In general, I shared this perspective (which I interpret as: skeptical of feminism, thinking of it as identity politics) before: (a) meeting feminist studies majors and (b) taking feminist studies classes.
I share wedrifid’s opinion on feminism and feminist studies. Yet I have also taken feminist studies classes, and my experiences also overlap with yours, though I had significant experience with feminism prior to taking those classes which undoubtedly colored my judgment. I will briefly outline the development of my views around gender politics:
As a teenager, I started out with feminist intuitions, believing that feminism could do no wrong.
I got into pickup, and I read Why Men Are The Way They Are by Warren Farrell. My experience as a shy, romantically-challenged, gender non-conforming young man, combined with Farrell’s book and the arguments of the pickup and seduction community, led to a perspective on gender politics that became increasingly different from feminism. Feminists emphasized the oppression of women and “male privilege.” I could see these phenomena, but I also say phenomena that looked pretty clearly like male oppression and “female privilege,” which feminists didn’t seem to talk about.
I read more books, such as Spreading Misandry and Legalizing Misandry by Nathanson and Young, and Heterophobia by Daphne Patai. I started discussing feminism on the internet, yet my interactions with feminists on blogs taught me very fast that many feminists have trouble defending certain ideas in feminism, and have a low tolerance for criticism of their ideas. My agreement with a larger segment of feminist positions didn’t matter; unless I accepted certain concepts (e.g. “male privilege”) and embedded assumptions, I was treated like an outgroup member, regardless of how civil or reasonable I tried to be.
I came to believe that ideological and biased thinking was highly prevalent in feminism. Yet I found that many critiques of feminism, were also biased and wrong. For example, the Men’s Rights Movement criticizes feminism in many areas, yet it also sometime replicates some of the errors of feminism, such as playing fast and loose with the facts to support ideological positions. I started a blog on feminism with a couple other people to have a critical, but fair evaluation of the movement: FeministCritics.org.
In college, I took several feminist studies courses. Although I had a lot of negative experiences with feminism prior to these courses, I tried to counteract my biases. I tried really hard to like feminism.
My experience with feminism in real life was much more positive than my experience with feminists on the internet. I had a lot of fun, and made several new friends. I got one B+, and several As, in these courses (these grades serve as evidence that I understand a lot of the basics of feminist theory). I voiced a lot of agreement with certain feminist positions, and I also managed to raise a few objections to feminist ideas in classes and in papers. Most of these objections were heard and treated respectfully, though I did not try to insist on them in a way that would take up lots of class time. I did get one D on a paper in one class, where the professor didn’t seem to understand my objection to some ideas in the reading, and said that I had “failed to engage with the reading” (I toed the party-line better in subsequent assignments, and got an A in the class). Other papers I wrote were on the similarities between misogyny and misandry, and the seduction community. I recently posted one of my old feminist studies papers that I got on A on to my blog.
Feminists I encountered in real life seemed a lot more open to new ideas. Perhaps real life led to less polarized communication than the internet. Also, feminists who are motivated to talk about it on the internet may be more convinced by it and treat it more as an ideology. “Real life” feminists seemed a lot more open to considering notions-that-should-be-compatible-with-feminist-theory-but-are-treated-as-politically-incorrect, like the oppression of men, sexism towards men, and female privilege; they haven’t yet learned that these things aren’t supposed to exist, according to academic feminism. (Though I did have a brief disagreement with another student during a feminist studies class who claimed that women are oppressed, but that bad stuff that happens to men does not qualify as “oppression.”) I also found that some feminist students were open to hearing about men’s experiences and perspectives, and consider them evidence of problems in society, just as feminism treats women’s experiences as evidence of problems in society.
