Zeconte said:
Lightknight said:
She said that there is no such thing as sexism against men. If there is no such thing then there must be no institution in which women are in control or else sexism against men would exist. Furthermore, and I will clarify this every time I respond to this part of the discussion, I utterly reject her notion that sexism requires power. An utterly powerless man, a hobbo on the street with no legs, can be sexist against a woman just as easily as anyone else. To follow her insane definition of sexism would be to rule out genuinely sexist individuals who have no personal power whenever we look into the situation any deeper on any meaningful level.
Again this is nothing more than semantic gymnastics on your part,
We are discussing what she meant by what she said. Semantics is the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. There are sub-branches of semantics that are called, "Formal Semantics", "lexical semantics", and "conceptual semantics". When people complain that someone is debating about semantics as though that somehow defeats their points they are showing extreme ignorance of what semantics are and how wide a range of debates are purely semantic based because "what things mean" is central to learning and understanding. The only time where something being semantic is a relevant counter are arguments that are not concerned with meaning or if the particular word or phrase being focused on isn't central to the discussion and so is wasting time.
But seeing as this discussion is literally about what she meant, yes, semantics are at play. You're just going to have to deal with that. And the only people doing acrobatics are the people who are trying to interpret her meaning in other ways when she backed up what she said multiple times and with links.
where you take sexism to mean "gender-based discrimination"
Yes, the dictionary definition of the word. The actual definition of the word. This is called lexical semantics. Her entire point is to try to redefine sexism to suit her needs. Trying to make it so that women cannot be sexist in her world view merely because they are women. Because God forbid we start to consider that women do hold power. How in the world is a female manager who is empowered to hire or fire individuals not capable of combining said power with prejudice? So even with Anita's nonsensical attempt to redefine a word so that she can't be called sexist she is wrong that sexism against men can't exist.
and ignore that she takes sexism to mean "gender-based discrimination plus institutionalized power structures enforcing said discrimination on a societal level" in order to claim that she does not believe men can be discriminated against based on their gender (I.E. you are arguing against the idea that sexism does not exist against men based on your definition of the word, rather than her's).
You're not getting it. There are two problems here that I have regularly addressed. Point #2 below addresses this one.
1. She is wrong. The article she linked is not Merriam Webster. It is not an authoritative source in defining terms. It is an apparently written by a blogger named Andrea Rubenstein who went by the name of Tekanji online. She seems to have retired from writing but has also recently made two posts this year (one to Intel for removing their ads). While the other work I've seen Tekanji write is eloquent and intellectual, she is not in charge of defining terms. She does not get to take existing terms and decide that the way everyone uses them don't fit her own personal narrative and so she thinks it should mean "X". She has a BA in Asian Area Studies, studied Japanese, and as of 2008 had just finished 4 years in computer programming (the article Anita linked was in 2007).
Now, while she is an excellent writer and I might really enjoy her work (if I could find any games she's written on), she is not any kind of actual definition authority or scholar in the area of feminism. She cares about feminism and makes clear points in my opinion, but this is some person who basically decided that from now on the word "Universe" will be replaced with "Unicorn" because they like that more but here it's because the term change suits her agenda of being able to make sexist comments towards men without being called a sexist.
She also distinguishes between gender based prejudice and sexism. Implying that she is also trying to change the traditional meaning of the term sexism. That a woman can commit an act of "gender based prejudice" but because she's doing it to men then it's not sexism because men are privileged by the system in Anita's eyes. In a way, this is victim blaming. "Oh, she treated you poorly because you're a man? Well of course she did, you're a man. That's not sexism." That's simply incoherently offensive and should not be defended by anyone supporting equality.
2. Even if we entirely accept her definition that you are defending, there are multiple problems:
A. Women do have power and some men genuinely have no power. Let's think about the extremes here. Is a female CEO capable of being sexist (Anita's Definition) towards men? She certainly has power, if she is prejudiced against males and let's that bleed into the areas she has control over then how wouldn't that meet the definition. How about a homeless man on the street? Is he capable of being sexist (Anita's Definition)? Is she claiming that the homeless man on the street has power and is privileged just because he was born a man? If so, that's her being sexist (actual real definition of sexism).
B. I would debate against the notion that women don't have power or control at the higher social and government level. Not only do we see the likes of Hilary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kaganm and Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the highest echelons of government, but we regularly see laws in clear support of equality for people of all races and genders being written into law through the efforts of both these female leaders and male leaders who support their cause. It isn't enough just for men to be in power for sexism against females to be the norm. The males who are in charge also themselves have to be sexist. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of men support equality with their votes and words. Regardless of what people believe in private, any step of sexism or racism is generally met with public outrage and is generally considered political suicide. Society itself is on the side of equality by a fair margin. As best as I can tell, the only thing that seems to be lagging is equality in marriage which again, the powers that be, are wading into it and overturning policies that were voted into law. So what area is she talking about that women haven't gained power in yet? Does she require that women be exactly 50% in control or higher before any sexism+power can take place? If it is merely as defined, then any power in the system allows room for sexism and women clearly have that and are only getting more and more in power every day (and good for that, let's please not forget that I am personally very pro-equality. My being here is because Anita is being anti-equality by what she said. She is being sexist.).
C. Males absolutely reinforce sexism against other males too. Society itself which women do affect greatly does reinforce sexism against other males too. She is trivializing and dismissing the sort of extreme sexism we can absolutely face and that's unethical of her to do.
It just doesn't follow in any meaningful way that would justify her saying that there's no such thing as sexism against males. It was a bigoted thing for her to say. Entirely sexist and it should not be deemed acceptable by you or anyone else in society. This would be as insane as someone claiming that there's no such thing as rape against males and insisting on only calling it sodomy when it happens to males but rape when it happens to females. You don't trivialize victims, you just don't. She is trivializing gender based prejudice when it happens to men by trying to rob it of the proper title of sexism it deserves just as much as it deserves when it happens to females. Shame on her for committing this egregious evil.