It’s true that there is a lot of painfully bad epistemology in feminist discourse. However, the proportion of bad epistemology is typical of most human discourse concerned with advocacy.
That’s true. As far as ideologies go, feminism isn’t that bad. It’s really in a similar category to men’s rights, and pickup. Mainstream politics (democrat vs. republican) are at least as ideological, and religion and multi-level marketing organizations are much worse.
What makes feminism special is that in white, middle / upper class society, people often don’t look on feminism with the level of skepticism that they might apply in mainstream politics. Feminism has very high status relative to how ideologically biased it is. Pickup and men’s rights are also ideologically biased, but they aren’t high status, and pickup artists and MRAs don’t have a powerful government lobby like feminists do.
Feminism has very high status relative to how ideologically biased it is.
Among all similarly-biased ideologies (similar in degree, not necessarily in direction), feminism is unusually high-status.
But is feminism unusually biased for the level of its status? It doesn’t seem to me that it is. If feminism weren’t occupying that position of status, some other ideology would be, and I wouldn’t expect this other ideology to be less biased.
But is feminism unusually biased for the level of its status?
I’m not sure.
If feminism weren’t occupying that position of status, some other ideology would be, and I wouldn’t expect this other ideology to be less biased.
An alternative is that feminism would share space with other gender political ideologies in liberal political dialogue. Just like both liberalism and conservatism share status among different parts of the population, feminism would share status with other gender political movements.
Unfortunately, in white middle/upper class, educated liberal gender politics, feminism is the single party in a one-party system. I would like to see more forms of gender politics that are progressive, so there can be competition in the gender politics space.
To a certain degree, different brands of feminism could function as different parties (certainly in academic feminism they do). A Christina-Hoff-Sommers-esque conservative feminist is unlikely to agree much with a Dworkinite radical feminist. For instance, “rape is a subset of violence with no particularly gendered component” and “rape is the natural outgrowth of a culture in which women’s subordination to men is eroticized” are two substantially different positions (both of which I disagree with).*
Admittedly, the average person is not particularly clear on the distinct branches of feminism; hell, there is still a widespread belief that radical feminist means “a feminist who’s really extreme” as opposed to a distinct framework of theories and political beliefs. And even among the different groups of feminists there are usually some common premises (gender being at least partially a social construct, men being privileged over women, etc.).
That said, I too would like more variation in the gender politics space; some groups (most notably, men) are distinctly underserved by the current gender discourse, and more competition in the marketplace of ideas can only be a good thing. :)
*I am somewhat cheating here by picking an issue on which there is a lot of disagreement among different branches of feminism, as opposed to (say) the gender gap, in which the primary disagreement is between feminists who do and do not suck at math.
To a certain degree, different brands of feminism could function as different parties (certainly in academic feminism they do).
You are quite correct. There are large disagreements and fissures within feminism. These disagreements might not be obvious or cared about by non-feminists (similar to how many feminists don’t recognize the differences within MRAs and PUAs). See out-group homogeneity bias.
As you also observe correctly, there are some common premises (and biases) even within these different groups of feminists. Although there are widely varying feminist opinions on porn, trans people, race issues, etc, there unfortunately seems to be a lot of homogeneity in how feminists view men’s issues.
For example, the notion that “men are privileged over women” is very common, and I wish that there was more debate within feminism about whether that was an acceptable generalization, and what it means.
The acceptance of these concepts is merely a case of the availability heuristic. Women’s oppression (and men’s privilege) is more cognitively available to feminist women, so their theories often fail to account for oppression towards men and female privileges. This bias is not completely universal across feminist factions, but it’s very broad.
I hope that if examples of male suffering, female perpetration, and female advantages were more cognitively available to feminists, then some of them would eventually update their theories into a form of feminism that is more inclusive.
