Feminism

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This reminded me of something my mother used to complain quite loudly about. I haven't been paying much attention to swedish politics in recent years, but there was a proposal once for increased mandatory paternity leave. I believe it was to be enforced by reducing the allowed maternity leave, or somesuch.
Besides that the parents would not be allowed to make their own arrangements, she feared that the lack of flexibility would greatly inconvenience couples with any noticeable income imbalance. Non-genderbound parental leave would be far easier to tailor to any given situation.

This pisses me off too. I feel there's a new sexism rising and it's just as harmful as the old one where men were seen as superior and women inferior. Now men are seen as neo-hunters and warriors and women are labelled as nurturers (all based on science, of course, and anyone who doesn't fit this exact mold is seen as abnormal.

As long as there are women denied opportunity or economic empowerment simply because of their gender, there will be a need for "feminism".

And surely no one believes that women are not still being denied opportunity.

I'm older than most of you posting on this thread, I think, so perhaps my concerns are also infiltrated with a bit of "age-ism". My concerns have to do with legalities and the force of law. When I was younger, people would often say stuff like "you can't legislate people's attitudes" or "society isn't ready for this yet", which of course were just BS excuses for keeping the status quo. No, you can't legislate attitudes, but that's not what matters.

What matters is having the law truly being blind to gender.

If you have the law on your side, then at least you've got a leg to stand on when you're fired or passed over because you're too "uppity" or you didn't "know your place." Believe me, this continues to happen every single day in the corporate world.

Of course I realize there's far more to this issue than the law. But you start somewhere. And you do what you can.

It's based on "evolutionary psychology," which can only be considered a 'science' in the absolute loosest definition of the word 'science.' Maybe a definition that would include phrenology.

The notion of the genders as equal and gender differences as unimportant is very firmly stuck back in the 1970s. More modern feminists recognize that the genders are equal but that there are important and valued differences. There is nothing whatsoever novel or additional to 1970s feminism in what you have described. Describing it as "post feminism" is not accurate as such a notion is more stuck in the past then heading into the future.

No, you see people who think they are feminists or who use feminism for a veneer of respectability. Feminism innately entails equality of the sexes/genders. Anyone who does not desire such equality and calls themselves a feminist is lying or mistaken.

They are probably stuck in the 1970s....


The result of apparently wide-spread propaganda.


A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Should we assume that NAS (the National Autistic Society in the UK) is advocating that non-Autistic people are not equal to Autistic people or that it has an inappopriate name, or that while it does not contend any inequality and is appropriately named, it happens to be focussed on the rights and needs of a particular group, what with specialization being an effecient and necessary means to many ends in modern, complex societies? I am going with the latter.

There were already "humanist" movements at the time that feminism developed and they as a rule did not hold with he radical idea of women as people.

Agreed. I'm really not sure how this particular misconception survives. Propaganda is part of it, and lack of education about what feminism is.




There have been humanist movements with different meanings in different points in history. I don't know much about what humanist movements were abroad in the 1970's, so I'll defer to you on that. Nonetheless, my primary point to this paragraph was that I think 1970's feminists were less worried about what to call the movement and more worried about actual things that need to change for equality of the sexes to exist. There are many feminist activits today with the same concerns, and they can call themselves what they like. I call myself a feminist, but not everyone has to. We can still work together to stop inequality.

Individual differences are important, not gender differences. I'm a person who happens to be female. If we respect individual differences, that includes those that happen to have a gender correlation. I am not defined by being a woman. I'm me.

Talking about differences between men and women is placing them in boxes, which was the problem feminism was trying to combat. Instead, differences between, Mary, Tom, Tim, Jane, etc.

Er, the 1970s was not when feminism began and it was not when the term "feminism" was coined. By the 1970s the term was well and truly established for decades.


