lets collectively lol @ these "I need feminism because..." pics

[Lictor Face]

Oh look people take 4chan images seriously. Time to bail out of the thread.

 

[QuadFish]

There is a serious and growing issue in the Western world where people are seeking to blame their personal problems on the perceptions of the general public; when they have no right to control the opinions of others.

Take the first picture as a prime example (even though all of them are). Why does he care that other people think less of him because he enjoys his GF ramming him up the ass? What he does in the bedroom is his own business, and of course the business of everyone else he decides to tell. If you go around making things public knowledge you're bound to get reactions, and not all of them agree. Exactly what does a movement devoted to women's equal rights intend to do about policing the opinions of those that think differently then he does? People think less of others for expressing their republican or democratic ideas; what does feminism intend to do about that?

Feminism is quickly becoming a meaningless term, used to combat meaningless oppression based on meaningless opinions of other people which should have a meaningless impact in your own life.

I really wish Escapist had a thumbs up button sometimes, because this is the kind of thinking that just doesn't happen enough in these feminism "debates" (or any other topic really). There's a point where someone opening a criticism reaches just the right level of assholery that there's almost no way for someone on the other end of the discussion not to feel like they are being personally attacked, and to then react with anything other than frustration and more aggression. It just shifts it from a discussion to a insult slinging fest; even without explicit insults both sides turn aggressive just off the tone.

So yeah, the OP's pretty much interpreted the same issue (though not so consciously) and then complained about it in a crude, almost-sexist way, then been called out on it by equally crude people, and you've come in, realised what's wrong with the pictures and addressed it. People on the internet are becoming experts on arguments but not debates...

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

So a tonne of your people fucking disgust me.

Just needed that put down here.

 

[Strazdas]

It feels like it's just "HEY LOOK AT DEM STUPID FEMINISTS LOL". Just because some feminists are stupid and ridiculously extreme, doesn't make feminism stupid.

Then why are there so many of them and are feminists making no attempts to distance themselves from the sexist and hatefull ones?

thats like saying "Why are there so many kids on COD and the normal ones are making no attempts to distance themselves from the sexist and hatefull ones?"
They are, its just that they dont go around jumping of buildings screaming their heracy.

Feminism was a good idea.... when it started.
What it turned into now is worse than crusades.

back in the day being a little "voluptuous" was actually pretty attractive, it ment you were well fed and possibly upper class (just take a look at all those classical paintings) same with being pale when now a tan is considered atractive (when its kind of unhalthy in some ways)

sorry, i dont find being attractive to money fascinating, beucas back then fat = rich and thats the only reason they liked it.
Also, tan is out of fashion already, and im very happy, i hate tans

if you believe in and support any of these:
- a women or men having to endure sexual harassment to maintain or progress through their career.

then you are feminist.

Wait, what? feminism, means both women and ment have to endure sexual harrasment? i think you missed something there.
as for your previuos "do with your own body" post. i dont think neither men or women should be allowed that. FOr example i believe that drug abuse should not be allowed.

 

[Giftfromme]

I'm pretty sure the absurd ones are being facetious, doofus

Are you actually certain of that? You call me a doofus, but you can't actually be sure how serious these people are. Yep that makes sense. You know what you could do is say you're not sure (I don't know either) and just leave it at that. But instead you put in an insult. Good post!

Oh look people take 4chan images seriously. Time to bail out of the thread.

Any picture that is uploaded to 4chan is immediately invalidated? Do you know how silly that sounds? You should try reading it out aloud, just to ensure you understand.

You do realise these picture could have been taken...wait...let is sink in...from somewhere else? After which they were uploaded by a user to 4chan. And in fact these images were taken from somewhere else! A Facebook group.

http://www.facebook.com/groups/484004694975876/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Facebook groups like that.

They're all still invalid now aren't they?

So a tonne of your people fucking disgust me.

Just needed that put down here.

Not enough punctuation in the posts, I know. Next time I shall endevour to help fix this by writing perfectly in my first post and stating that I want this example copied in every post henceforth.

I am sorry for this remission and it's really all my fault. I blame myself. But to ensure this doesn't bother you in the future, I will change my wicked ways.

 

[Strazdas]

http://www.facebook.com/groups/484004694975876/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Facebook groups like that.

They're all still invalid now aren't they?

Facebook groups are invalid just on the fact that their facebook groups alone.

 

[Smeatza]

-equal pay for equal work
-a woman's right to do with her body what she wants
-a woman's worth is not inherently tied to her ability to reproduce and a man's desire to copulate with her
- a fair representation of women and men in management positions
- a women or men having to endure sexual harassment to maintain or progress through their career.