Even though I had a better experience with “real life feminists” in women’s studies than with “internet feminists,” my conceptual criticisms of feminism weren’t alleviated by experiences in feminist studies, and some were intensified. I’ve read several books which criticize women’s studies and academic feminism, such as Professing Feminism by Daphe Patai, the aforementioned Spreading Misandry and Legalizing Misandry by Nathanson and Young, Fashionable Nonsense by Sokal and Bricmont (an excellent rationality text), and Higher Superstition by Gross and Levitt. My experiences with feminist studies weren’t quite as bad as what they describe, but there was definitely overlap. Here are a couple examples that stand out in my memory:
On the first day of Feminist Studies 101, the professor handed out the syllabus, and said that this class would proceed from the assumption that (1) women are oppressed in society, and (2) this oppression is unjust and should be remedied. Here’s how the syllabus put it:
This course embarks from a few key feminist assumptions: women’s and men’s lives are thoroughly gendered, gendered dynamics of power and inequality are reproduced in and through other forms of difference (class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, religion, disability and so on), and such social inequality is unjust.
Whenever I debated feminists online, couldn’t defend their foundational terms and assumptions, and would resort to saying “go take Feminism 101.” So I did… yet, the premises of feminist thought were really explained and justified there either, but rather assumed.
I saw denials of biology several times. In a couple classes, I heard the claim that not just gender, but sex (i.e. division into male and female) and sexual orientation were socially constructed. The notion that sex is a social construction can only be created by a lot of sleight of hand that I won’t get into right now (but see this critique of Anne Fausto-Sterling).
As for sexual orientation being socially constructed, I have a funny story. The queer professor in my masculinity and feminist theory class claimed that sexual orientation is “socially constructed.” A student objected, saying something like “well, I’m queer, and I’ve heard a lot of queer people say that they feel like they are born that way… isn’t biology a factor?” The professor brushed off this objection and maintained that homosexuality is socially-constructed, marginalizing the experience of this student, many queer people, not to mention a lot of scientific research and queer history. During the break in the class period, the student thanked the professor and walked out of the class never to return, but not before I befriended her at the water fountain and told her she was my hero.
Some of the biggest problems with feminist studies from an epistemological standpoint were not things that feminists said, but what they didn’t say. Feminist professors and writing just start throwing around all these terms like “patriarchy,” “male privilege”, “oppression”, “power”, “dominance”, and “sexism.” Yet the conceptualization of these terms was never explained or defended. I view them as a castle built on sand.
Since the concept of privilege inherent in the term “male privilege” expresses a hierarchy (ie. an in-group/out-group dynamic), the placement of men in the in-group (because of the power that their class holds) necessitates placing women and other non-men in an out-group (because of the lack of power). Thus, “female privilege” doesn’t work as a counterpart to “male privilege” because it doesn’t fit into that dynamic.
This argument assumes that there is a linear hierarchy of men over women. This is a persistent claim of feminism. While it is plausible that the people at the top of the hierarchy of a certain type of status are disproportionately male, this doesn’t mean that males in general are ranked higher than females in general; there could be more men at the bottom, also: a greater variance of advantage in men.
This argument assumes a metric by which we can discover a hierarchy of men over women, but the metric is unspecified. Another assumption is that hierarchy is unidimensional. To me, it seems plausible that males are advantaged over females on some dimensions of power, while females are advantaged over males on other dimensions of power; who is on top of this hierarchy depends on what dimension we are looking at, or on some way of aggregating measurements on different dimensions. A multi-dimensional model of power is unexplored by feminists, who simply assume that the dimensions of power and status that women rank lower on are the only dimensions that exist or matter. From this biased assumption, feminists declared a hierarchy of men “as a class” (whatever that means) over women “as a class,” self-servingly defined “institutional privilege” as only held by the class at the top of the hierarchy, and denied that women have gender privilege.
