Bad Feminist

[Mike]

No, you've explained it well enough. I understand what happened. I just don't understand why it's so funny to you. Seriously. My best guess is: a person born genetically male beat a bunch of people born genetically female in a physical competition, and that's funny because gender issues are complicated, and people disagree on how to deal with them, and sometimes seemingly simple approaches have dramatic consequences.

Am I close? I mean, obviously not funny to me, but it's long agreed you and I have different tastes.

[mimekiller]

Not really complicated its just a laughable state of affairs as we move forward as a society. its not just "a bunch of people" its some world RECORDS that will probably never be beaten by a cis woman ever again. And I do think if a woman wants to compete in guy sports thats fine, like how in boxing a boxer can move UP a weight class if they want but if they want to move DOWN they actually have to lose the weight.

[Mike]

Laughable is not the same as funny. I agree the situation is absurd or bizarre, but your claim was that you laughed your ass off.

And to be fair, every time you say LMAO, I can easily picture you cackling gleefully at whatever it is you've linked. I imagine many times you probably do, but I've always assumed it was merely Schadenfreude and not actual humor, because the situations never seem funny.

[Phoebe]

Is mime actually Don Jr? He was on a roll about this story, all upset.

[mimekiller]

HA, this is conservative fodder(even tho on this issue I would agree with them) as an example of a absurd culture so afraid to offend people that they are willing to deny reality itself. I actually had to HUNT for a article that talked about this that wasn't generated by some whack a do neo con outlet. Do I enjoy being in this company? Well no but I don't like that PAT BUCHANAN is the most steadfast anti-war voice in this country as well but its just the hand I'm dealt.

[Phoebe]

On the "peace issue", you're with the hippies and it's just a weird anomaly that a few atypical rightwingers are feeling negative toward foreign military interventions right now. It's not like they hate war due to their love of innocent babies.

But on this gender question, it's not the atypical rightwingers who find themselves with strange bedfellows; it's the lefties and a handful of so-called feminists who suddenly find actual outright neonazis palatable because they share the same terrifying, rigid, and scientifically groundless "biological sex" gender ideology. If you find yourself nodding along to what the neocons and neonazis are saying about trans people, time to reconsider how you got there. "Reality" might be different than you imagine?

[mimekiller]

Oh please libs love war as much as cons, look at how CODE PINK and CINDY SHEEHAN were thrown to the side once handsome Obama started to drone people into salsa, most libs would actually support all of Trumps policys if he was a bit more ding dang polite about them and was a democrat.

And again I feel I'm fairly progressive towards trans, believing that however you identity you should have safety, respect, and all rights as anyone else, , I will be RESPECTFUL and use whatever pro noun people want but if you ask me do you THINK they are a woman the reply is a resounding no and do I THINK that just because a man mutilates himself with the help of a doctor does that mean he can go into womans sports well I also think no no no a thousand times no.

But why not lets embrace this, lets have the next mike tyson whoever that is go into female boxing and just MURDER women in one round, would be great blood sport in this glorious world we live in.

[Phoebe]

I know, you've already expressed your appreciation for the prospect of women being punched in the face by someone they were surprised to find was stronger! I like to keep track of people who delight in women being punched!

But seriously, sports have already been addressing guidelines for participation and it's working fine, except in weird cases where they're telling a biologically female woman she has to alter her natural body chemistry to compete in races as a woman! Of course there are going to be outlier cases on the border, like anything involving variation, but most trans women clearly should be competing against other women. Not just because of gender but because of their physical bodies.

I am sure I disagree with this cyclist because I think the relevant physical factors for sports officials to consider go beyond testosterone and vary by sport. And I think it is totally okay and normal for people to have narrow preferences about the kinds of physical bodies with which they prefer to have sex. And women should be able to talk about their physical bodies in sex-specific ways because that is not exclusionary at all; rights and freedoms are not a zero sum game here. In a country where women are censured in legislatures for saying the shocking word "vagina", and breastfeeding is still "controversial", we have a long way to go before women may be told not to take control of and use the language needed to describe their bodies. That doesn't prevent us from affirming that not all women have vaginas or wish to breastfeed, etc. Oppression of women based on their physical bodies is real even as oppression of women based on their gender is real. Sadly we have both; no need to ignore either one.

