Feminists attacked Sarah Palin for -not- getting an abortion.
What was happening here was a little more complicated than that. Some of it may, as you suggest, have been motivated by Palin making the “wrong” choice. But there were a lot of other issues. First, the child in question has Down syndrome, making it ethically unlcear whether it is even best to have such a child. Second, Palin used her own personal experience to argue against abortion and abortion rights as a whole. It wasn’t like Palin was arguing “I didn’t have an abortion but you have a right to one if you so choose”.
But the most serious issue here was likely the most common one: old-fashioned tribalism. Palin was a leader of the Greens, and so the Blues didn’t like that. This is problem with lots of movements and by far isn’t the only example where a large fraction of the feminist movement on a large scale has had issues with this (look for example how differently many feminists treated nearly identical accusations about Bill Clinton and Clarence Thomas).
But the fact that there are self-identified feminists who approve of stay at home mothers or similar roles, or even are in those roles themselves is robust.
I don’t disagree, except with your odd word choice there. (Did you change “evidence” to “fact” at the last minute?)
I don’t remember making that change, but that word would certainly make substantially more sense in this context, so probably.
More, what exactly is the -point- in rehabilitating the label? Why does it matter to you that I, and many other people, regard the label as referring to a misanthropic belief system? What’s so hard about picking a new name that doesn’t carry that baggage?
Do you realize that rehabilitating the name is providing umbrella protection to second-wave feminists? You realize what the halo effect does there? You’re validating their views. You’re making it -harder-, not easier, for society to move on from a destructive ideology.
So, I’m not sure by and large that 2nd Wave Feminism was a “destructive ideology” as a whole. It accomplished real things, and was a reaction to a much more sexist society. In the 1960s, in many US states, a woman couldn’t have electricity and phone utilities in her name if she was married. Woman had trouble being accepted into science classes in universities and were treated poorly. It wasn’t until the early 1970s that the entire Ivy League admitted women. Etc.
But the general point you raise is an interesting one: When is an identity, movement or affiliation so bogged down by history that we’re better off leaving the term out entirely? I think if someone had a German group that advocated lots of scientific research, strong central government, pride in cultural heritage, and expansion of autobahns they’d probably be correct not to identify themselves as “Nazis” for reasons completely separate from the legal issues in much of Europe. But does the same apply to the history of say the Democratic party (supported slavery), or the Republican party (fought against civil rights, had Richard Nixon as President), or to use other more direct comparisons: would you make this recommendation to any of MRAs, Tea Partiers, or Occupiers?
Moreover, in this specific case, many of the Third Wavers would argue that to many (and possibly most?) feminism as a term has a great deal of positive connotations also, and that to adopt another term would lose those positive connotations. Moreover, if one makes a completely new term, one has the problem of then losing the identity, structure, and social support one gets(humans are tribalistic but movements to succeed need to generally take advantage of this). This is especially relevant because many young people (especially many young women) have a positive view of feminism (many haven’t encountered personally any of the more problematic aspects of 2nd wave feminism).
Palin used her own personal experience to argue against abortion and abortion rights as a whole.
Which doesn’t justify attacking her choice in the matter at all.
Would you make this recommendation to any of MRAs, Tea Partiers, or Occupiers?
MRAs—yes, but for a different reason. The men’s rights movement is still unheard-of enough that few people have actual opinions on them. The reason I’d advocate -they- change their name is that I suspect a lot of the hazards feminism ran into was the gender bias inherent in the label.
The Tea Party and Occupy movements are too young, I think, to recommend changing their names. That would just be capricious.
Moreover, in this specific case, many of the Third Wavers would argue that to many (and possibly most?) feminism as a term has a great deal of positive connotations also, and that to adopt another term would lose those positive connotations.
They don’t get to complain about the negative connotations if they’re mining the word specifically for its connotations. That’s just hypocrisy.
Moreover, if one makes a completely new term, one has the problem of then losing the identity, structure, and social support one gets
That’s part of the idea, yes. Dissolve the old structures and start anew.
Which doesn’t justify attacking her choice in the matter at all.
Sure. But it does give a pretty decent explanation of what is going on and makes clear that this isn’t useful as evidence for the initial claim (that she was being attacked for the choice made), when there are so many other circumstances,. (Feminism, like any other political movement has the same standard problems political movements have. This shouldn’t be surprising and shouldn’t be a specific strike against feminism any more than it is against any other group.)