As far as I can tell, most of feminist theory isn’t about rational arguments, it is a morass of biased and self-serving reasoning. Feminist theory is highly foundationalist with its dependence on ubiquitous terms like “male privilege” and “patriarchy” that are loaded with unexplained and unexamined assumptions. If you believe in gender equality, but you don’t believe in the concept of patriarchy, and you think female privilege and male oppression exist, then you can still be a feminist, right? Not in the feminist blogosphere or academia you can’t, at least not if you argue for these opinions at length. Ironically, many “real life” feminists who haven’t been inducted into the higher forms of feminist dogma on the internet and in academia probably believe at least the last two things, because they have not yet been taught to subordinate their sense of fairness and empathy (being open to the idea that the other gender has disadvantages, too, not just advantages) to the convoluted sorts of reasoning that I criticize above.
There are forms of feminist thought that are better than others. Some feminist philosophers, such as Helen Longino, do have insightful ideas and seem epistemically responsible (even though I don’t always agree with them). Many feminists are empathetic and interested in learning about men’s experiences with gender in ways the broader culture is not, which I view as the human capacity for empathy rising above the limiting conceptual framework of ideological feminist thought (the typical response of blogosphere feminists to male experiences of oppression is “patriarchy hurts men, too” used as a dismissal). For an example of what feminist theory could be (but unfortunately isn’t most of the time), see this discussion of a feminist paper that I like.
So magfrump, I do agree that there is potential for learning stuff about applied rationality from feminism. It’s kind of a needle in a haystack, but if you’ve found the needle, I would love to see it, and I look forward to your post on the subject. As I’ve written, I like a look of the analytical tools developed by feminists, and I wish feminists would use them more often, and in an unbiased and consistent way.
Don’t take my word for any of this. Read Finally Feminism 101. Read feminist blogs. Participate on feminist blogs, call out ideas that seem fishy to you (general you), and see what kind of response you get. Read The Gender Knot. Take some feminist studies courses. Then get back to me.
A couple of things stand out that I would like to reply to. For the most part, you seem vastly better-informed than I feel, and I have a lot of reading to do, so I will save a longer-form reply for the post itself.
Things that stood out:
Saying that something is socially constructed, to me, is about the map/territory distinction. Thus in the case of queerness, I would say that things such as “gay” and “straight” are socially constructed, and our concepts of sexual orientation are socially constructed, which does not at all contradict that they may be biologically based. For example, I would also say that a table is socially constructed (why is it a table vs a bed vs a chair?). The set of people that you may or may not be attracted to is not socially constructed, but the labels you apply to communicate that information are.
In regards to the response to Fausto-Sterling; I don’t agree that (as they claim) her claims about a continuum rely on her claims of abundance. I also noticed that when discussing vaginal agenesis they did not discuss consent or comfort, although the comparison to a cleft palate makes that implicit. Finally, they conclude by defending pathology only with an example, and by saying that her theories are “not helpful to clinicians,” whereas I feel that her intended audience was not so limited. I also feel very strongly that on page five about “these...individuals deserve the same care...” is pure window dressing, for reasons that I will mention but not in detail.
On the other hand, purely in terms of statistics, I feel somewhat betrayed by my Professor who is, for the most part as far as I can tell, of a feather with Longino (we had assigned reading from Longino, for example).
I agree with you that feminism includes specific political ideals at its roots, including fairness and inclusivity, and while I don’t mean to say that this means everyone should “tow the party line” I do think that effort put into, for example, reasserting the sexual dimorphism or discussing female privilege could be better used in other ways and lead to self-images which create artificial conflict. Of course this somewhat assumes epistemological hygiene on the part of feminists which may not exist...
I’m cutting myself off because this is at least five times the length I intended and I need to go to a barbecue.
my Professor who is, for the most part as far as I can tell, of a feather with Longino (we had assigned reading from Longino, for example).
I don’t deny that your prof holds similar views, but in general this isn’t an accurate indicator. Some things are just stuff everybody has to assign or they’re accused of not covering the material, and I’ve also had teachers assign things specifically to complain about how awful they were in the next class.
