Feminism or Cancer?

There was a poll taken some time ago, I thought it was pretty funny. This guy asked "Would you rather your child have feminism or cancer?" And more than half of his followers said cancer.

I personally think cancer would be better too for many reasons.

What do you guys think?

Krazy: If I literally had to choose if my child would be a feminist or have a form of cancer, I would much rather have my child be a feminist. I like diverse views and ideologies anyways.
Feminism is just a constructed concept, cancer isn't.

What do you not like about the concept of feminism?

Bi0Hazard: Well first of all, it's not feminine. So before even talking about why it's bad, it's just not feminine, despite the name. It teaches that women should take on the place of a man. A man has his place, and a woman has her place. The man's place is the authority of the family and provider, while the woman's place is at home, raising the children.

Right now, women are out of their place in society, and men have failed to lead their families properly. Feminism teaches that it should be a 50/50 deal; this queer-type of relationship with no real man of the house.

This gender-equality thing is a delusional concept. Men and women are not equal. But feminists insist that they are, despite the obvious reality learned from nature.

Krazy: Why should society and gender be that way?
Where women stay home to be a housewife and the men go out to provide with work. With a defined gender applied to the sexes.
This gender-equality thing is a delusional concept. Men and women are not equal. But feminists insist that they are, despite the obvious reality learned from nature.
Equality is a construct with our institutions. It doesn't have to do with biological difference.

Bi0Hazard: I think it's pretty obvious that it should be that way. That's just the natural order of things. You can even tell from physiology. You can look at a woman and can tell that her body is clearly designed for child-bearing. She's more emotional, and more weaker and less rough, perfect for raising children. And if you look at a man, he has more muscle, more energy, more determination. It's obvious that he is designed for hard labor. He should be the provider.

It doesn't have to do with biological difference
Feminists often believe it does. A classic example is women in combat. They don't honestly believe that a woman can do just as well as a man in a physical fight (unless they're completely delusional), they just want to try to blur the differences between the genders as much as possible and live in their own perfect world, even at the expense of human lives and national security.

Krazy: I don't see how nature tells us what forms of equality society should defend. Yes, the sexes are different, but this doesn't relate to political or social equality. Women having the child-bearing capabilities also doesn't tell us whether society should establish specific gender roles for them (like being a housewife). Establishing your system just isn't a necessary action to respect the differences between the sexes.

Now as for feminists, they may recognize a difference between the sexes, but what they are advocating for is the establishment of women's rights and social equality for women. While I see the modern movement as problematic, the concept isn't exactly. With women being in combat, I can't speak for all feminists, but the ideal seen here is the equality of opportunity regardless of gender, race, or sex.

Bi0Hazard: Do you honestly believe that most women want equality?

Krazy: I think this is interesting to deconstruct because "feminine" is socio-culturally defined. What is "feminine" is unique in every place at any time - women have had many roles through the ages. Likewise, men have had roles which are not uniform. This thing about place you mention isn't a universally accepted standard now, nor has it ever been. But for you, in the place you're in right now with your conceptualization of the world, it is absolutely correct. You're looking at the big scary world from the inside out and given this, it is easy to think culture *should* be a certain way. In the same way, when European colonists took over much of the world they took with them their own epistemological bases - the essential paradigms by which they understood ontology, aesthetics, acculturation etc. Their worldview was one of superiority - "our way is the proper way" - with the notion being that the rest of the world was somehow uninformed or lesser.

Today we might call slave-owners racist. But they were products of a colonial culture that recognized that racist worldview. Culture is collectively held, not individually. That many of these cultures were racist themselves is not relevant. In the same way it is not relevant that some women today are not feminist. What is relevant is that women are discriminated by attitudes like yours, based on a cultural norm that you have accepted as relevant for you. Therefore you would seek to impose that on other people, much like people in times past sought to impose their ideologies of racial superiority as slave traders.

I take an unashamed social constructionist approach to this issue. What is "delusional" and "equal" are equally culturally defined concepts. We reflect ourselves in our judgments on other people - those who believe others are lowly, are insecure. It sounds to me like you're afraid of your status of what you consider "masculine", which like femininity is a fluid concept. Bridging that we have the notion of feminism, which one might conceptualize as what Foucault called the "mediating structure" - the holistic view of two objects, which often doesn't really seem to satisfy either one of them. Recognizing this, feminism will talk about the principle of "substantive equality," a term borrowed from legal theory which grew out of acculturation lawsuits. This recognizes men and women are not equal, just like cultures are not equal. As a result, in order to give them fair treatment, their treatment need not be the same.