I believe in
-equal pay for equal work
-a human's right to do with her body what she wants
-a human's worth is not inherently tied to their ability to reproduce and other's desire to copulate with her
-one should employ the best person for the job, regardless of gender or race
-nobody should have to endure any kind of harassment to maintain or progress through their career.

I am not a feminist. I am more realistic, and more compassionate than that.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Then what was the point of your posting? You offered no explanations, nor links to explanations and when called out you just refuse to give more.

I posted because I'm entitled to opinions of my own. However, this is not my job. I don't get paid to educate you, or to explain things to you, and if I can't even trust that you would bother to read my response I have absolutely no desire to try.

I've been ignoring you because I have spent hours giving explanations on this thread, and yet you couldn't be arsed to spend 10 minutes fully reading a single post. What would be different if I responded to you directly? What would be different if I spent more hours looking for materials weren't behind a paywall? What would be different if I gave you a reading list? Would you go off and read anything on it? Current evidence suggests not, you've clearly never bothered to read anything on this subject in your life, why would you start now?

You don't want to learn. I don't want to teach you. But I'm still entitled to my opinion. I know that might sound weird and all, but unfortunately it's true.

 

[KerryBamBerry]

...Seriously? Alright, time to bust out the image. I am busting out the image now.

Spoiler: Image busting out

The image has been bust out now.

I mean, just... What's the point? The purpose of this thread is literally point and laugh at people who think differently to you? About feminism of all things? Yeah, that'll end well.

Made my day! lol

 

[zehydra]

I don't need feminism.

What we do need though, is acceptance for stepping outside gender norms.

I like a couple of Feminism's ideas, but the whole movement itself is corrupted.

Like with every goddamn movement you are going to have your outliers, folks that take the central ideas to an extreme. Most of the time, they are idiots. However, if you believe in and support any of these:

-equal pay for equal work
-a woman's right to do with her body what she wants
-a woman's worth is not inherently tied to her ability to reproduce and a man's desire to copulate with her
- a fair representation of women and men in management positions
- a women or men having to endure sexual harassment to maintain or progress through their career.

then you are feminist. If you believe in none of these, you are huge dick.

I do believe in those, but I do not consider myself a feminist.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I guess Third Wave Feminism is what was going for. And the absence of a goal is what concerns me.

It's really difficult to pin down what third wave feminism actually is, because noone really came out and said "I'm a third wave feminist". It's generally quite a dismissive term. Actually I think the differences between different "waves" of feminism is generally hugely overstated. The only thing that I can see really "changed" in third wave feminist theory is what has been retroactively termed "queer theory", and I'll get onto that in a minute because you mentioned something interesting later on.

I guess you could say the third wave is the point at which feminism had become such a broad part of society as a whole that the organized element of it (which had been ailing for a while) kind of broke down. It's probably no coincidence that the 90s also gave us concepts like "girl power" and "real women", which I think get caught up in the critique of the "third wave". I guess you can't be a social force without also being a market.

The latter would only be recapitulating the theory in the hopes that there will some kind of spontaneous enlightenment amongst the privileged group, even though the impossibility of this enlightenment is a core axiom of the theory in the first place.

I disagree..

If privileged people could not grasp the meaning of privilege, we would never had had white civil rights activists, we would never have had male pro-feminists (and we have, at every stage of feminist history), we wouldn't have LGBT allies. A concept like privilege is very difficult to convey to someone who has it, very few people naturally sees themselves as privileged, very few people believe that their life is great and the reason is because they're a man, or because they're straight, or because they're white. They think their lives suck, and the reason it's so hard to argue with that is that they're kind of right.

And actually, this is where the "third wave" can really help. But again, more on that later.

To the contrary, I want it to evolve beyond theory. The theory is the beginning, not an end in and of itself. It's used to establish a foundation of political thought upon which you act.

And I would argue that there is huge amounts of action in our society.

You asked something earlier along the lines of "how is feminism going to destroy gender roles?" That's actually a very good question, because it's been a tension in feminism for a very long time. Gender exists, it has thousands of years of history and meaning. In order to mitigate the effect it has on our lives, the "feminist movement" had to to invoke that meaning themselves, to advocate and represent and speak for "men" and for "women". They had to acknowledge the existence of these things. They had to draw commonalities between all men and between all women, as well as differences between the two. Feminism could argue that men and women should be equal, but (however much its own theory pointed out that these things were arbitrary and produced by society) it could not challenge their existence.

Over time, it became apparent that, shock, not all women were actually the same. That as much as they were part of this category of "women", there were other things about them which made them different from each other. Some were white, and others were black or came from other ethnic minorities. Some were gay, others were straight and others were bisexual or what we would now call transgendered. Some were comparatively wealthy or well educated, while others were poor and had little formal education. Feminism had claimed to speak for all of these women as if they were a coherent category, but the reality is that they did not have a common identity so much as a common purpose, and as that purpose came closer to completion people felt less and less identification with the movement. That is why I rail so strongly against the idea of a feminist movement today, it kind of fell apart, and for me at least that was a good thing. Yes, there are still feminists out there who whine about the lack of organized movement today and think it's terrible, but I think they're missing the point. The ability to be more than just "women" is exactly what feminism had been arguing for, the breakdown was actually another step on the path to mission accomplished.