[Phoebe]

I'm not sure whether this falls under the bad or good feminist category, but let's assume that not every trans or nonbinary person arguing on the Internet is funded by some kind of basement troll factory, or that contemporary feminism would support what's happening here, in which case it's a bad feminist take?

Anyway, the point is that "some" enbys and trans people of the Internets (how many is some? No idea - enough to make a big public stir and affect behavior?) have decided the proper thing to do is harass, dox, and "cancel" some trans and queer people who make leftist political content. Let's put aside for the moment how hopelessly counterproductive this is in the world where every day should be a desperate struggle to make sure we still have democracy in the face of smiling neighbors who would keep smiling even if they saw the kidnapped babies in freezing unmarked warehouses. Is there even a reason for this bizarre left-eats-its-own behavior? Yes: if A still has feelings of kindness or friendship for someone else (B) who still has feelings of kindness or friendship for someone else (C) who has the audacity to give less than a minute of "platform" (i.e. allow to speak publicly alongside you without expressing your hatred and rejection of their person) to someone else (D) who has said controversial and objectionable things while being friendly with someone else (E) who has said bigoted things, then A is every bit as guilty of horrifying bigotry as E and basically should be wiped from the face of public life. This is what the young people are doing instead of opposing Trump and his allies: an experiment in maximizing the reverse transitive properties of bigotry. Honestly I can't imagine there are. any real people like this who aren't Russian bots but it sure seems like there are, because sometimes they're people who have a long history of seeming to be real people.

Also, if someone says "I wholeheartedly support NB people and everyone should do their own gender thing in complete unharassed and unrestrained freedom", but also occasionally says totally harmless things that nevertheless annoy NB people, this person is obviously a toxic bigot in exactly the same way that neonazis are toxic bigots, except perhaps even worse because you thought they were an ally. A general rule is that failure at perfect allyship is equivalent to being a nazi. So in case people (me) start getting pompous about having all the critical thinking powers on their side of the political debates of the day, it turns out that total failures at critical thinking are an all-purpose tool for everyone to enjoy.

[Mike]

My opinion is that the truly toxic people you speak of are a small minority. The problem is that it only takes a small handful of extremists doing terrible things. The the opposition and mass media and social media can repeat the horror stories about them and magnify their terribleness.

[Phoebe]

I hope you are right. I think to the people involved it feels like a LOT of others are piling on them. But in the larger scheme of things, this entire debate is happening in a small corner of the world. I don't know, I have been in the room to see things like the "snapping" they do nowadays in support of these very narrow, exclusivist readings of who is qualified to participate in progessive politics, and the gasps at slight deviations from the Approved Lefty Script. It's an ugly atmosphere, though of course nothing like the ugliness one sees on the corresponding Approved Righty side. But I've talked to people who were affronted by these attitudes and criticisms, trying to repair some damaged ground... it feels like the (what do we even call this group? the gender-non-conforming left?) ---- is going down a difficult path that leads to undermining its own goals. I am a toxic member of the centrist capitalist patriarchy, from that perspective, and I feel like if a feminist-left movement is too wackadoo to tolerate me as a supporter and I would have to be Publicly Denounced by all my friends, the people pushing it have a thing or two to learn about how to effect change in the world. I am pretty annoyed by Andrew Sullivan, who is truly a lousy feminist - I mean not a "bad" one who still wants to be a feminist, but a straight up lousy non-feminist - but I do not easily forget that we went straight to same-sex marriage equality practically overnight, and presenting it as compatible with moderate values and stable traditional family units was The Way to get that done.

