The Feminist Failure

[Erasmus]

Or What is wrong with Feminism?, following Leon Trotsky's excellent What is wrong with the Soviet Union?

I found this on an educational site about Ursula le Guin's magnificent 'The Dispossessed':
www.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/dispossessed.html It reminded me of how different 'feminism' as I understood it then was from the reactionary macho-worship it has become since. I hope that which are the original and which my responses are evident enough.


Unfortunately, many contemporary readers have only vague or distorted notions of what the feminism of the 70s was all about, so here is a checklist of views commonly asserted by at least some feminists during that period, and which LeGuin is being influenced by or reacting to in her novel:

0. Men and women should not be stereotyped by their gender roles.

Feminists, perhaps more than anyone else, stereotype traditionally feminine gender roles as inferior to traditionally masculine and despise women who fail to reject them for traditionally masculine ones as socially inferior 'sex objects' and 'tools of the Patriarchy' while continuing traditional prejudices that men who do not despise traditionally feminine behaviour as 'beneath their dignity' must be homosexual, incapable or unworthy of complete emotional-sexual relationship with women.

1. One branch of feminism argued that there are no innate pyschological or social traits associated with being a man or woman; another argued that there are, but that the ones associated with women have been devalued and distorted by patriarchal culture.

See 0! Modern feminists devalue all characteristics and activities traditionally associated with women and exalt those traditionally considered 'masculine' as superior and required for both sexes.


2. Men think in a linear fashion, women tend to think more holistically (the circle is a female symbol suggesting this idea).

This is one of the few that feminists have not reneged on. Instead, they revert to pseudo-Victorian beliefs that this is something 'born not bred'.


3. Men define themselves by what they own and control; women by their relationships to other people.

Who cares more about what they own and less about feeling for anybody else than a feminist parading her ability to afford the latest fashion and 'freedom' from the 'emotional restriction' of caring and feeling for a man as she expects him to love her?


4. Jobs should be done by whoever can do them, and gender is largely irrelevant to this.

In modern feminism this has come to mean that women must do traditional men's jobs for feminists to respect and value them equal with men, while placing no pressure at all upon men to perform and value traditional women's activities - a one-way trip that puts traditional 'masculine' firmly superior to 'feminine' for both sexes.


5. Women should have equal access to jobs with men.

Which has become like Stalin's 'right to work' - to a labour camp if you refuse. Men should have equal access to a home life beyond 'jobs' with women. The practical result has been to force women into treating domestic life with the same contempt as men used to instead of liberating men to enjoy a life outside of work equal with women.


6. Marriage and motherhood should not prevent women from having careers any more than it prevents men from doing so.

Again, a one-way trip. It denies the status of motherhood (or fatherhood) as a career in its own right as valuable as any money-making concern. Marriage and fatherhood never prevented men from having a career because the career took precedence over their emotional 'human' commitments and men were no more than money-making servants for women. Women should of course have 'careers', but in no way like the traditional total commitment demanded of men that has only got worse since the mobile phone allowed permanent 'on call' status. It is men who should be freed from such dehumanizing demand to achieve equality with women's domestic life, while women take their place until both are doing both equally instead of women forced to squeeze their personal life into the gaps where they can't be as denied and exploited as men.


7. Women should be able to pursue their careers without having where they live determined entirely by their husbands' jobs.

And men presumably not have to move to suit women. This is a matter for individuals to sort out betweern themselves, but when the woman expected the man to earn for her, he would have to do what the Company said and go where it told him. Now, she must put the company ahead of her personal life instead of him being as able as her to require the Company to respect his personal commitments.


8. The social emphasis on physical beauty depersonalizes and dehumanizes women.

Beauty? There is something of ancient asceticism about this. Why should we not value physical self-presentation as much as any other form of presentation?


9. Language oppresses women: terms associated with them often create a presumption of passivity and weakness. New ways of using language to make men and women more equal are needed.