So when Yahoo allegedly went on a campaign to get rid of top male employees, an uninformed person might think "that's feminist", because it outs male roles and replaces them with female. From a substantive equality perspective, however, it is anti-feminist because it is not fair to those male employees. To give an inverse example, females have different events at the Olympics. Yet this is clearly feminist - even though they are not treated the same, they are substantively treated in the same way, each according to their own abilities, and their achievements are both celebrated just as much (at least, in theory).

Do I believe most women want that? That depends on the culture. Perhaps where you are they don't. Speaking for myself, I've met maybe one woman in my whole life who I didn't think was a feminist, and that person vehemently defended that she was a feminist. See, feminism too is socially constructed. I bet you that if you went to the streets and took a petition around to remove women's right to vote you wouldn't get much interest from women, but perhaps I'm wrong. Your culture has reasons why it exists and has flourished in its own way. Diversity and inclusiveness are pathways to understanding these cultures. Attempting to impose cultural values on other people is the opposite. If the president decided to take away your guns you'd fight him to the death, but you're happy imposing YOUR cultural values on other people. Just as guns are a dangerous cultural value (because they hurt people physically) so can patriarchy be damaging in some situations. Think of almost any abusive relationship you know of.

(BTW I say that not to diminish males who have been abused, but rather to challenge the notion that male domination is always a social good)

Krazy: The principle of equality is pretty widespread through our modern society. Plenty of women support equality.

admin: I don't think he believes that gender is a social construct.

Bi0Hazard: There's a difference between gender (are you a girl or boy) and labels associated with them (feminine/masculine). He describes there being certain physical characteristics that define genders and, in his mind, suit the genders to particular roles. Fine. But that does not necessarily mean that such roles are labelled in a gendered way. In the same way there are physical characteristics that define, say, races. But that doesn't mean we define people racially.

The famous image is the iceberg model of personal identity. This image isn't totally accurate but it generally shows how aspects of identity are often invisible, which presents a huge problem in applying these kinds of labels like masculine or feminine:

admin: There's a difference between gender (are you a girl or boy) and labels associated with them (feminine/masculine).
I would call that biological sex vs gender.

Bi0Hazard: I've seen that too. I was trying to distinguish them because in Krazy's posts his conception of gender seemed more like sex.

admin: He wants to apply gender roles and stereotypes to the sexes, so I don't think he is confusing them. He just thinks that men ought to be masculine and women ought to be feminine (which are culturally and socially defined terms). He used the reasoning of taking physical characteristics of the sexes to draw a conclusion about how gender roles should be.
He sounds like he advocates for a patriarchal society to me, but he may not be comfortable with that term.

Bi0Hazard: We don't disagree on any of that. All my point requires is an understanding that masculine / feminine is socially defined.

admin: Honestly, and I'm not trying to be offensive, just saying the truth as I see it, but if somebody believes that gender or it's traits are completely cultural and not natural nor innate, then they have to be, to some extent, brain-washed by society or self-deluded to believe that. Because gender is something that touches our souls; and permeates them. Masculinity is tough, leader-like, and loves femininity. And feminine is soft, quiet, and respects masculinity. That's in every culture and it passes culture. And if you can find a culture that has those traits completely switched for each gender, then that is a stupid culture. But there isn't one like that to my knowledge.

Somebody's view of what is, for example, tough, may vary from person to person, you're right. But tough is still a masculine trait. Some people think it's a manly thing to drink beer, and the more you can hold in your stomach at one time, the more manly. Personally, I don't think so, because if you can drink something really strong really fast, that just shows me you've been a drinker/alcoholic for a long time. Because somebody whose been doing it for a while can hold more in their stomach and a newbie will vomit it up if he drinks a lot less. Not to mention that beer has a lot of feminizing compounds in it.

And comparing gender to race is a very poor anology. Race is only skin-deep, but male/female is who you are.

Krazy: So I guess my response to this is simple - do you have any objective evidence for these claims, or are they based on your personal worldview/belief?

Bi0Hazard: Yeah, they think they want equality, but they don't. The truth is, if you remove the media-brainwashing, if you remove the social programming, women want men to lead them and men want women who will obey them and follow them. A lot of people like the rhetorical idea of "equality", but they really don't want it; it goes against nature. Because the male and female are opposites by nature.

admin: Just to inform you, you haven't provided "objective evidence" for your claims that manhood and womanhood are all in the mind. But sure, I guess I could show you what the Bible says. But I don't think you would be interested. And I don't even think the Bible is necessary to prove this. Men are men, and women are women. That's so obvious. It's nature. It's the natural order.

Bi0Hazard: He sounds like he advocates for a patriarchal society to me, but he may not be comfortable with that term
No, that's accurate. You can say that.