But yeah.. we still have gender, we still have gendered norms and gendered roles. Feminism changed them, but it really got us no closer to getting rid of them, in fact some strands of feminism have probably contributed to these things by creating a new kind of consciousness among women which emphasized their shared experience and similarity at the expense of the enormous differences between them. Popular feminism can be godawful, it's Gerri Halliwell in union jack bikini talking about how having babies is "girl power" levels of awful. It's Julie Burchill ranting about "trannies" taking over from "real women" levels of awful (sorry, these are all British references).

But the fact is, there is a huge political battle about gender going on very publicly and visibly right now, and it's not feminist, but it's there. It's there because there already is gender non-conformity in our society. It's more visible than ever before, to the point where celebrities now engage in it openly and where kids now grow up aware of things which, 50 years ago you couldn't even put in a film or books without risking censorship. I'm talking, of course, about the push for LGBT rights.

The same queer theory which feminists whine has no political application and can't possibly help the cause is being applied politically as we speak to the detriment of traditional gender roles. It's not the only voice in the LGBT rights lobby, it's not even the dominant voice, but certain ideas from it are already employed as rhetorical tactics in the effort to to win that debate and as such it is filtering into society. Put it this way, I don't know a single person under 40 who is in any way involved in LGBT activism (beyond showing up at Pride) and who has not read or tried to read Gender Trouble.

Why is this important? Because "normative" ideas of gender have always been formed in opposition to non-conformity. Being a "real man" has been contingent on being heterosexual and cisgendered for as long as these ideas exist. A world in which fucking other men or having been born female-bodied has no bearing on what kind of man you are is already, to a large extent, a world in which gender norms have been destroyed.

Don't mistake the absence of a political feminist movement for the absence of political application of gender theory.

Yeah, I kinda rushed the ending there.. sorry if doesn't make sense, I need to walk the dog and this post is long enough.

 

[maninahat]

Oh, faith and begora, would you look at all them lovely strawmen!

Don't worry, lads, I doubt evil hairy ladies will confiscate your dick in the dark of the night...

Of course they'd never do such a thing.

They'd collude with the state to do it instead like allowing women to commit paternity fraud and throw men in jail when they don't pay up. Spend more money on healthcare. Allow women to falsely cry rape without consequence. Have more men die in combat or at work. Treat men worse in the court and prison system.

I think its telling that almost all of those points are a consequence of decisions and rules made by male leaders. For instance, women weren't the ones who got to decide that women couldn't be drafted, it was men who decided on their behalf, usually with the mindset that women weren't capable of much beyond cooking, cleaning and basic menial labour. We've had to wait this long before US women are permitted to serve in front lines combat, which is something women long campaigned for.

I'm not going to deny the one about women getting more lenient sentencing, though again, we have way more male judges than female judges. Go figure.

 

[TomLikesGuitar]

Rape Culture:

"Hey everyone, this one specific horrible event is actually everyone's fault. You should all feel bad because you all contribute to every single rape just by being alive."

Fuck that.

Even if all rape is "everyone's fault", then what about 'War Culture'? 'Poverty Culture'? 'Famine Culture'?

All somewhat worse than rape and made MUCH worse by the culture around us, but no one blames it on the general public.

Rape is horrible, but if you're going to sit there and say that I "contribute to rape culture" then FUCK you. Hardcore feminists make women look bad (just like hardcore LGBTQers) because they demonize those who would potentially fight alongside them.

If you really want to fix 'rape culture', maybe start by NOT pointing fingers at the wrong people.

Peace.

 

[Naqel]

I only read the OP so far, and I already need to ask a very important question...

Those people, are they absolutely honest, with no irony or sarcasm intended?

Because all of those pictures sound pretty damn stupid to me.

 

[awesomeClaw]

Rape Culture:

"Hey everyone, this one specific horrible event is actually everyone's fault. You should all feel bad because you all contribute to every single rape just by being alive."

Nice straw man, buddy. Were you working on that one for a while?

Actually, rape culture = "Hey, you know that rape? Turns out is wasn't the rapist's fault after all. It was the rape victim. She was asking for it"

Normally, we call that stupidity. It exists in all genders and in all cultures.

Some people say that it´s the fault of the raped that they got raped. Those people contribute to rape culture. Okay. I can buy that. Now please explain how someone who has never said anything of the sort is still contributing to this so-called "rape culture", then we can talk.