Modern feminists the prime example of insisting that all feminine terms are 'derivative' and 'inferior' to masculine even when they are not, and at the same time as demanding women take masculine titles they decree superior, complaining about the convention of masculine including feminine!


10. Capitalism is a patriarchal institution which oppresses women.

Capitalism is an exploitive institution which oppresses everybody - but who have been most eager to join in and demand their place in the Company Boardroom than feminists, instead of replacing it with something more socialist and accountable to its 'users'?


11. Women should not have to reshape and decorate themselves (removing body hair, for instance) to be accepted and loved.

But they choose to do so regardless of what men think about it, and post-feminism choose to do so even more as their 'right' to present their body as they choose, not as men might prefer.


12. Homosexuality and bisexuality should be just as socially acceptable as heterosexuality--as should celibacy.

Yet it is feminists who have have been loudest in returning to the 'Victorian' view of regarding heterosexually active women as 'objects' submissive to 'dominant males' and supporting the implied contempt for the other sex of celibacy and homosexuality.


13. Sex should be a matter of intimate sharing, not of conquest or trophy-hunting.

Or of chasing a big fat wallet? I had a long acrimonious argument last year with feminists telling me that I mustt be some sort of pervert for being unable to want to force sex on a woman against her wishes, and that as long as she has stopped resisting, that constitutes 'consent', so is not rape. Even the law in many places does not accept that dross. And who except a feminist or their 'male chauvinist' rapist equivalents would want sex with somebody they know just wants it over and done with and out the way?


14. Rape is a crime of violence which should be punished much more severely than it usually is.

Many things come under the name of 'rape'. From 13, it is clear that what I consider 'rape', some feminists consider normal sexual behaviour that they want for themselves.


15. Women should not be defined by their childbearing abilities. Men can and should raise children as well as women.

Feminism has now managed to exclude women's childbearing abilities altogether and it is feminists who have led the arguments against me that men should have domestic involvement equal with women as "denying women's choice". Why should women have 'choice' when men do not?


16. Men strive to compete, but women prefer communal decision-making in which all aspects of a problem are discussed until a consensus is arrived at so that the group is not divided into winners and losers.

As every woman remembering childhood days of 'best friends' who next moment are stabbing each other in the back conspiring with their previous 'worst enemy' will know.


17. Modern childbirth techniques common in hospitals are dehumanizing and dangerous. Women should be able to give birth at home, without drugs, using such traditions as giving birth in a squatting position.

And today's feminists demand Caesarean section or preferably non 'degrading' un-masculine pregnancy at all.


18. Childbirth is a natural phenomenon, not a disease. Women should be able to return to work shortly after giving birth.

See 17. But why should women be expected to treat their children as objects to be abandoned so they can fulfill their service quota as traditionally required of men instead of a part of their life to enjoy and to expect men to be free to share with them (as in Sweden for instance)?

19. The medical establishment is generally male-dominated; women need to reject the authority of doctors and insist on treatments appropriate to their needs.

Or as a female doctor in the 70s patronized my wife about period problems: "That's part of being a woman dear: learn to put up with it". The man in the practice was far more sympathestic because he could not relate it to his own problems. For similar reasnos, I would much rather have a woman inspect by 'naughty bits' than a man able to relate it to himself.


20. A marriage in which a woman is prized only for her sexual attractiveness and availability is a sort of prostitution.

Absolutely! But this is the kind of marriage the majority of women value and the only kind that modern feminists appear ot recognize.

21. Children should be able to make many decisions about how they are raised.

Which decisions? Modern feminists demand they all be raised like traditional boys and woe betide the girl who wants to look pretty. Boys can get away with 'pretty' as long as they condition themselves to reject love of women for the rest of their life, in best traditional style.


22. A few feminists even argued that children should be able to "divorce" their parents.

Good idea!

