I disavow the ignorance displayed in the statement that “Feminists always think women are better than men.” But felt important to share how well received such a message is received on this site.
Previous posts in this series:
- epic ratio: https://lemmy.cafe/post/9597634
- lemmy is a worse platform for women than reddit was: https://lemmy.cafe/post/4821164
—bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody
Reminds me of
i really love this and also the amount of jpg distortion going on showing how loved and re-distributed this post was
Yeah, it was the least potato version I could find lol definitely well loved…
Maybe this, thanks to Google’s “in quotation” exact match
@Feathercrown@lemmy.world - digital whiteout revealed
It’s like a well read book lmao
One part has even been removed with white digital ink. Fascinating
I’d love for someone who down voted this to explain their position…
I agree, but wouldn’t hold my breath lol
Though I don’t doubt at least a couple have already commented elsewhere on this thread, and are trying to hide their anti-feminism (aka misogyny) behind the thin veil of pretending it excludes them, and that we must refocus thousands of years of feminist struggle on to them and call it “egalitarianism” otherwise they have no reason to join our fight for equality (which they conveniently ignore means equality for everyone, which is why they need to make up excuses to reject it, because, going back to the meme I posted and why they downvote it - they don’t want equality, they want to hold on to superiority at all costs, and their fragile egos don’t like having that mirror held up to them).
(edit to add: and even if we give in and centre them and do call it egalitarianism, they won’t actually want to fight with us to bring down the patriarchy, they’ll just keep shifting the goalposts to make it more and more about freeing their poor souls from the imaginary oppression of feminism) .
I mean, I do think that using the term Feminism for movements that aren’t about women seeking equality is kind of a stretch of the original word. If the focus of the movement has changed so much that defining it as the original focus isn’t accurate anymore, a new word should be used for the new movement instead. I’m undereducated on modern Feminist theory but this seems to me to be self-evident and I’ve never seen a good argument why referring to gender-related egalitarianism as Feminism has more positives than negatives.
you should read that work by hooks, it’s linked and available right there
I noticed it was a direct PDF download (based). I have a 7 hour car ride coming up, if it doesn’t make me too carsick I might read it!
godspeed! this channel also has a sort of audiobook of it with some commentary in case you’re as bad with visual carsickness as me 🥴
Thank you spujb, you’re very helpful :)
imo we’re also just at a point now where everyone’s getting fucked, maybe let’s focus on preventing fascism right now and when neonazi parties aren’t getting 40% of the votes we can go back to worrying specifically about women’s rights. Though aside from that there’s also the fact that we’re sorta supposed to not be grouping everything into “men” and “women” anymore, so at the very least the term “feminism” feels a bit inherently unsuitable… Maybe let’s just go with working class solidarity yeah?
feminism is for everyone. solidarity is for everyone. the working class is huge and the history of its successes are often inextricably linked, with both marxist and feminist leaders working together.
you also should read that work by hooks, it’s available and linked right there.
Solidarity is the entire point of Intersectionality. How about we have solidarity for everyone’s human rights and not toss any group to the side.
Thiisss
There’s room for a few issues at once. Gender still plays an important social role and I won’t stop anyone from fighting for justice just because it’s not my one chosen issue.
I have always felt that feminism has had a marketing problem. I consider myself a feminist and I am for equal rights for all. But the issue with feminism is that it’s easy to point to the word and use it to propagandize a people against it. The word evokes a priority towards women (which I believe it should), but that makes folks feel like there are people out to be against them which is not what the movement is about.
And then you have the people who claim to be feminist who are really just misandrists who want to see men broght down to achieve equality or who want to see women be valued higher than men. In reality, the way forward should be to lift women up to the level that society holds men. It shouldn’t be a battle of sexes.
Feminism also (in name only) sorta precludes anyone who isn’t female. So non-binary? Get fucked I guess? I think there really ought to be a better way to market an equality movement than labelling it for women, even if that is the primary target of increasing equality.
It would be like calling a racial equality movement blackism and then saying you represent all race’s equality. That specifically disregards all races not considered black from a marketing perspective, even if your movement’s actions are positive representation for all races.