I’m pretty sure that our professor said we should read the Longino assignment twice, because we probably wouldn’t get it and it was very important. But that is of course extra information that convinced me that I didn’t provide, and I do see your point.
I have a notion that oppression is done by the most dominant/aggressive people in each group. Sometimes groups have historical advantages over other groups, but you really have to keep an eye on what individuals are doing.
magfrump said:
I share wedrifid’s opinion on feminism and feminist studies. Yet I have also taken feminist studies classes, and my experiences also overlap with yours, though I had significant experience with feminism prior to taking those classes which undoubtedly colored my judgment. I will briefly outline the development of my views around gender politics:
As a teenager, I started out with feminist intuitions, believing that feminism could do no wrong.
I got into pickup, and I read Why Men Are The Way They Are by Warren Farrell. My experience as a shy, romantically-challenged, gender non-conforming young man, combined with Farrell’s book and the arguments of the pickup and seduction community, led to a perspective on gender politics that became increasingly different from feminism. Feminists emphasized the oppression of women and “male privilege.” I could see these phenomena, but I also say phenomena that looked pretty clearly like male oppression and “female privilege,” which feminists didn’t seem to talk about.
I read more books, such as Spreading Misandry and Legalizing Misandry by Nathanson and Young, and Heterophobia by Daphne Patai. I started discussing feminism on the internet, yet my interactions with feminists on blogs taught me very fast that many feminists have trouble defending certain ideas in feminism, and have a low tolerance for criticism of their ideas. My agreement with a larger segment of feminist positions didn’t matter; unless I accepted certain concepts (e.g. “male privilege”) and embedded assumptions, I was treated like an outgroup member, regardless of how civil or reasonable I tried to be.
I came to believe that ideological and biased thinking was highly prevalent in feminism. Yet I found that many critiques of feminism, were also biased and wrong. For example, the Men’s Rights Movement criticizes feminism in many areas, yet it also sometime replicates some of the errors of feminism, such as playing fast and loose with the facts to support ideological positions. I started a blog on feminism with a couple other people to have a critical, but fair evaluation of the movement: FeministCritics.org.
In college, I took several feminist studies courses. Although I had a lot of negative experiences with feminism prior to these courses, I tried to counteract my biases. I tried really hard to like feminism.
My experience with feminism in real life was much more positive than my experience with feminists on the internet. I had a lot of fun, and made several new friends. I got one B+, and several As, in these courses (these grades serve as evidence that I understand a lot of the basics of feminist theory). I voiced a lot of agreement with certain feminist positions, and I also managed to raise a few objections to feminist ideas in classes and in papers. Most of these objections were heard and treated respectfully, though I did not try to insist on them in a way that would take up lots of class time. I did get one D on a paper in one class, where the professor didn’t seem to understand my objection to some ideas in the reading, and said that I had “failed to engage with the reading” (I toed the party-line better in subsequent assignments, and got an A in the class). Other papers I wrote were on the similarities between misogyny and misandry, and the seduction community. I recently posted one of my old feminist studies papers that I got on A on to my blog.
Feminists I encountered in real life seemed a lot more open to new ideas. Perhaps real life led to less polarized communication than the internet. Also, feminists who are motivated to talk about it on the internet may be more convinced by it and treat it more as an ideology. “Real life” feminists seemed a lot more open to considering notions-that-should-be-compatible-with-feminist-theory-but-are-treated-as-politically-incorrect, like the oppression of men, sexism towards men, and female privilege; they haven’t yet learned that these things aren’t supposed to exist, according to academic feminism. (Though I did have a brief disagreement with another student during a feminist studies class who claimed that women are oppressed, but that bad stuff that happens to men does not qualify as “oppression.”) I also found that some feminist students were open to hearing about men’s experiences and perspectives, and consider them evidence of problems in society, just as feminism treats women’s experiences as evidence of problems in society.