23. Children should be raised to accept their bodies and their sexuality without shame.

Modern feminists are full of traditional 'protection' for girls and even adult women perceived as sexless victims of rampant males, or else 'sex objects', 'tools of the Patriarchy', 'sex traitors' if they do express sexual equality with men. For males to look on females as sexually equal and desirable individuals is 'visual rape' in their eyes, for women to do so towards men traditional 'giving themselves cheap': women are absolute inferiors in feminist terms to their fantasy of the 'dominant rapist male' they so obviously want to be.


24. Children can be raised by all kinds of configurations of loving adults: the traditional nuclear family is not necessarily the best model for childrearing.

Modern feminism treats children as an interference with conformity to traditional masculine ideals, to be farmed out so that women can be as reduced to traditional unidimensional economic slavery as men.

25. Great women from the past can provide inspiration for us today; their influence and importance need to be more widely recognized.

According to modern feminism, all women in the past were feeble subordinated creatures from time so immemorial that to be so implies that they must be natural inferiors to the 'dominant male'. They dismiss women who did achieve something and stand out as 'honorary men' and even 'female patriarchs'.


(original again)
Note that this is not a definition of feminism--just a list of common attitudes among some feminists in the period that LeGuin was writing. See whether you can identify where she is agreeing with these positions, illustrating them, or disagreeing with them.

[iamjumbo]

no, my boy. no matter how much honey you put on a cat turd, it will NEVER be a jelly donut. you've got beaten down for your lunacy a thousand times. i guess that there is something to be said about masochism, but you take it to a new height

[beth]

Bottom line here, IMO, people can not be fit into little boxes. There are too many situations, too many circumstances and too many varying preferences.

Best to just loosen up and let people - gender be damned - play their own hand of cards. If we don't feel good about some, just move on . . . there are certainly plenty of options.

[iamjumbo]

Apr 29, 2010 7:15:51 GMT -5 beth said:

Bottom line here, IMO, people can not be fit into little boxes. There are too many situations, too many circumstances and too many varying preferences.

Best to just loosen up and let people - gender be damned - play their own hand of cards. If we don't feel good about some, just move on . . . there are certainly plenty of options.

our boy here likes to put every woman into the same little box that he has hallucinated.

[Erasmus]

Well I am used to jumbo's irrelevant abuse that doesn't actually say anything - apart from the absurd remark that I am putting every woman in a box by pointing out how so completely opposed modern feminists are to the 1974 values quoted there that the author felt it necessary to quote them at all, and how little any of then have to do with 'women' except to castigate them as willing subordinates to men.

Any person I know would endorse the 1974 values as so obvious as not to need stating, as do I. It is only on the net that the likes of jumbo and those who call themselves feminists insult me (and by extension) those former feminist values by calling them 'lunacy' and 'hallucination'. No meboy (and any self-styled feminists who may be attuned) those are the values we all take for granted as the way we live today. That is, we all accept them except a few madwomen calling themselves 'feminists' with a fear of men living in a past that probably never existed, and yourself.

Feminism has reached its Stalinist Phase where those who support its original aims are denounced as traitors, while those who have reverted to values almost identical to those it revolted against declare themselves Leaders of the Revolution. Truth is, that they are now about as relevant and popular to women in general as Stalinists to the average Russian.

Tell you what - follow up what Renegade Evolution has to say about feminists and what they have to say about her and them pretend that what I say about them is 'hallucination' or that they are more representative of a typical modern woman than she is. The immediate link leads to her current beef about stereotyping rednecks. You will have to make the effort to follow her links from there.

[Wonder Woman]

Hmm. Feminist. The 'feminist movement'. At the outset, it was necessary for women to ban together (enlisting some willing men's help, naturally) to come out of oppression and gain equal rights (always realizing nothing is ever black vs white).

We've come a long way, baby...

But, just maybe 'we' go too far ~ or leastways, self-proclaimed feminists do.

Now we have choices, women who choose the traditional role of doting wife and mother extraordinaire, are often seen as 'backward' and even lazy.