That said, I too would like more variation in the gender politics space; some groups (most notably, men) are distinctly underserved by the current gender discourse, and more competition in the marketplace of ideas can only be a good thing. :)
I too would like more variation in the gender politics space; some groups (most notably, men) are distinctly underserved by the current gender discourse, and more competition in the marketplace of ideas can only be a good thing. :)
What if an idea is highly competitive but factually wrong? Or even actively harmful?
Unfortunately, in white middle/upper class, educated liberal gender politics, feminism is the single party in a one-party system. I would like to see more forms of gender politics that are progressive, so there can be competition in the gender politics space.
At this point, we probably have to pin down the meanings of “feminism”, “liberal”, and “progressive” a bit to make some progress. So, what would be an example of a “gender politics” that is “liberal” and “progressive”, but not represented by any “party”?
All “liberal gender politics” are going to look similar in some ways just in virtue of being liberal gender politics. You are evidently claiming that the only actual liberal gender politics is contingently feminist (in the de dicto sense), but that feminism is not among those features that it has just in virtue of being liberal gender politics. I’m trying to delineate which features you’d say that liberal gender politics has qua liberal gender politics, and which you’d say that it has only contingently.
So, what would be an example of a “gender politics” that is “liberal” and “progressive”, but not represented by any “party”?
The men’s rights movement and pickup are both gender politics movements. Some segments of those movements are “progressive” (defined later), and some are not (just like feminism: some of it is progressive, some of it is not). These movements are not “parties” because they have very little political power. Feminism has quite a lot of political power.
First, some definitions.
In gender politics, a “traditionalist” is someone who believes that our ideas and cultural practices around gender are better the way they are, or were better in the past. A “progressive” is someone who believes that gender politics is flawed, and should be changed according to a set of values. These values might include equality, autonomy, bodily integrity, and more.
Feminists had a problem with gendered cultural practices, and they created a successful movement. By changing gender norms and fighting sexism against women, feminists managed to change society towards greater equality and autonomy for women. In these ways, feminism is a progressive gender political movement.
Unfortunately, feminism hasn’t been a consistently progressive gender political movement. Thanks to bias in feminism (self-serving biases, typical mind fallacy, availability heuristic), there are many traditional ideas that are unchallenged by feminism. In some cases, feminist arguments or behaviors reinforce tradition.
Feminists don’t believe that they are being traditional, because their typical idea of tradition is a “patriarchy” where men where unilaterally advantaged over women of similar class and race. Yet that portrayal is only sometimes accurate throughout history. Men have experienced disadvantages throughout history that feminists haven’t fully recognized (see forced labor for instance). Yet since feminists haven’t recognized them, feminists typically seem to think that to be “progressive,” the only (or primary) thing activists need to do is to improve the situation of women.
As an abstract example, let’s say that is a culture with 4 ideas or practices around gender:
A and B: disadvantage women
C: disadvantages men and women
D: disadvantages men
Here are how the arguments look to me:
Traditionalists: Pro-A, B, C, and D
Typical feminist: anti-A, anti-B, “C disadvantages women more than men, or women exclusively”
What feminism thinks tradition is: A, B, and C disadvantaging women only. D is not recognized as tradition, even though it is.
Progressive non-feminist: anti-C, anti-D, opposes how feminism misrepresents the effect of C on men
Right now, in the wider culture, there is a two party system in gender politics: feminism (a partially progressive movement) and conservatism (a mostly traditional movement). Yet this two-party system under-serves many people. Conservatism doesn’t serve any progressives at all.
There are a lot of possible positions for people who want to change how cultures treat men and women, but neither towards the past, nor in the exact ways that feminists typically want to change things. There are lots of people like this, but they don’t have an influential and high-status movement like feminism.
So for people who want change things, there is only one party in gender politics: feminism. The men’s rights movement and the pickup community are growing into contenders in the gender politics space, but they lack influence and status in white middle/upper class liberal discourse.
Yet without status, organization, representation, or a political lobby, non-feminists who are progressive about gender politics just get stomped on by both feminists and conservatives. They remain isolated, or they get folded into feminism, the men’s rights movement, pickup, or libertarianism. Furthermore, there are feminists who like to portray vocal non-feminists as wanting to put women back in the kitchen, when that’s not true of progressive non-feminists.