The rest of the work you are responding to is in fact doing exactly what you are asking, reasserting the truth that “Feminism is for Everybody.” You should read it! Of course, she doesn’t have a time machine and can’t rewrite entire etomological history, but the book is good and more people should read it. It’s linked in the above comment :)
People are blaming propaganda, I additionally blame the attention economy aka social media algorithms that favor attention. Young men are often shown videos of “crazy feminists” acting stupid, which gives this impression.
If you only see the dumbest people and takes from a movement, big surprise you won’t understand it.
I think your point might also apply the other way - people are also encouraged to make exaggerated, incendiary comments for attention. Mild, reasonable takes, especially not posted quickly, will usually be overshadowed by the more extreme top comments. I believe the poster in question defended themselves claiming it was just an exaggeration.
excellent analysis. this is part of my reasoning for making posts like these. silly little reactionary posts responding to misunderstanding or bigotry often have some of the more interesting and nuanced discussion and learning in the comments.
tldr i think it’s possible to reverse engineer propaganda structures if you put some thought into it
honestly i don’t think it’s too big a stretch to claim that the attention economy you describe is an intentional structure of conservative propagandists.
it’s so much not a stretch that it simply just is. it’s the kinda stretch you get sleeping in a perfectly neutral resting position for 8 hours
hahaha thank you XD
Not at all a stretch indeed. Although I think they discovered the attention economy, which was initially a side-product of profit-driven social networks.
I additionally blame the attention economy aka social media algorithms that favor attention
I mean this is also propaganda :P This is how the alt right are setting their hooks in people, by using the algorithms as they are to get boys and young men to listen to their little gurus etc. and slowly pull them right.
True. The way I see it, this was already a bug of attention-seeking algorithms, which right-wingers rediscovered as a feature.
This peaked in like 2015
Not really.
Now they just use the term woke.
Maybe my feed has simply been spared from those videos…
The algorithm is unfortunately quite good at figuring out if you’re receptive to this stuff or not. If your feed doesn’t have it that’s a good sign!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VzGdo1IDdc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2QGME8KHzY
These two have been lit really doing the root cause analysis. Has to go further, glad to see bell hooks mentioned in the thread. And the curiousity. Conservative propaganda and indoctrination doesn’t play fair. Leopards, faces, how long will folks allow their rights be stripped away before their eyes?
Yeah I’ve seen so much casual misogyny upvoted here
Removed by mod
Dude fuck off
Removed by mod
Somebody’s gotta make it clear that your shit isn’t welcome here, given your utter failure to comprehend that fact.
Hopefully me banning will get that message across
Common Ada W
Removed by mod
What years of anti-feminist propaganda does to a man
man i’d love to see the propaganda replaced with Commiunism
Kind of a roundabout way to say that, but I guess the underlying message is people are equally terrible? That’s not really the worst opinion I’ve seen.
The actual message is the “… And feminists are hypocrite liars about it” part you skipped over.
thanks for saying the truth lol. i happen to also believe that people are equally terrible but it’s annoying that people are intentionally ignoring the other half of the message.
That is definitely what they said, but they seem to mislabel feminism in general. Since feminism isn’t about superiority to men, then who they are referring to is not representative of feminism as a whole. I guess what I’m saying is that they are actually right that anyone that thinks that one group is superior to another is wrong. They are wrong about the term they used to describe someone like that though, which I don’t label as the worst thing ever compared to actually thinking the former point. So not understanding the term feminism bad, but also their point directed at the right people isn’t wrong.
Don’t worry I too hit the comment button without reading sometimes.
people just suck tbh
humanity was a mistake
In other words you see oppression, and the people fighting back against their oppression as equally shit.
Classy.
this type of abrasive behavior is not rhetorically effective
Wow, I was not expecting this tone policing bullshit from you.
But no - what is abrasive is saying “humanity sucks” in the face of marginalised people, who have no hand in our oppression, pointing out that oppression. Not calling out someone doing this.
The patriarchy sucks. Misogyny sucks. Capitalism sucks. Humanity, which includes all of the people oppressed by those and other structures created by and for the benefit of a tiny minority of people, who band together and fight for each other and our rights and survival, shouldn’t be thrown under the bus because someone doesn’t want to, for whatever reason, diferenciate humanity and social constructs imposed on it for profit and control.