On the other hand, for many, the word 'feminist' leaves a little bad taste in mouths like you get just before being ill, not just of men, but of women, who don't have a want or need to be more equal than those they seek to be equal to.

[Deleted]

At the risk of being accused of lowering the tone of this discussion, I would like to ask Erasmus if he has read the following book.

Cunt: a declaration of independence By Inga Muscio

Published by Seal Press.

[Erasmus]

I am aware of that book and that it is of the kind anybody that I've had contact with who'd call herself 'feminist' condemns with all the traditional belief in women's inferiority to the men that kind of women want to feel inferior too (or to emulate).

For the most part, I would definitely regard it as indicative of feminism to scream cunt and fuck at men and then run whining The nasty sexist man treated me like a sexual person should she get any response on the same level and to jeer at any women who does not feel herself inferior to men as sex object, fallen woman and similar degrading definitions that if she disagrees with their belief in (middle class) women's traditional pretence of inferiority to men, in order to get men to do the dirty work for them, she is an inferior being to the 'traditional' masculine ideal that feminists demand of men and want to force upon women.

The list I quoted of 1974 feminist ideals has almost come true. There are still occasions where women refuse to reduce themselves to traditional demands upon men, and many more situations where feminists try to prevent women from accepting men as equals wanting and being the same as women.

For instance, woman wears jeans - traditional men's wear, so no problem; man wears a skirt, no way! Woman wears a man's shirt or borrows his briefs, no problem; woman catches her boyfriend wearing her identical blouse or thin briefs that fit better than anything he can find in the shops - she's crying to the newspapers how can she deal with this pervert dressing as she takes it for granted to dress herself - that is, how can a woman cope with a man acting equally with herself? It must be 40 years since a man has ever raised that question and been told to wise up to equality - but feminists are still at it!

The values that 'feminism' used to stand for are what those who now call themselves 'feminists' oppose and condemn their new liberated teenage replacements for doing exactly as they did screwing around in exactly the same terms of female inferiority that they don't really know what they are doing while boys of that age are somehow far more mature enough to exploit, use and abuse the little innocent female darlings.

Bullshit! Virgins are much fuller of folk myth about how much it hurts (I've been told that it really does and hard to sit down for a week, but bruising inside even familiar with fingers, because of her own contractions, not from a stinging torn hymen) than boys (who can be hurt outside much more - my first lover told me about her first lover dripping blood to the bathroom that she thought strange because she did not feel pain - and then realised it was his torn tegmen bleeding).

A girl has everything going against her, including traditional=feminist contempt as inferior sex 'object' (can there be any more contempt for a person than to call them the object that feminists do women who deny inferiority to men?) as well as her mates telling her that in most cases they did not really enjoy it . Yet she chooses to accept a male. For that, feminists dismiss her as a subservient object instead of glorifying her liberation to assert her sexual equality with him, and encouraging her to see it as a mutual deal where she is an equal partner instead of the 'object' that feminist filth demand she be for opening her legs to a man as if she thought herself his equal that they assure her she is not.

We are free of all that sexist filth. Only 'feminists' hang onto it because they feel inferior to their image of the dominant rapist men they wish they could be. If you find any woman who actually wants that kind of relationship between the sexes - run like hell! I think I may know one, who was all over me a year ago and that little-girly giggly flirty stuff put me right off. So she transferred to our boss and did con him until he found a strap-on dildo big enough to threaten more like birth than intercourse lurking under the piles of unwashed knickers. Was she using it on her girlfriend or her girlfriend on her?

Vibrator one thing, that (which we call the Weapon of Mass Destruction) is genuine perversion because if a woman wants a woman she does not want a penis and if she wants a penis she does not want to be raped with something like a black warty courgette (zucchini to Americans) and if she does want to be entered, what is wrong with a real man doing the real job? What prejudices her to prefer the brutal fake over the real thing? It is not as though she were terrified of entry altogether - just the opposite: no real man could match up to that thing.