Even though I had a better experience with “real life feminists” in women’s studies than with “internet feminists,” my conceptual criticisms of feminism weren’t alleviated by experiences in feminist studies, and some were intensified. I’ve read several books which criticize women’s studies and academic feminism, such as Professing Feminism by Daphe Patai, the aforementioned Spreading Misandry and Legalizing Misandry by Nathanson and Young, Fashionable Nonsense by Sokal and Bricmont (an excellent rationality text), and Higher Superstition by Gross and Levitt. My experiences with feminist studies weren’t quite as bad as what they describe, but there was definitely overlap. Here are a couple examples that stand out in my memory:
On the first day of Feminist Studies 101, the professor handed out the syllabus, and said that this class would proceed from the assumption that (1) women are oppressed in society, and (2) this oppression is unjust and should be remedied. Here’s how the syllabus put it:
Whenever I debated feminists online, couldn’t defend their foundational terms and assumptions, and would resort to saying “go take Feminism 101.” So I did… yet, the premises of feminist thought were really explained and justified there either, but rather assumed.
I saw denials of biology several times. In a couple classes, I heard the claim that not just gender, but sex (i.e. division into male and female) and sexual orientation were socially constructed. The notion that sex is a social construction can only be created by a lot of sleight of hand that I won’t get into right now (but see this critique of Anne Fausto-Sterling).
As for sexual orientation being socially constructed, I have a funny story. The queer professor in my masculinity and feminist theory class claimed that sexual orientation is “socially constructed.” A student objected, saying something like “well, I’m queer, and I’ve heard a lot of queer people say that they feel like they are born that way… isn’t biology a factor?” The professor brushed off this objection and maintained that homosexuality is socially-constructed, marginalizing the experience of this student, many queer people, not to mention a lot of scientific research and queer history. During the break in the class period, the student thanked the professor and walked out of the class never to return, but not before I befriended her at the water fountain and told her she was my hero.
...continued
...continued
Some of the biggest problems with feminist studies from an epistemological standpoint were not things that feminists said, but what they didn’t say. Feminist professors and writing just start throwing around all these terms like “patriarchy,” “male privilege”, “oppression”, “power”, “dominance”, and “sexism.” Yet the conceptualization of these terms was never explained or defended. I view them as a castle built on sand.
Nowadays, you can find some 101 explanations of feminism, such as Finally Feminism 101, but I wonder if anyone else finds the quality of reasoning to be pretty bad. For example, try to figure out why there is no such thing as “female privilege”:
This argument assumes that there is a linear hierarchy of men over women. This is a persistent claim of feminism. While it is plausible that the people at the top of the hierarchy of a certain type of status are disproportionately male, this doesn’t mean that males in general are ranked higher than females in general; there could be more men at the bottom, also: a greater variance of advantage in men.
This argument assumes a metric by which we can discover a hierarchy of men over women, but the metric is unspecified. Another assumption is that hierarchy is unidimensional. To me, it seems plausible that males are advantaged over females on some dimensions of power, while females are advantaged over males on other dimensions of power; who is on top of this hierarchy depends on what dimension we are looking at, or on some way of aggregating measurements on different dimensions. A multi-dimensional model of power is unexplored by feminists, who simply assume that the dimensions of power and status that women rank lower on are the only dimensions that exist or matter. From this biased assumption, feminists declared a hierarchy of men “as a class” (whatever that means) over women “as a class,” self-servingly defined “institutional privilege” as only held by the class at the top of the hierarchy, and denied that women have gender privilege.
As far as I can tell, most of feminist theory isn’t about rational arguments, it is a morass of biased and self-serving reasoning. Feminist theory is highly foundationalist with its dependence on ubiquitous terms like “male privilege” and “patriarchy” that are loaded with unexplained and unexamined assumptions. If you believe in gender equality, but you don’t believe in the concept of patriarchy, and you think female privilege and male oppression exist, then you can still be a feminist, right? Not in the feminist blogosphere or academia you can’t, at least not if you argue for these opinions at length. Ironically, many “real life” feminists who haven’t been inducted into the higher forms of feminist dogma on the internet and in academia probably believe at least the last two things, because they have not yet been taught to subordinate their sense of fairness and empathy (being open to the idea that the other gender has disadvantages, too, not just advantages) to the convoluted sorts of reasoning that I criticize above.