Fuck this noise, it’s like blaming climate change on “humanity” which puts billionaires who create as much CO2 in 90 minutes as the rest of us do in a lifetime, and, for example, Indigenous people who were genocided and their sustainable ways almost destroyed and continuously overlooked, on the same level of responsability.
All this is is the same old bullshit of blame shifting done by the privileged to deflect it from themselves.
What is abrasive is “all lives matter”-ing marginalised people.
i agree with literally everything you said here except that you put words into the other commenters mouth over eight words lol.
No, I really didn’t, I made a mildly snarky remark pointing out the direct implication of their bullshit statement (E: and which, if you agree with everything I’ve said, I’m genuinely confused why you’re getting defensive of), and I stand by it.
I’m sick and tired of people responding to problems we have because of very specific systems and a very small group of people with a condemnation of humanity as a whole (E: consciously or unconsciously, but very directly, helping our oppressors by shifting blame away from them), and I’m not going to be made out to be “abrasive” for calling it out for exactly what it is, nor the tone in which I do it in (which, lets be honest, was seriously fucking mild), policed.
If they don’t like the implications of their statement, perhaps they should reconsider why they made it, and not make it again in the future if they don’t want to be seen to be making those implications again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think you’re dead on. I have nothing else to add, but it’s refreshing to see a non-doomer take.
Yeah, because “all lives matter”-ing worked so well the first time around… 🙄
ignores the entire first half of the sentence, the half that i highlighted in my post “that’s not really the worst opinion i’ve seen” and twenty odd upvotes
we are so cooked yall
People will conveniently skim the subtext and skip to the true parts when the text, when taken as a whole, confirms their own biases.
A lot of people see feminism as a “women are better than men” take. It’s not, that’s radfem, feminism is about equality despite the name as it has roots in the suffragettes movement.
good insight, ty
Removed by mod
They certainly have a misunderstanding of what most people mean when they call themselves feminists. My point was it’s not as bad as it could be since they don’t demonize what feminism actually is. They think everyone is on an equal level even if they don’t have a positive opinion of everyone. I would say misusing a term is not really that bad when they could have said a lot worse like actually saying something along the lines of “women bad.” Which I didn’t really get that from their post, but perhaps I misunderstood their intentions.
I have encountered a lot of this mentality on Lemmy. Sometimes I go to engage, but it’s simply not worth it.
You won’t be able to inform folks with these opinions in a content aggregator forum, it’s just not the place for learning (and 196 is much less so).
Also is this OC in 196? Isn’t that sort of against the spirit of the community?
it’s just not the place for learning
awww dont tell me what to do :( i have learned much on this site and now i’m contributing back. i like doing my part to make the places i hang out nicer for everyone :)
Also is this OC in 196?
yes
Isn’t that sort of against the spirit of the community?
no i have done it for years
I only engage to make them feel unwelcome for having a bigoted view.
The worst opinion you’ve ever seen
Yup, that’s about what I expect every week or so
I thought political beliefs were three dimensional before I entered Lemmy. Now I think there’s four
gotta be at least 5 tbh
Just today found one like that in Lemmy, how can someone support racial eugenics whilst being anti trump and a nazi soviet revisionist???
Might just be one moving in circles
A spiral, going downwards with no bottom in sight.
Lemmy isn’t a monolith, and understanding that the fediverse has set itself up as an alternative to centralised platforms, I don’t think we should be surprised when trolls who tend to get banned on those other platforms find their way here.
Of course we’re going to see a lot of reactionary opinions here. These are the reactionaries that are too reactionary for reddit. They’ve learned to be less overt in their views because lemmy can excise a whole instance that’s just reactionary.
I’d say right now they’re trying to radicalise the normies. Vote manipulation is probably part of that strategy to make their views look more accepted than they are.
i’m not surprised just sad
he is so wrong that he got it right at the end… somehow
https://fedia.io/m/memes@lemmy.world/t/1488712/-/comment/8371814
seriously what the fuck. at least his replies are in the negatives. i suspect a troll, but all these upvotes??