Aha, so should we stop making sanitary provisions for menstruation in public toilets altogether or make sure that the exact same provisions are provided in male toilets? In fact should we do away with different toilets and men can be forced to use urinals while women come and go from the same toilets? Either way, it's a very 1970's idea, in that by the late 1970's early 1980's the idea was already becomming outdated in favour of valuing variaton rather than trying to hide it. You are welcome to continue believing it, but calling this belief "post-feminism" is inaccurate. Calling it old fashioned feminism would be more accurate.


Talking about differences refers to variation, and putting someone in a box is not a necessary consequence of either variation or references to it.

Pandd, you don't get my perspective, but I'm not going to argue about it. I've shared my point of view. I'm okay that you disagree with what you think I said. I've no desire to try to get you to understand my point of view.

Of course we shouldn't start making sweeping changes such as making people use the same toilets.

It's just that we shouldn't treat men as all the same and women as all the same.

I don't like this new focus on gender difference. One so called expert - I forget where I read this, I'll find it for you - went so far as to recommend that girls and boys' school setting be changed, with girls being given quiet areas and encouraged to talk about feelings, and boys being given activities which are basically watered down martial arts, like wrestling on soft surfaces and fencing with foam tipped sticks.

I would have loved the boy's group!

It is unfair that slight interpersonal differences are being given such huge value. I went to an all girl's school, and out of about 60 girls in my year, there were far more 'tomboy' rough and sporty types than girly-girls, and a huge swathe of girls who fell somewhere in the middle.

Perhaps there were more 'girly' people in my school than in the neighbouring boys' school, but I don't think that would have been a good enough reason to force us all to conform to what, essentially, is a minority rule. It's almost as if it suits society for gender roles to still be strong.

It would be great if that school had quiet areas and martial arts classes for all kids!

I have no idea why recognizing and valuing difference would entail or imply treating people as all the same. That makes no sense to me whatsoever.


All kinds of people suggest all kinds of weird things; often these people are some kind of expert. Considering a need to provide different toilet provisions in public places is a sensible way to recognize difference. Implementing educational differences on the basis of sex rather than individual need is actually suggesting forced sexual segregation where a person's opportunities are circumscribed by their sex. That sounds more like sexism than feminism to me.

For just about anything one could invoke an extreme. In respect of treating people as the same, unisex toilets are nowhere near as out there as the very famous proponent of this idea, Dr Money. He was so convinced it was true that he caused one of his male patients to be raised as a girl. As an adult the patient returned to living as a man before he killed himself. If there were no important sex based difference, this patient would have been as happy living as a female as a male, but the experience was so traumatic that eventually they ended their life.

Feminism would be advocating the same number of women's and men's restrooms in a public building (some of the older buildings at one university I attended still had only one women's restroom for the whole building, and a men's restroom on each floor), not advocating urinals in women's restrooms.

Why have separate toilets at all unless one assumes that there is some difference worth recognizing? We do not have separate toilet facilities for people with green eyes or who are taller than 6 foot.

Feminism that recognizes differences does not focus on process or seek equality by strictly treating everyone the same because that is not equal in effect, as people do not have the same needs. Nor does it mean treating any group as necessarily being the same within-group. The provision of urinals in mens toilets does not necessitate that every man uses them, it merely gives them this option. Not providing the same option to women is not sexist because....boys and girls are actually different. Not supplying more toilet facilities to women than to men may be equality of process but it is unequal in effect as it results in disproportionate waiting times on the basis of sex/gender.

The very provision of separate toilet facilities recognizes sex/gender difference and either one recognizes this difference and considers it merits recognition, or one has no reason to expect or wish for separate or different toilet facilities. Why would there be any need or wish for such in the absence of any sex/gender differences worth recognizing?

Feminism that does not recognize differences between males and females does not exist. That's why you don't see many feminists advocating sharing public bathrooms. Logically, you are using a device known as a 'straw man.'

Feminism advocates equal rights, not state-enforced hermaphroditism.

Feminism is the radical idea that women are human beings and deserve to be treated as such. Naturally I agree.