[mimekiller]

lol*

https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/sarahm ... ssion=true


*I'm laughing because this is such a obvious thing not to do but someone went and did it. funny!

[Mike]

Nope. That's pretty funny. (And tragic).

[Phoebe]

Wow, even in my small corner of the working world we have tighter mouth-flapping security than this for smaller issues. On the other hand, you would not believe some of the drama that we deal with, both through natural proceedings and sometimes by sheer unfortunate coincidence. I would love to tell all about it but no way! Even hearing about vague things related to my husband's work is kept in a steel lockbox.

[mimekiller]

Funniest bit of writing I've read in a long time. Hammurabi, sis, ya canceled.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/201 ... ient-dick/

[Phoebe]

That was actually an interesting/funny read but I don't think that person has ever read Hammurabi's code. I don't really think we can take this of the representative of feminism canceling Hammurabi, but at Reed College they had a lesbian feminist of color who was teaching that subject and was "cancelled", so cheers for the elitists.

[Phoebe]

Another A+++ #1 quality feminist finally hounded off Twitter by ostensibly left/progressive/woke harassment. Personally I think it's just neonazis pretending to be those things, because any real lefty person with functioning brains loves her, but who knows, the crazeeeee is enough to go all around these days.

[Phoebe]

Sorry to be back here in bad feminist land but this is a take most feminists likely oppose though I think they should not! It should be a very good feminist position!

Today's prompt is the proliferation of stories about how the pandemic situation is screwing women over. You know because they already bore a greater share of the domestic burden, and now more of them are losing their jobs, proportionally, and they are taking on even more responsibility at home what with the schools being canceled and such.

Meanwhile, men are more likely to DIE of the covid, but never mind, this imbalance is not as important as the laundry imbalance. What?! I just tire of this kind of b*******. I am generally displeased with the way that sexism influences domestic labor distribution, including in my own home, and it is difficult to fight against these tendencies because, for instance, if your husband's job is more important to your family's financial well-being, and your job is more flexible, then inevitably it's going to take a backseat and you're going to do more housework et alia. That's just how things are even if the people involved are trying not to be sexist. Also sometimes the people involved just want to be babied and taken care of all the time, but whatevs. I have the ox blood in me, I don't even care anymore, I carve out what has to be carved out.

But back to the feminists: during this pandemic situation, this is one of the first times in my life that I feel like the imbalance of childcare and healthcare and other domestic tasks actually makes sense, and can be accepted cheerfully as an unfortunate but necessary consequence of the current situation. It would be terrific if I could be the one making more money and taking all the risks to go out of the house for my job, while my husband sat at home and did dishes without exposure to other people. But that's not the way our world is organized, and I'm absolutely terrified that he is the one who's going to get sick because of it. He's the one who's vulnerable. And it's not just him, it's all the men who are put in this situation because they tend to have jobs that are more likely to be considered essential employment, or they have employers that force them to come to work anyway. There's a whole manliness thing about wearing a mask that requires its own separate essay or book, honestly, and that just makes the whole thing scarier.

It is so much better to be the one who stays at home doing the dishes, so much!!! So why are people complaining about this like it is a big feminist problem? This is one of those situations where the tools of feminism are helpful to analyze differences in how people are being affected, but it is not a situation where complaining about women's lot makes any sense. If you want to complain about that, there's one giant glaring problem: Domestic Violence. The fact that women are doing extra laundry while hoping that their husbands don't succumb to their greater risk of death is not the issue.

[Phoebe]

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/21/86009123 ... ehold-work

Here by contrast, from NPR, is a good story about how suddenly working from home together could be causing the reality of gender inequity in housework and caring for people to come to the surface. They talk about ways people can try to solve it together, and don't include the usual punitive language toward women who embrace or at least accept that role for important reasons.

Other goods about this story: it touches on differences in personal values that can be important factors in coming up with solutions, as well as the learned helplessness problem and the difficult feelings of anger that can accompany failure to work out a good solution.