MRAs—yes, but for a different reason. The men’s rights movement is still unheard-of enough that few people have actual opinions on them. The reason I’d advocate -they- change their name is that I suspect a lot of the hazards feminism ran into was the gender bias inherent in the label.
So this seems like one of the stronger(strongest?) arguments for changing the name of feminism. But at the same time, the MRAs have a serious problem: in the same way that some people have extremely negative associations with feminism, many have similar issues with the MRAs. If someone were to want to seriously deal with gender inequality issues in custody disputes, I’d strongly advise them to keep themselves away from being associated with the MRAs.
The Tea Party and Occupy movements are too young, I think, to recommend changing their names. That would just be capricious.
Really? I suspect that most Americans at least at this point have opinions about both these two movements, and for many they aren’t at all positive. See for example this study which shows that slightly under half the US has a negative view of the Tea Party.
They don’t get to complain about the negative connotations if they’re mining the word specifically for its connotations. That’s just hypocrisy.
The difference here is connotations and having fuzzy boundaries, or a denotation of bad history. In this case, the connotations and denotations get sort of wrapped up. But it isn’t unreasonable to use a term because it has some positive connotations and specifically use a variant of that term to mean “the version with these positives and not these negatives”, e.g. “Third Wave Feminism” or something similar.
Moreover, if one makes a completely new term, one has the problem of then losing the identity, structure, and social support one gets
That’s part of the idea, yes. Dissolve the old structures and start anew.
So this means you can’t benefit from the old structures. Worse, when one does try to do this sort of thing, people who want to smear your movement can still connect you to the old term and accuse you (correctly) of essentially changing your name for marketing purposes. And when one does this sort of thing, often the end result is that you still get the negative associations. (See e.g. the whole debacle of trying to split off “intelligence design” from “creationism” for example.)
It might make sense to split off and form a completely new group or setting when there are serious problems. But that would require a careful evaluation of the pros and cons, and the opinion of someone who has a negative view already may not be very good evidence. Moreover, there’s always the danger that repeated splitting leads to things like this, or more amusingly this.
Moreover, there’s always the danger that repeated splitting leads to things like [this], or more amusingly [this].
Okay, who else moused over the first URL, then the second one, and immediately deduced what the Youtube video would be, without even bothering to check? :D
The difference here is connotations and having fuzzy boundaries, or a denotation of bad history. In this case, the connotations and denotations get sort of wrapped up. But it isn’t unreasonable to use a term because it has some positive connotations and specifically use a variant of that term to mean “the version with these positives and not these negatives”, e.g. “Third Wave Feminism” or something similar.
Actually, it is unreasonable. That’s pretty much precisely what I meant when I called it hypocrisy. “Give us the accolades [for things we didn’t do], but don’t give us any criticism [for things we also didn’t do, but this time because we didn’t do them].” Especially when you then go on to complain about how unfair it is to be painted in the same light as your intellectual forebears. Well, if it’s unfair of other people to regard you harshly for the actions of past feminists, it’s equally unfair for them to regard you positively for the actions of past feminists.
“Trying to have your cake and eat it too” I believe is the idiom generally used in these kinds of cases.
So, it may help to think of movements as sets of associated memes. In that context, it may make sense to say something like: “Instead of this version of movement A1, we’re going to have slightly different strain A2, which has the following additional basic memes and takes out the following. Since most of the good results of A1 have been due to the ideas we are leaving in, please continue with those positive associations.”
First, if you’re dealing with minds -capable- of breaking it up into memes and dealing with them individually, why do you need the memeplex? Aren’t you double-counting the positive associations?
Second, suppose some -completely different- movement comes along, and takes all the good memes from A1, and adds something -bad-; stereotypically, and putting “feminazi” to a more literal purpose, putting Jews in ovens (in a gender-neutral way, of course). Does it get to use the “positive associations” for the good memes of A1? Supposing the good memes of A1 were -good enough- to balance out the bad memes of this new movement, FN1, is FN1 on the whole a good thing, even if A1, in its time, already did all the good that the good memes of A1 could possibly do, and FN1 can only have a negative impact?
I don’t mean to draw literal parallels between FN1 and any real-world ideology—my point there is that your position on the matter seems to declare that certain memes represent unlimited caches of “goodness” that any memeplex can draw upon. A hostile memeplex is fully capable of using these positive associations as a defense mechanism against criticism. (I do hint at a real-world analogy there.)
First, if you’re dealing with minds -capable- of breaking it up into memes and dealing with them individually, why do you need the memeplex?
