
(edit to add: and even if we give in and centre them and do call it egalitarianism, they won’t actually want to fight with us to bring down the patriarchy, they’ll just keep shifting the goalposts to make it more and more about freeing their poor souls from the imaginary oppression of feminism) .
I mean, I do think that using the term Feminism for movements that aren’t about women seeking equality is kind of a stretch of the original word. If the focus of the movement has changed so much that defining it as the original focus isn’t accurate anymore, a new word should be used for the new movement instead. I’m undereducated on modern Feminist theory but this seems to me to be self-evident and I’ve never seen a good argument why referring to gender-related egalitarianism as Feminism has more positives than negatives.
you should read that work by hooks, it’s linked and available right there
I noticed it was a direct PDF download (based). I have a 7 hour car ride coming up, if it doesn’t make me too carsick I might read it!
imo we’re also just at a point now where everyone’s getting fucked, maybe let’s focus on preventing fascism right now and when neonazi parties aren’t getting 40% of the votes we can go back to worrying specifically about women’s rights. Though aside from that there’s also the fact that we’re sorta supposed to not be grouping everything into “men” and “women” anymore, so at the very least the term “feminism” feels a bit inherently unsuitable… Maybe let’s just go with working class solidarity yeah?
feminism is for everyone. solidarity is for everyone. the working class is huge and the history of its successes are often inextricably linked, with both marxist and feminist leaders working together.
you also should read that work by hooks, it’s available and linked right there.
Solidarity is the entire point of Intersectionality. How about we have solidarity for everyone’s human rights and not toss any group to the side.
I have always felt that feminism has had a marketing problem. I consider myself a feminist and I am for equal rights for all. But the issue with feminism is that it’s easy to point to the word and use it to propagandize a people against it. The word evokes a priority towards women (which I believe it should), but that makes folks feel like there are people out to be against them which is not what the movement is about.
And then you have the people who claim to be feminist who are really just misandrists who want to see men broght down to achieve equality or who want to see women be valued higher than men. In reality, the way forward should be to lift women up to the level that society holds men. It shouldn’t be a battle of sexes.
Feminism also (in name only) sorta precludes anyone who isn’t female. So non-binary? Get fucked I guess? I think there really ought to be a better way to market an equality movement than labelling it for women, even if that is the primary target of increasing equality.
It would be like calling a racial equality movement blackism and then saying you represent all race’s equality. That specifically disregards all races not considered black from a marketing perspective, even if your movement’s actions are positive representation for all races.
The rest of the work you are responding to is in fact doing exactly what you are asking, reasserting the truth that “Feminism is for Everybody.” You should read it! Of course, she doesn’t have a time machine and can’t rewrite entire etomological history, but the book is good and more people should read it. It’s linked in the above comment :)
People are blaming propaganda, I additionally blame the attention economy aka social media algorithms that favor attention. Young men are often shown videos of “crazy feminists” acting stupid, which gives this impression.
If you only see the dumbest people and takes from a movement, big surprise you won’t understand it.
I think your point might also apply the other way - people are also encouraged to make exaggerated, incendiary comments for attention. Mild, reasonable takes, especially not posted quickly, will usually be overshadowed by the more extreme top comments. I believe the poster in question defended themselves claiming it was just an exaggeration.
excellent analysis. this is part of my reasoning for making posts like these. silly little reactionary posts responding to misunderstanding or bigotry often have some of the more interesting and nuanced discussion and learning in the comments.
tldr i think it’s possible to reverse engineer propaganda structures if you put some thought into it
honestly i don’t think it’s too big a stretch to claim that the attention economy you describe is an intentional structure of conservative propagandists.
it’s so much not a stretch that it simply just is. it’s the kinda stretch you get sleeping in a perfectly neutral resting position for 8 hours
I additionally blame the attention economy aka social media algorithms that favor attention
I mean this is also propaganda :P This is how the alt right are setting their hooks in people, by using the algorithms as they are to get boys and young men to listen to their little gurus etc. and slowly pull them right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VzGdo1IDdc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2QGME8KHzY
These two have been lit really doing the root cause analysis. Has to go further, glad to see bell hooks mentioned in the thread. And the curiousity. Conservative propaganda and indoctrination doesn’t play fair. Leopards, faces, how long will folks allow their rights be stripped away before their eyes?
Yeah I’ve seen so much casual misogyny upvoted here
Kind of a roundabout way to say that, but I guess the underlying message is people are equally terrible? That’s not really the worst opinion I’ve seen.
The actual message is the “… And feminists are hypocrite liars about it” part you skipped over.
That is definitely what they said, but they seem to mislabel feminism in general. Since feminism isn’t about superiority to men, then who they are referring to is not representative of feminism as a whole. I guess what I’m saying is that they are actually right that anyone that thinks that one group is superior to another is wrong. They are wrong about the term they used to describe someone like that though, which I don’t label as the worst thing ever compared to actually thinking the former point. So not understanding the term feminism bad, but also their point directed at the right people isn’t wrong.
In other words you see oppression, and the people fighting back against their oppression as equally shit.
Classy.
ignores the entire first half of the sentence, the half that i highlighted in my post “that’s not really the worst opinion i’ve seen” and twenty odd upvotes
we are so cooked yall
People will conveniently skim the subtext and skip to the true parts when the text, when taken as a whole, confirms their own biases.
A lot of people see feminism as a “women are better than men” take. It’s not, that’s radfem, feminism is about equality despite the name as it has roots in the suffragettes movement.
They certainly have a misunderstanding of what most people mean when they call themselves feminists. My point was it’s not as bad as it could be since they don’t demonize what feminism actually is. They think everyone is on an equal level even if they don’t have a positive opinion of everyone. I would say misusing a term is not really that bad when they could have said a lot worse like actually saying something along the lines of “women bad.” Which I didn’t really get that from their post, but perhaps I misunderstood their intentions.
What years of anti-feminist propaganda does to a man
