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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2011 7:00:21 GMT
Liberator, I disassociated myself from feminism in the 1970s, but that was largely because of the rather strange ideas of some of my feminist work colleagues, which have long since been debunked.
Since then I've realised that feminism can be applied to a broad spectrum of ideas and beliefs. There are all kinds of feminism, just as there are widely different schools of Marxist theory. No doubt that those attitudes you describe can be found within the feminist movement, but they are in no way reflective of the whole, or its history.
Are you really suggesting that post-1980s feminism was responsible for all "the enormous political and social conflicts of the 1970s"? You flatter my sisters too much.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 22, 2011 18:28:14 GMT
Quite - the fact that I felt it necessary to contrast an early what might be called green-pagan-matriarchal-demasculinzed feminsm with a later corporate-secular-patriarchal-mascluinzed one shows the problem with just talking about feminism. In fact, it has come to mean so many things to so many people that it actually means nothing at all.
However, there is a sense in which it is commonly understood and in which most self-styled web feminists write, and that is both fearful and envious of an exaggerated aggressive image of men, contemptuous of everything they associate as traditional to women and a conviction that women are social inferiors to men by virtue of having lived this traditionally different inferior feminine life, and sexual inferiors to men by nature. They are the only women I have ever read who exemplify Freud's theory of Penis Envy perfectly.
To hold this rabble of self-loathing women responsible for anything flatters them. They are more the result and possible tool of the almighty conservative consumerist swing that took root in the 1980s against former repudiation of it - Stalin's answer to Trotsky if you like. They might to some degree be considered an Establishment subversion to get a threatening socially progressive movement on its side, but on the whole I think it's simpler than that and almost a natural process. Animal Farm describes the process and indeed, the modern feminist ideal looks very much that if the animals look from woman to man and back again, they will see no difference - but most importantly the men will be as they always were.
However, I think this process comes about far less from any machinations but from an inevitable process that people want change as long as everything remains familiar. They will jump particularly on a bandwagon proclaiming their entitlement to do and have what they want - but what do they want? To a large extent it is what they have always had but better and what they have not had but been brought up to believe better. This is very different from refuting those concepts of better.
So the typical strident feminist writer today believes women socially inferior to men because she believes what she considers traditional to men superior (it must be because men have done it in her circular reasoning) but she also believes sex a traditional matter of female subordination and giving herself to male. To most people, these are antiquated beliefs from generations ago, but the feminist would not feel the need to be a feminist if she had moved on with the rest of society and no longer believed in the sense of sexual shame and masculine superiority that she must have learnt growing up in some back end of nowhere cultural time warp.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2011 19:32:26 GMT
Oops.
Shouldn't have opened my big mouth.....
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Post by june on Jul 22, 2011 19:34:52 GMT
;D ;D ;D Oops. Shouldn't have opened my big mouth.....
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Post by Liberator on Jul 23, 2011 1:37:36 GMT
Oops. Shouldn't have opened my big mouth..... Why not? Shouldn't all socio-political movements be subject to scrutiny instead of shying away from discussion if it confronts dogma with liberal argument?
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Post by firedancer on Jul 23, 2011 12:05:58 GMT
Uterus envy anyone?
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Post by june on Jul 23, 2011 12:08:27 GMT
Uterus envy anyone? That's m-f transgender gays isn't it?
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Post by firedancer on Jul 23, 2011 12:46:57 GMT
Dunno June but I would have thought that if Freud's ideas about penis envy can be defined as Liberator has above and not as I understood Freud postulated i.e. the counterpoint to castration theory, then it would seem that the opposite (according to Liberator's definition) would not be castration theory, but the belief in the superior value of the female, and that could be defined as uterus envy.
Personally I think Freud's ideas about women were a load of cobblers. Even he said he had not been able to understand women in 30 years and boy was he right.
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Post by june on Jul 23, 2011 12:51:55 GMT
Dunno June but I would have thought that if Freud's ideas about penis envy can be defined as Liberator has above and not as I understood Freud postulated i.e. the counterpoint to castration theory, then it would seem that the opposite (according to Liberator's definition) would not be castration theory, but the belief in the superior value of the female, and that could be defined as uterus envy. Personally I think Freud's ideas about women were a load of cobblers. Even he said he had not been able to understand women in 30 years and boy was he right. Beautifully put, I agree.
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Post by toby on Jul 23, 2011 14:01:51 GMT
skylark posted.:-Liberator, I disassociated myself from feminism in the 1970s,
Toby comments.:- I suppose they threw you out when you bought a Bra so you didn't knock yourself out when running for a bus , no ?
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Post by toby on Jul 23, 2011 14:03:01 GMT
Firedancer posted.:-Uterus envy anyone?
Toby comments.:- Elton John has it big time !!
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Post by toby on Jul 23, 2011 14:04:40 GMT
Skylark posted.:-Oops.
Shouldn't have opened my big mouth.....
Toby comments.:- Come on now, I expect you to refute these comments.
You can do it !!
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Post by jean on Jul 27, 2011 8:20:36 GMT
Shouldn't all socio-political movements be subject to scrutiny...? Of course they should - so long as what you want to subject to scrutiny really is an identifiable socio-political movement and not a product of your own psychological needs. Your version of feminism as opposed to women's liberation is every bit as much of a caricature as toby's there.
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