The personal values thing is key, because most approaches to this issue assume that the proper goal is to accomplish a specific set of tasks on the domestic front. The question is then how you do them or how you divide up the labor for them. This doesn't work if one person's solution to accomplishing that labor does not fit with the values the other person holds dear. And I can tell you from long personal experience that the anger arising from having your values disrespected is much greater than the anger arising from resentment over doing more laundry or dishes or doctor appointments. It took maybe a decade to solve that values problem, and I'm not sure it ever really got solved so much as the other party capitulated to Reality (and eventually started to see that children were supposed to be a useful labor force). So when a story hints at those kinds of forces, I think it's much more in touch with real life than stories that just talk about some abstract mass of tasks to be done and whether they're being divided in a certain way, which is a fairly simple logistics problem. It may be a really hard one to solve, but struggles over logistics aren't such difficult ones.

[Phoebe]

I'm afraid this might fall into the bad feminist category - as a guideline I try to determine what things I feel comfortable discussing with just about anyone and what things I prefer to discuss only in a "room" where I already know people are open to considering controversies in a reasonable manner, and half baked ideas can be turned over. If it's the latter it's probably a bad feminist issue because it will conflict with the demands of contemporary feminism in some way...

Anyway, here's my bad feminist take of the week: "Karen" started off naming an important phenomenon that was contributing to racist harms against people, but now it has been so fully co-opted by the mainstream, and in particular by white male misogynists, that it is becoming merely another sexist comment against women-in-general.

I was reminded of this when I saw Tahlvin mention it in the other thread, because he was using it (Qanon Karen) in the "original" sense, so to speak. These original Karens, as I understand it, are the white women who want to control and micromanage other people, who call the police on people for trivial reasons, lie and exaggerate their own vulnerability in order to hurt others, get upset about things that merely demonstrate how few important problems they have, quickly weaponize their white privilege in a racist way, etc. This is a real phenomenon so accordingly it was given a name.

But nowadays Karen seems to have gently wafted over into "any woman who complains about anything that men find it annoying for women to complain about". Now women (especially older women) whose values and standards (including good things like courtesy, patience, consideration for others) have become dated or rarer in society are Karens for having such values. People who complain about the lack of mask wearing are now frequently being called Karens by virus-hoaxers and virus-ignorers of all sorts (this conjunction of contemporary issues might be the most common instance I'm seeing). People who post signs in the office imploring hand-washing to stop Covid spread are control-freak Karens, people who think you should vaccinate your children are meddling Karens, people who want drivers to be courteous are Karens, and so on and so forth for any issue that involves the interaction of people in contemporary society!

From the perspective of conservative white men, which is Trump's #1 voter base, Me Too advocates are now being labeled as Karens as well. The red flag should fly up at this point.

Some people have tried to establish male Karen equivalents like the Chad or the Kyle (sorry! I hate it) or whatever, but that never caught on much. Being mad about a general-purpose (as opposed to specifically-racist) Karen means being mad about Women, and particularly about women who make any demands or want power. So either Karen is a racist, a conspiracy theorist who refuses to listen to any expertise, a victim weaponizing privilege to police others, a person who tries to pointlessly micromanage others due to her desire for control, or she needs to be retired. It's way too easy for men to attack women who want a say, who want to control men's behaviors, and this has become yet another way they can dismiss even the reasonable and non-racist forms of such desires.

I'm not sure I have been actually called a Karen but I say all the above knowing I'm Karen-eligible in so many ways. That's fine with me, when we're talking about racist Karen that's long overdue. The majority of white women voted for Trump, or in Alabama voted for the abusive creep! White women have to account for their behavior and that shouldn't bother any of us who are white women - it's a good thing that we need to speak up for better values, if that's what we want. But I definitely bristle when I hear older women than me being called Karen because, in general, they want people to stop being inconsiderate of one another; that just sounds like the same old sexism.