We suspect that since it was in her flat, she was the one to use it on another woman. Nothing wrong in itself, but everything wrong in lying about it. Besides, her vagina is literally the last place I would touch a woman because if it isn't, she might not feel enough and the only ways I can touch inside her is enjoying her sensations more exciting that any that I might feel. Maybe she enjoys that sort of sexual violence too. I certainly don't, but I have found that a lot of women, including somebody I take as very seriously representative of women in general because she was a virgin when we met (and confirms feminist projection of their own feelings onto men as all rapists) is that once she was not a virgin, all tenderness and sensuality went out the window and all she wanted was hard and rough - that is, rape - which is exactly what another teenager had told me some ten years previously.

I guess that when it is new, a girl especially needs to be pushed to find her limits, but it bored me into one hell of difficulty to be even able to 'perform' for somebody demanding more than she knew - and (predicatbly) six months later was full of counsellor-speak down the phone how I had 'abused' her innocent little self by giving her the sex she wanted and I did not, but not the violence smacking her that she walked out on me for refusing. She of course hated feminists as pseudo-macho girls trying to dominate her as they imagined men dominating them, but she still showed a lot of feminist influence in her demand for sex to be violent and intercourse-only instead of loving tender teasing and fun as with women I'd known before. They were experienced; she spoke from total innocence of what a virgin female with every other sexual experience wants - to be held down and raped rigid. Not what I want - but what a virgin wants.

[iamjumbo]

Apr 30, 2010 22:06:50 GMT -5 Erasmus said:

I am aware of that book and that it is of the kind anybody that I've had contact with who'd call herself 'feminist' condemns with all the traditional belief in women's inferiority to the men that kind of women want to feel inferior too (or to emulate).

For the most part, I would definitely regard it as indicative of feminism to scream cunt and fuck at men and then run whining The nasty sexist man treated me like a sexual person should she get any response on the same level and to jeer at any women who does not feel herself inferior to men as sex object, fallen woman and similar degrading definitions that if she disagrees with their belief in (middle class) women's traditional pretence of inferiority to men, in order to get men to do the dirty work for them, she is an inferior being to the 'traditional' masculine ideal that feminists demand of men and want to force upon women.

The list I quoted of 1974 feminist ideals has almost come true. There are still occasions where women refuse to reduce themselves to traditional demands upon men, and many more situations where feminists try to prevent women from accepting men as equals wanting and being the same as women.

For instance, woman wears jeans - traditional men's wear, so no problem; man wears a skirt, no way! Woman wears a man's shirt or borrows his briefs, no problem; woman catches her boyfriend wearing her identical blouse or thin briefs that fit better than anything he can find in the shops - she's crying to the newspapers how can she deal with this pervert dressing as she takes it for granted to dress herself - that is, how can a woman cope with a man acting equally with herself? It must be 40 years since a man has ever raised that question and been told to wise up to equality - but feminists are still at it!

The values that 'feminism' used to stand for are what those who now call themselves 'feminists' oppose and condemn their new liberated teenage replacements for doing exactly as they did screwing around in exactly the same terms of female inferiority that they don't really know what they are doing while boys of that age are somehow far more mature enough to exploit, use and abuse the little innocent female darlings.

Bullshit! Virgins are much fuller of folk myth about how much it hurts (I've been told that it really does and hard to sit down for a week, but bruising inside even familiar with fingers, because of her own contractions, not from a stinging torn hymen) than boys (who can be hurt outside much more - my first lover told me about her first lover dripping blood to the bathroom that she thought strange because she did not feel pain - and then realised it was his torn tegmen bleeding).

A girl has everything going against her, including traditional=feminist contempt as inferior sex 'object' (can there be any more contempt for a person than to call them the object that feminists do women who deny inferiority to men?) as well as her mates telling her that in most cases they did not really enjoy it . Yet she chooses to accept a male. For that, feminists dismiss her as a subservient object instead of glorifying her liberation to assert her sexual equality with him, and encouraging her to see it as a mutual deal where she is an equal partner instead of the 'object' that feminist filth demand she be for opening her legs to a man as if she thought herself his equal that they assure her she is not.