Simultaneously, a lot of the people who criticize feminism have traditional views that will be unattractive to progressives, leaving feminism without any competition among progressives, even though competition should exist to either incentive feminism to evolve in a more consistently progressive direction, or replace it if it won’t.
That’s true. As far as ideologies go, feminism isn’t that bad. It’s really in a similar category to men’s rights, and pickup. Mainstream politics (democrat vs. republican) are at least as ideological, and religion and multi-level marketing organizations are much worse.
What makes feminism special is that in white, middle / upper class society, people often don’t look on feminism with the level of skepticism that they might apply in mainstream politics. Feminism has very high status relative to how ideologically biased it is. Pickup and men’s rights are also ideologically biased, but they aren’t high status, and pickup artists and MRAs don’t have a powerful government lobby like feminists do.
Among all similarly-biased ideologies (similar in degree, not necessarily in direction), feminism is unusually high-status.
But is feminism unusually biased for the level of its status? It doesn’t seem to me that it is. If feminism weren’t occupying that position of status, some other ideology would be, and I wouldn’t expect this other ideology to be less biased.
I’m not sure.
An alternative is that feminism would share space with other gender political ideologies in liberal political dialogue. Just like both liberalism and conservatism share status among different parts of the population, feminism would share status with other gender political movements.
Unfortunately, in white middle/upper class, educated liberal gender politics, feminism is the single party in a one-party system. I would like to see more forms of gender politics that are progressive, so there can be competition in the gender politics space.
To a certain degree, different brands of feminism could function as different parties (certainly in academic feminism they do). A Christina-Hoff-Sommers-esque conservative feminist is unlikely to agree much with a Dworkinite radical feminist. For instance, “rape is a subset of violence with no particularly gendered component” and “rape is the natural outgrowth of a culture in which women’s subordination to men is eroticized” are two substantially different positions (both of which I disagree with).*
Admittedly, the average person is not particularly clear on the distinct branches of feminism; hell, there is still a widespread belief that radical feminist means “a feminist who’s really extreme” as opposed to a distinct framework of theories and political beliefs. And even among the different groups of feminists there are usually some common premises (gender being at least partially a social construct, men being privileged over women, etc.).
That said, I too would like more variation in the gender politics space; some groups (most notably, men) are distinctly underserved by the current gender discourse, and more competition in the marketplace of ideas can only be a good thing. :)
*I am somewhat cheating here by picking an issue on which there is a lot of disagreement among different branches of feminism, as opposed to (say) the gender gap, in which the primary disagreement is between feminists who do and do not suck at math.
You are quite correct. There are large disagreements and fissures within feminism. These disagreements might not be obvious or cared about by non-feminists (similar to how many feminists don’t recognize the differences within MRAs and PUAs). See out-group homogeneity bias.
As you also observe correctly, there are some common premises (and biases) even within these different groups of feminists. Although there are widely varying feminist opinions on porn, trans people, race issues, etc, there unfortunately seems to be a lot of homogeneity in how feminists view men’s issues.
For example, the notion that “men are privileged over women” is very common, and I wish that there was more debate within feminism about whether that was an acceptable generalization, and what it means.
The acceptance of these concepts is merely a case of the availability heuristic. Women’s oppression (and men’s privilege) is more cognitively available to feminist women, so their theories often fail to account for oppression towards men and female privileges. This bias is not completely universal across feminist factions, but it’s very broad.
I hope that if examples of male suffering, female perpetration, and female advantages were more cognitively available to feminists, then some of them would eventually update their theories into a form of feminism that is more inclusive.
I think you’ve been taking a step in that direction with your blogging, with your posts on undiagnosed brain injury in the military, how sexual violence, domestic violence, and abuse are much less gendered than the traditional feminist portrayal according to new surveying, and the underreporting and cover-up of sexual violence towards men in African conflict zones.