People deal with thoughts much more effectively as groups of associated thoughts. Similarly, movements work with groups of associated thoughts. The set of movements based on a single meme is pretty small.
It may help to remember that these are movements that are trying to be genuinely politically successful. Yes, a hostile or dangerous memeplex can use similar techniques, but that doesn’t make them intrinsically bad techniques (or for that matter any worse when one specific movement is using them.)
But at the same time, the MRAs have a serious problem: in the same way that some people have extremely negative associations with feminism, many have similar issues with the MRAs. If someone were to want to seriously deal with gender inequality issues in custody disputes, I’d strongly advise them to keep themselves away from being associated with the MRAs.
I’m just wandering past your conversation, but I think many people are just offended by the concept of men demanding rights—y’know, because they have enough damn rights already, and so on.
That is, the very term “men’s rights” has negative connotations even without negative associations (and probably contributed to those associations, via bias.)
Possibly, but as someone with lots of negative associations with MRAs, I’m not sure how big of a factor this is. I’m sympathetic to goals like making custody fairer or paying more attention to male victims of domestic violence. My extremely negative opinion of MRAs is based on what they’re actually like, not an abstract skepticism that there could ever be a legitimate cause with that name.
What was happening here was a little more complicated than that. Some of it may, as you suggest, have been motivated by Palin making the “wrong” choice. But there were a lot of other issues. First, the child in question has Down syndrome, making it ethically unlcear whether it is even best to have such a child. Second, Palin used her own personal experience to argue against abortion and abortion rights as a whole. It wasn’t like Palin was arguing “I didn’t have an abortion but you have a right to one if you so choose”.
But the most serious issue here was likely the most common one: old-fashioned tribalism. Palin was a leader of the Greens, and so the Blues didn’t like that. This is problem with lots of movements and by far isn’t the only example where a large fraction of the feminist movement on a large scale has had issues with this (look for example how differently many feminists treated nearly identical accusations about Bill Clinton and Clarence Thomas).
I don’t remember making that change, but that word would certainly make substantially more sense in this context, so probably.
So, I’m not sure by and large that 2nd Wave Feminism was a “destructive ideology” as a whole. It accomplished real things, and was a reaction to a much more sexist society. In the 1960s, in many US states, a woman couldn’t have electricity and phone utilities in her name if she was married. Woman had trouble being accepted into science classes in universities and were treated poorly. It wasn’t until the early 1970s that the entire Ivy League admitted women. Etc.
But the general point you raise is an interesting one: When is an identity, movement or affiliation so bogged down by history that we’re better off leaving the term out entirely? I think if someone had a German group that advocated lots of scientific research, strong central government, pride in cultural heritage, and expansion of autobahns they’d probably be correct not to identify themselves as “Nazis” for reasons completely separate from the legal issues in much of Europe. But does the same apply to the history of say the Democratic party (supported slavery), or the Republican party (fought against civil rights, had Richard Nixon as President), or to use other more direct comparisons: would you make this recommendation to any of MRAs, Tea Partiers, or Occupiers?
Moreover, in this specific case, many of the Third Wavers would argue that to many (and possibly most?) feminism as a term has a great deal of positive connotations also, and that to adopt another term would lose those positive connotations. Moreover, if one makes a completely new term, one has the problem of then losing the identity, structure, and social support one gets(humans are tribalistic but movements to succeed need to generally take advantage of this). This is especially relevant because many young people (especially many young women) have a positive view of feminism (many haven’t encountered personally any of the more problematic aspects of 2nd wave feminism).
Which doesn’t justify attacking her choice in the matter at all.
MRAs—yes, but for a different reason. The men’s rights movement is still unheard-of enough that few people have actual opinions on them. The reason I’d advocate -they- change their name is that I suspect a lot of the hazards feminism ran into was the gender bias inherent in the label.
The Tea Party and Occupy movements are too young, I think, to recommend changing their names. That would just be capricious.
They don’t get to complain about the negative connotations if they’re mining the word specifically for its connotations. That’s just hypocrisy.
That’s part of the idea, yes. Dissolve the old structures and start anew.
Sure. But it does give a pretty decent explanation of what is going on and makes clear that this isn’t useful as evidence for the initial claim (that she was being attacked for the choice made), when there are so many other circumstances,. (Feminism, like any other political movement has the same standard problems political movements have. This shouldn’t be surprising and shouldn’t be a specific strike against feminism any more than it is against any other group.)