We are free of all that sexist filth. Only 'feminists' hang onto it because they feel inferior to their image of the dominant rapist men they wish they could be. If you find any woman who actually wants that kind of relationship between the sexes - run like hell! I think I may know one, who was all over me a year ago and that little-girly giggly flirty stuff put me right off. So she transferred to our boss and did con him until he found a strap-on dildo big enough to threaten more like birth than intercourse lurking under the piles of unwashed knickers. Was she using it on her girlfriend or her girlfriend on her?

Vibrator one thing, that (which we call the Weapon of Mass Destruction) is genuine perversion because if a woman wants a woman she does not want a penis and if she wants a penis she does not want to be raped with something like a black warty courgette (zucchini to Americans) and if she does want to be entered, what is wrong with a real man doing the real job? What prejudices her to prefer the brutal fake over the real thing? It is not as though she were terrified of entry altogether - just the opposite: no real man could match up to that thing.

We suspect that since it was in her flat, she was the one to use it on another woman. Nothing wrong in itself, but everything wrong in lying about it. Besides, her vagina is literally the last place I would touch a woman because if it isn't, she might not feel enough and the only ways I can touch inside her is enjoying her sensations more exciting that any that I might feel. Maybe she enjoys that sort of sexual violence too. I certainly don't, but I have found that a lot of women, including somebody I take as very seriously representative of women in general because she was a virgin when we met (and confirms feminist projection of their own feelings onto men as all rapists) is that once she was not a virgin, all tenderness and sensuality went out the window and all she wanted was hard and rough - that is, rape - which is exactly what another teenager had told me some ten years previously.

I guess that when it is new, a girl especially needs to be pushed to find her limits, but it bored me into one hell of difficulty to be even able to 'perform' for somebody demanding more than she knew - and (predicatbly) six months later was full of counsellor-speak down the phone how I had 'abused' her innocent little self by giving her the sex she wanted and I did not, but not the violence smacking her that she walked out on me for refusing. She of course hated feminists as pseudo-macho girls trying to dominate her as they imagined men dominating them, but she still showed a lot of feminist influence in her demand for sex to be violent and intercourse-only instead of loving tender teasing and fun as with women I'd known before. They were experienced; she spoke from total innocence of what a virgin female with every other sexual experience wants - to be held down and raped rigid. Not what I want - but what a virgin wants.

what utter rubbish, but, we'll leave that aside. THIS has to be the dumbest statement that i've seen in a long time. when i finally stopped laughing at the abject absurdity, i could copy and paste it:

For instance, woman wears jeans - traditional men's wear, so no problem; man wears a skirt, no way! Woman wears a man's shirt or borrows his briefs, no problem; woman catches her boyfriend wearing her identical blouse or thin briefs that fit better than anything he can find in the shops - she's crying to the newspapers how can she deal with this pervert dressing as she takes it for granted to dress herself - that is, how can a woman cope with a man acting equally with herself? It must be 40 years since a man has ever raised that question and been told to wise up to equality - but feminists are still at it!

NO ONE with an iq above forty, and the ability to use it, would try to assert that this stupidity has ANYTHING to do with feminism, in ANY way. it has not an iota of relevance to equality, to the rational mind of course

[Deleted]

If you told a Scottish Highlander wearing a kilt that he was wearing a skirt or at least dressing in an unmanly fashion, you would be extremely fortunate if he simply responded to that suggestion with a left hook.

A study of the history of costume shows clearly that the 'unisex' look dates back at least as far as four thousand years and is anything but an invention of 'feminism.'

A study of history also reveals clearly that many periods show greater or lesser degrees of empowerment by females.

Your 'definitions' of 'feminist principles' remind me irresistibly of Hitler's 'definitions' of Jews, of Stalin's 'definitions' of 'anti-Communists.' of bin Laden's 'definitions' of 'anti-Muslims' and of Bal Thackeray's 'definitions' of anti-Hindus.