I couldn’t agree more.
What if an idea is highly competitive but factually wrong? Or even actively harmful?
At this point, we probably have to pin down the meanings of “feminism”, “liberal”, and “progressive” a bit to make some progress. So, what would be an example of a “gender politics” that is “liberal” and “progressive”, but not represented by any “party”?
All “liberal gender politics” are going to look similar in some ways just in virtue of being liberal gender politics. You are evidently claiming that the only actual liberal gender politics is contingently feminist (in the de dicto sense), but that feminism is not among those features that it has just in virtue of being liberal gender politics. I’m trying to delineate which features you’d say that liberal gender politics has qua liberal gender politics, and which you’d say that it has only contingently.
The men’s rights movement and pickup are both gender politics movements. Some segments of those movements are “progressive” (defined later), and some are not (just like feminism: some of it is progressive, some of it is not). These movements are not “parties” because they have very little political power. Feminism has quite a lot of political power.
First, some definitions.
In gender politics, a “traditionalist” is someone who believes that our ideas and cultural practices around gender are better the way they are, or were better in the past. A “progressive” is someone who believes that gender politics is flawed, and should be changed according to a set of values. These values might include equality, autonomy, bodily integrity, and more.
Feminists had a problem with gendered cultural practices, and they created a successful movement. By changing gender norms and fighting sexism against women, feminists managed to change society towards greater equality and autonomy for women. In these ways, feminism is a progressive gender political movement.
Unfortunately, feminism hasn’t been a consistently progressive gender political movement. Thanks to bias in feminism (self-serving biases, typical mind fallacy, availability heuristic), there are many traditional ideas that are unchallenged by feminism. In some cases, feminist arguments or behaviors reinforce tradition.
Feminists don’t believe that they are being traditional, because their typical idea of tradition is a “patriarchy” where men where unilaterally advantaged over women of similar class and race. Yet that portrayal is only sometimes accurate throughout history. Men have experienced disadvantages throughout history that feminists haven’t fully recognized (see forced labor for instance). Yet since feminists haven’t recognized them, feminists typically seem to think that to be “progressive,” the only (or primary) thing activists need to do is to improve the situation of women.
As an abstract example, let’s say that is a culture with 4 ideas or practices around gender:
A and B: disadvantage women C: disadvantages men and women D: disadvantages men
Here are how the arguments look to me:
Traditionalists: Pro-A, B, C, and D
Typical feminist: anti-A, anti-B, “C disadvantages women more than men, or women exclusively”
What feminism thinks tradition is: A, B, and C disadvantaging women only. D is not recognized as tradition, even though it is.
Progressive non-feminist: anti-C, anti-D, opposes how feminism misrepresents the effect of C on men
Right now, in the wider culture, there is a two party system in gender politics: feminism (a partially progressive movement) and conservatism (a mostly traditional movement). Yet this two-party system under-serves many people. Conservatism doesn’t serve any progressives at all.
There are a lot of possible positions for people who want to change how cultures treat men and women, but neither towards the past, nor in the exact ways that feminists typically want to change things. There are lots of people like this, but they don’t have an influential and high-status movement like feminism.
So for people who want change things, there is only one party in gender politics: feminism. The men’s rights movement and the pickup community are growing into contenders in the gender politics space, but they lack influence and status in white middle/upper class liberal discourse.
Yet without status, organization, representation, or a political lobby, non-feminists who are progressive about gender politics just get stomped on by both feminists and conservatives. They remain isolated, or they get folded into feminism, the men’s rights movement, pickup, or libertarianism. Furthermore, there are feminists who like to portray vocal non-feminists as wanting to put women back in the kitchen, when that’s not true of progressive non-feminists.
Simultaneously, a lot of the people who criticize feminism have traditional views that will be unattractive to progressives, leaving feminism without any competition among progressives, even though competition should exist to either incentive feminism to evolve in a more consistently progressive direction, or replace it if it won’t.