So this seems like one of the stronger(strongest?) arguments for changing the name of feminism. But at the same time, the MRAs have a serious problem: in the same way that some people have extremely negative associations with feminism, many have similar issues with the MRAs. If someone were to want to seriously deal with gender inequality issues in custody disputes, I’d strongly advise them to keep themselves away from being associated with the MRAs.
Really? I suspect that most Americans at least at this point have opinions about both these two movements, and for many they aren’t at all positive. See for example this study which shows that slightly under half the US has a negative view of the Tea Party.
The difference here is connotations and having fuzzy boundaries, or a denotation of bad history. In this case, the connotations and denotations get sort of wrapped up. But it isn’t unreasonable to use a term because it has some positive connotations and specifically use a variant of that term to mean “the version with these positives and not these negatives”, e.g. “Third Wave Feminism” or something similar.
So this means you can’t benefit from the old structures. Worse, when one does try to do this sort of thing, people who want to smear your movement can still connect you to the old term and accuse you (correctly) of essentially changing your name for marketing purposes. And when one does this sort of thing, often the end result is that you still get the negative associations. (See e.g. the whole debacle of trying to split off “intelligence design” from “creationism” for example.)
It might make sense to split off and form a completely new group or setting when there are serious problems. But that would require a careful evaluation of the pros and cons, and the opinion of someone who has a negative view already may not be very good evidence. Moreover, there’s always the danger that repeated splitting leads to things like this, or more amusingly this.
Okay, who else moused over the first URL, then the second one, and immediately deduced what the Youtube video would be, without even bothering to check? :D
Actually, it is unreasonable. That’s pretty much precisely what I meant when I called it hypocrisy. “Give us the accolades [for things we didn’t do], but don’t give us any criticism [for things we also didn’t do, but this time because we didn’t do them].” Especially when you then go on to complain about how unfair it is to be painted in the same light as your intellectual forebears. Well, if it’s unfair of other people to regard you harshly for the actions of past feminists, it’s equally unfair for them to regard you positively for the actions of past feminists.
“Trying to have your cake and eat it too” I believe is the idiom generally used in these kinds of cases.
So, it may help to think of movements as sets of associated memes. In that context, it may make sense to say something like: “Instead of this version of movement A1, we’re going to have slightly different strain A2, which has the following additional basic memes and takes out the following. Since most of the good results of A1 have been due to the ideas we are leaving in, please continue with those positive associations.”
First, if you’re dealing with minds -capable- of breaking it up into memes and dealing with them individually, why do you need the memeplex? Aren’t you double-counting the positive associations?
Second, suppose some -completely different- movement comes along, and takes all the good memes from A1, and adds something -bad-; stereotypically, and putting “feminazi” to a more literal purpose, putting Jews in ovens (in a gender-neutral way, of course). Does it get to use the “positive associations” for the good memes of A1? Supposing the good memes of A1 were -good enough- to balance out the bad memes of this new movement, FN1, is FN1 on the whole a good thing, even if A1, in its time, already did all the good that the good memes of A1 could possibly do, and FN1 can only have a negative impact?
I don’t mean to draw literal parallels between FN1 and any real-world ideology—my point there is that your position on the matter seems to declare that certain memes represent unlimited caches of “goodness” that any memeplex can draw upon. A hostile memeplex is fully capable of using these positive associations as a defense mechanism against criticism. (I do hint at a real-world analogy there.)
People deal with thoughts much more effectively as groups of associated thoughts. Similarly, movements work with groups of associated thoughts. The set of movements based on a single meme is pretty small.
It may help to remember that these are movements that are trying to be genuinely politically successful. Yes, a hostile or dangerous memeplex can use similar techniques, but that doesn’t make them intrinsically bad techniques (or for that matter any worse when one specific movement is using them.)
I’m just wandering past your conversation, but I think many people are just offended by the concept of men demanding rights—y’know, because they have enough damn rights already, and so on.
That is, the very term “men’s rights” has negative connotations even without negative associations (and probably contributed to those associations, via bias.)
Possibly, but as someone with lots of negative associations with MRAs, I’m not sure how big of a factor this is. I’m sympathetic to goals like making custody fairer or paying more attention to male victims of domestic violence. My extremely negative opinion of MRAs is based on what they’re actually like, not an abstract skepticism that there could ever be a legitimate cause with that name.
Not abstract, to be fair, usually …
But yes, even those without such skepticism (like myself) tend to notice that the quality is, in fact, low.