Essentially your perspective is so simplistic and scatter-gun that it conflates together a wide variety of opinions and presents them as if they represented a unified world view to which all 'feminists' subscribe in the same way that a Catholic is supposed to believe in the infallibility of the Pope.

You are essentially behaving as if, for example, Valerie Solanas represented the mainstream of feminist thought rather than a side current populated by the lunatic fringe.

[iamjumbo]

May 1, 2010 9:41:07 GMT -5 @mikemarshall said:

If you told a Scottish Highlander wearing a kilt that he was wearing a skirt or at least dressing in an unmanly fashion, you would be extremely fortunate if he simply responded to that suggestion with a left hook.

A study of the history of costume shows clearly that the 'unisex' look dates back at least as far as four thousand years and is anything but an invention of 'feminism.'

A study of history also reveals clearly that many periods show greater or lesser degrees of empowerment by females.

Your 'definitions' of 'feminist principles' remind me irresistibly of Hitler's 'definitions' of Jews, of Stalin's 'definitions' of 'anti-Communists.' of bin Laden's 'definitions' of 'anti-Muslims' and of Bal Thackeray's 'definitions' of anti-Hindus.

Essentially your perspective is so simplistic and scatter-gun that it conflates together a wide variety of opinions and presents them as if they represented a unified world view to which all 'feminists' subscribe in the same way that a Catholic is supposed to believe in the infallibility of the Pope.

You are essentially behaving as if, for example, Valerie Solanas represented the mainstream of feminist thought rather than a side current populated by the lunatic fringe.

and a miniscule side current at that.
grapes and watermelons are NOT the same fruit, but, there are a few, thankfully a tiny minority such as in the instant case, who continue to try to claim that they are

[Deleted]

1. One branch of feminism argued that there are no innate pyschological or social traits associated with being a man or woman; another argued that there are, but that the ones associated with women have been devalued and distorted by patriarchal culture.

I could go through a step by step analysis of the many fallacies contained in your post. However, let me begin by drawing your attention to your own point 1.

Since it is immediately apparent that 'one branch of feminism argued' and 'another argued' in favour of the opposite position, on your own principles it is abundantly clear that 'feminism' is not and never was the monolithic weltanschauung that you pretend.

[iamjumbo]

May 2, 2010 11:02:02 GMT -5 @mikemarshall said:

1. One branch of feminism argued that there are no innate pyschological or social traits associated with being a man or woman; another argued that there are, but that the ones associated with women have been devalued and distorted by patriarchal culture.

I could go through a step by step analysis of the many fallacies contained in your post. However, let me begin by drawing your attention to your own point 1.

Since it is immediately apparent that 'one branch of feminism argued' and 'another argued' in favour of the opposite position, on your own principles it is abundantly clear that 'feminism' is not and never was the monolithic weltanschauung that you pretend.

it's obviously more fun for some to fantasize that it is

[Erasmus]

You can shout your abuse as much as you like, jumbo, but you're not actually saying anything except to jump up and down yelling Nya nya. You even quote my examples of where it's acceptable for women to copy men but not men to copy women in clothing and talk about anybody with an IQ over 40 ... would dispute this has anything to do with feminism. Very likely - but you still can't answer why what is acceptable for the goose is not for the gander can you? And because you can't, you don't even try, you just resort to playground insult and lies.

Yes, LIES. You LIE by constantly calling that list 'mine'. But it is not mine: it comes from this site www.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/dispossessed.html So why don't you stop LYING that the list is mine and say openly that what you, in support of modern feminiism, oppose are the values of 1974 feminism? What you abuse and scoff at me for supporting are original feminist values.

Since it is the likes of you and women who call themselves 'feminist' who are the only people to be so abusively dismissive and hostile to those values, it entirely proves my point doesn't it? Modern feminists and their 'male chauvinist' fellow-travellers like your oppose everything that feminism used to believe in.