There are forms of feminist thought that are better than others. Some feminist philosophers, such as Helen Longino, do have insightful ideas and seem epistemically responsible (even though I don’t always agree with them). Many feminists are empathetic and interested in learning about men’s experiences with gender in ways the broader culture is not, which I view as the human capacity for empathy rising above the limiting conceptual framework of ideological feminist thought (the typical response of blogosphere feminists to male experiences of oppression is “patriarchy hurts men, too” used as a dismissal). For an example of what feminist theory could be (but unfortunately isn’t most of the time), see this discussion of a feminist paper that I like.
So magfrump, I do agree that there is potential for learning stuff about applied rationality from feminism. It’s kind of a needle in a haystack, but if you’ve found the needle, I would love to see it, and I look forward to your post on the subject. As I’ve written, I like a look of the analytical tools developed by feminists, and I wish feminists would use them more often, and in an unbiased and consistent way.
Don’t take my word for any of this. Read Finally Feminism 101. Read feminist blogs. Participate on feminist blogs, call out ideas that seem fishy to you (general you), and see what kind of response you get. Read The Gender Knot. Take some feminist studies courses. Then get back to me.
A couple of things stand out that I would like to reply to. For the most part, you seem vastly better-informed than I feel, and I have a lot of reading to do, so I will save a longer-form reply for the post itself.
Things that stood out:
Saying that something is socially constructed, to me, is about the map/territory distinction. Thus in the case of queerness, I would say that things such as “gay” and “straight” are socially constructed, and our concepts of sexual orientation are socially constructed, which does not at all contradict that they may be biologically based. For example, I would also say that a table is socially constructed (why is it a table vs a bed vs a chair?). The set of people that you may or may not be attracted to is not socially constructed, but the labels you apply to communicate that information are.
In regards to the response to Fausto-Sterling; I don’t agree that (as they claim) her claims about a continuum rely on her claims of abundance. I also noticed that when discussing vaginal agenesis they did not discuss consent or comfort, although the comparison to a cleft palate makes that implicit. Finally, they conclude by defending pathology only with an example, and by saying that her theories are “not helpful to clinicians,” whereas I feel that her intended audience was not so limited. I also feel very strongly that on page five about “these...individuals deserve the same care...” is pure window dressing, for reasons that I will mention but not in detail. On the other hand, purely in terms of statistics, I feel somewhat betrayed by my Professor who is, for the most part as far as I can tell, of a feather with Longino (we had assigned reading from Longino, for example).
I agree with you that feminism includes specific political ideals at its roots, including fairness and inclusivity, and while I don’t mean to say that this means everyone should “tow the party line” I do think that effort put into, for example, reasserting the sexual dimorphism or discussing female privilege could be better used in other ways and lead to self-images which create artificial conflict. Of course this somewhat assumes epistemological hygiene on the part of feminists which may not exist...
I’m cutting myself off because this is at least five times the length I intended and I need to go to a barbecue.
I don’t deny that your prof holds similar views, but in general this isn’t an accurate indicator. Some things are just stuff everybody has to assign or they’re accused of not covering the material, and I’ve also had teachers assign things specifically to complain about how awful they were in the next class.
I’m pretty sure that our professor said we should read the Longino assignment twice, because we probably wouldn’t get it and it was very important. But that is of course extra information that convinced me that I didn’t provide, and I do see your point.
I have a notion that oppression is done by the most dominant/aggressive people in each group. Sometimes groups have historical advantages over other groups, but you really have to keep an eye on what individuals are doing.