How hard is it to manipulate votes on Lemmy instances? I’m guessing the answer varies depending on the instance but I don’t think it’s completely impossible on any of them.
Very easy
To back this statement up, there was/is a vegan community that would ban anyone who downvoted a post in their community so that sub would jump to the frontpage, because anyone who was banned could no longer vote on its content.
lmao, thank you
Well, !memes@lemmy.world’s modlog doesn’t look like that
the context was one singular example of this happening btw, its still a bad take tho
sample size of one goes crazy
Wario’s origin story.
Having seen that thread, lemmy.ca isn’t sending its best, as usual.
The user is registered on fedia.io
isn’t that what i’m saying?
There’s so much transphobia on Lemmy, even the trans community mods are transphobic sometimes.
I’m sorry drag, but it’s just not transphobia to not be willing to use bespoke alternative second person pronouns. Second person pronouns are probably the single most closed class in the English language.
That’s not what drag is talking about.
Drag is talking about the aftermath of the time drag made two posts on c/yepowertrippinbastards, and some furry came to both posts to start fights, say nounself pronouns are trash, ping random other people to get them to fight drag, call drag a troll for being trans, and give fake bans to drag in the modlog. Then, when drag went to the admins of the furry instance to complain about the mod abuse, this guy created an alt account to harass himself while pretending to be drag, and pinging various other people in the furry community to start fights in the same strategy he used on his own account. The end result of which was a bunch of furries who drag has never heard of assuming drag pinged them and harassed this guy, and spreading rumours about drag, just as this guy planned.
And the specific aftermath drag is talking about is when drag was banned from c/trans@lemmy.blahaj.zone for “encouraging suicide” (telling trans Americans to shoot Nazis). Drag contacted the mods and explained the situation, and they said they were wrong to ban drag for encouraging suicide, but that they’d heard some “more serious accusations” that they refused to share, but that were now the reason for the ban. So in short, drag got banned from a trans community for secret reasons and was given no chance to appeal.
What drag thinks happened is that furry guy, being a skilled manipulator with deep knowledge of Lemmy systems and a grudge against nounself pronoun users, convinced that mod team to go along with his campaign against drag, while hiding his transphobic intentions behind the false flag campaign. So the mod team thought they were protecting trans users on their community from harassment. They had good intentions. But the intention guiding their actions without their knowledge was this transphobic guy who loves starting fights and hates nounself pronouns. They sided with a transphobic bad actor over a trans member of their community because they were lied to. And if they had followed proper moderation procedure about not banning people for secret reasons, it wouldn’t have happened. Which is why these kinds of procedures exist in the first place, it’s to protect people from disinformation campaigns. So in drag’s opinion, those mods bear some responsibility for the hidden intention guiding their actions, because they weren’t careful enough to keep the transphobia out of their actions.
Oh fair enough. I didn’t realise all of that. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for understanding. Drag doesn’t demand other people use drag’s preferred pronouns, and drag guesses that must be pretty unusual for a trans person. Human brains are pattern matching prediction machines. Everyone knows misgendering is wrong, so people’s brains match the pattern and assume that must be the issue drag is talking about. It’s a matter of using too much brain and not enough eyeball.
I have seen extremely little transphobia.
I’ve exchanged dozens of comments with drag, drag is a snowflake troll. In all of our interactions, I misgendered drag once and drag immediately capitulated on it and acts like I’ve maliciously set out to torture drag for making a mistake, once. Drag then turned on me for defending drag’s pronouns in a discussion about how many feel new and modern pronouns don’t deserve respect, claiming I am lying about drags pronouns and only did it to hurt drag.
But drag refuses to apologize for calling me a Nazi, or any of the other insults drag has hurled at me, because drag feels I’m a Nazi for criticizing Harris/the DNC despite me being a trans veteran who voted for Harris.
Don’t engage with drag.
Mods, here is a declaration of intent to harass by @BlitzoTheOisSilent@lemmy.world :
Funny way to apologize to someone for unjustly calling them a Nazi.
Edit: Eh, I’ll just save us both the headache (moreso me) and drag is blocked. Bye drag and the victim complex you hide behind, from this nAzI to you.