Instead of just hollering in the hope of drowning what you don't want to hear out, so that you can eliminate feminine values altogether, how about looking at the hatred and contempt feminist sites actually display to women who fail to regard themselves as inferior victims of a 'Patriarchy' that exists only in their inferiority complex fantasies? Others will. Others have.

Repeat:

Unfortunately, many contemporary readers have only vague or distorted notions of what the feminism of the 70s was all about, so here is a checklist of views commonly asserted by at least some feminists during that period, and which LeGuin is being influenced by or reacting to in her novel:

0. Men and women should not be stereotyped by their gender roles.
1. One branch of feminism argued that there are no innate pyschological or social traits associated with being a man or woman; another argued that there are, but that the ones associated with women have been devalued and distorted by patriarchal culture.
2. Men think in a linear fashion, women tend to think more holistically (the circle is a female symbol suggesting this idea).
3. Men define themselves by what they own and control; women by their relationships to other people.
4. Jobs should be done by whoever can do them, and gender is largely irrelevant to this.
5. Women should have equal access to jobs with men.
6. Marriage and motherhood should not prevent women from having careers any more than it prevents men from doing so.
7. Women should be able to pursue their careers without having where they live determined entirely by their husbands' jobs.
8. The social emphasis on physical beauty depersonalizes and dehumanizes women.
9. Language oppresses women: terms associated with them often create a presumption of passivity and weakness. New ways of using language to make men and women more equal are needed.
10. Capitalism is a patriarchal institution which oppresses women.
11. Women should not have to reshape and decorate themselves (removing body hair, for instance) to be accepted and loved.
12. Homosexuality and bisexuality should be just as socially acceptable as heterosexuality--as should celibacy.
13. Sex should be a matter of intimate sharing, not of conquest or trophy-hunting.
14. Rape is a crime of violence which should be punished much more severely than it usually is.
15. Women should not be defined by their childbearing abilities. Men can and should raise children as well as women.
16. Men strive to compete, but women prefer communal decision-making in which all aspects of a problem are discussed until a consensus is arrived at so that the group is not divided into winners and losers.
17. Modern childbirth techniques common in hospitals are dehumanizing and dangerous. Women should be able to give birth at home, without drugs, using such traditions as giving birth in a squatting position.
18. Childbirth is a natural phenomenon, not a disease. Women should be able to return to work shortly after giving birth.
19. The medical establishment is generally male-dominated; women need to reject the authority of doctors and insist on treatments appropriate to their needs.
20. A marriage in which a woman is prized only for her sexual attractiveness and availability is a sort of prostitution.
21. Children should be able to make many decisions about how they are raised.
22. A few feminists even argued that children should be able to "divorce" their parents.
23. Children should be raised to accept their bodies and their sexuality without shame.
24. Children can be raised by all kinds of configurations of loving adults: the traditional nuclear family is not necessarily the best model for childrearing.
25. Great women from the past can provide inspiration for us today; their influence and importance need to be more widely recognized.

Note that this is not a definition of feminism--just a list of common attitudes among some feminists in the period that LeGuin was writing. See whether you can identify where she is agreeing with these positions, illustrating them, or disagreeing with them.

Now take each point in turn and explain why you (and modern feminists) find it so insane and have to be so abusive towards me for supporting most. I have given the few I disagree with. Give your alternative and reasons for believing it. Do you really hate and despise women that much? It looks so!

My lover in 1980:

To me, Feminism means a good job for equal pay and sleeping with any man I fancy: I am very worried about this new generation that thinks it means quivering under the table in a Lesbian huddle the moment a man looks at them

That new generation is now the 'mainstream', as far as such a vestigial off-the-wall fringe movement all at odds with each other can be said to have a 'mainstream'.

I believe in absolute equality and that means respecting traditionally feminine activities equal with masculine and both sexes doing both. It does not mean women wearing trousers to the office laughing at men wearing a skirt while cooking dinner.