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Some people on Facebook have been circulating this statement from Mark Ruffalo regarding the “I Am Not A Feminist” movement on the interwubs – which alerted me to the fact that such a movement exists.
Naturally, this has led to a lot of dithering over what does or doesn’t count as feminism. For myself, I don’t really want to jump into that debate – partly because I have no wish to mansplain things to the IANAF women, but mainly because I’m far more interested in the fact that the argument is taking place at all. I think it signifies clearly that the definition of the word “feminism” has been effectively rewritten to mean something other than its original meaning.
I don’t want to point fingers, but at a guess I’d say this is the result of a few factors:
1. The feminist community itself has a far from unified view on what counts as feminism and how far it should be taken. And like all movements, it has a few crackpots that want to, say, establish a matriarchy and kill off all the men after extracting their sperm and storing it in freezers. Something like that. Anyway, it has its share of extremists like any sociopolitical group.
2. Anti-feminist conservative politicians, talk radio hosts and cable TV news programs have exploited that rift and cherry-picked extreme feminist statements to represent the entire group as one big man-haters club.
3. Social media has amplified all of that on both sides to the point where it’s impossible to tell the difference or even explain it.
Whatever the cause, it’s clear from a lot of the IANAF statements I’ve seen that many of its supporters have a far different idea of what counts as “feminism” than people like me (or Mark Ruffalo, for that matter) who see the term in a more positive light. Some of it is based on the idea that feminism is unfair to men who face gender-biased injustice just like women do (which is debatable, but anyway).
But some IANAF statements actually seem to support things I would have classified as feminist statements – i.e. women being treated equally, equal pay, not being a victim, being strong and assertive and in charge of their own bodies and destiny, etc.
The common theme seems to be that they don’t like the label “feminism” to describe these things, because they seem to think the word exclusively means “man-haters club” or “let’s all become unisex!”
So it’s a semantics argument, more or less. In the absence of a unified agreement on what counts as “feminism”, the definition of the word – or rather, the perception of the definition – has changed by way of political jiggery-pokery to the point that it no longer means what it used to mean.
It’s sort of like how liberal politicians now avoid using the word “liberal” because conservatives have successfully equated “liberal” with “Communist” in the public sphere, and use the term to label every left-leaning presidential candidate as a potential danger to the American way of life. (It’s no coincidence that every serious Democratic candidate in the last 20 years has been labeled by the RNC as “the most liberal member of Congress”.) Which is why liberals call themselves “progressives” now.
Anyway, I think this is what’s throwing everyone off with IANAF – the lack of a new word/label to describe what the IANAF people do support.
Meanwhile, it’s interesting that in addition to rejecting the “feminist” label, some of the same women are also rejecting the “War On Women™” meme that has dominated political discourse over the last 15 years or so, which Democrats and progressives routinely use to describe select GOP policies they consider unfavorable to women. Which may be true – the problem is that the WoW meme doesn’t invite debate over the policies in question – it brands the GOP en masse as evil misogynists and, by extension, labels every Republican woman who supports those policies as helpless duped brainwashed victims of privileged white male patriarchy. Which is kind of sexist, maybe.
Apparently some IANAF women (who may or may not even be Republican) resent that label too – at least as applied to the situation in the US. You want to see a real war on women? Go to countries where women can’t legally drive or vote, are punished for being raped and generally need permission from men to do anything. As full-on misogyny goes, the GOP isn’t even trying.
Lesson learned: maybe we should stop resorting to simplistic labels on Facebook and start having real productive discussions about these issues.
Ha ha. No. Just kidding. This is 2015. No one does that anymore. Intellectual discussion is for turkeys. If you can't say it in a meme or emoticon or Instagram, it’s tl;dr. Hell, I’m lucky any of you are still reading this. If you are, I appreciate the effort, anyway.
Nowadays a woman’s gotta hit a man,
This is dF
Naturally, this has led to a lot of dithering over what does or doesn’t count as feminism. For myself, I don’t really want to jump into that debate – partly because I have no wish to mansplain things to the IANAF women, but mainly because I’m far more interested in the fact that the argument is taking place at all. I think it signifies clearly that the definition of the word “feminism” has been effectively rewritten to mean something other than its original meaning.
I don’t want to point fingers, but at a guess I’d say this is the result of a few factors:
1. The feminist community itself has a far from unified view on what counts as feminism and how far it should be taken. And like all movements, it has a few crackpots that want to, say, establish a matriarchy and kill off all the men after extracting their sperm and storing it in freezers. Something like that. Anyway, it has its share of extremists like any sociopolitical group.
2. Anti-feminist conservative politicians, talk radio hosts and cable TV news programs have exploited that rift and cherry-picked extreme feminist statements to represent the entire group as one big man-haters club.
3. Social media has amplified all of that on both sides to the point where it’s impossible to tell the difference or even explain it.
Whatever the cause, it’s clear from a lot of the IANAF statements I’ve seen that many of its supporters have a far different idea of what counts as “feminism” than people like me (or Mark Ruffalo, for that matter) who see the term in a more positive light. Some of it is based on the idea that feminism is unfair to men who face gender-biased injustice just like women do (which is debatable, but anyway).
But some IANAF statements actually seem to support things I would have classified as feminist statements – i.e. women being treated equally, equal pay, not being a victim, being strong and assertive and in charge of their own bodies and destiny, etc.
The common theme seems to be that they don’t like the label “feminism” to describe these things, because they seem to think the word exclusively means “man-haters club” or “let’s all become unisex!”
So it’s a semantics argument, more or less. In the absence of a unified agreement on what counts as “feminism”, the definition of the word – or rather, the perception of the definition – has changed by way of political jiggery-pokery to the point that it no longer means what it used to mean.
It’s sort of like how liberal politicians now avoid using the word “liberal” because conservatives have successfully equated “liberal” with “Communist” in the public sphere, and use the term to label every left-leaning presidential candidate as a potential danger to the American way of life. (It’s no coincidence that every serious Democratic candidate in the last 20 years has been labeled by the RNC as “the most liberal member of Congress”.) Which is why liberals call themselves “progressives” now.
Anyway, I think this is what’s throwing everyone off with IANAF – the lack of a new word/label to describe what the IANAF people do support.
Meanwhile, it’s interesting that in addition to rejecting the “feminist” label, some of the same women are also rejecting the “War On Women™” meme that has dominated political discourse over the last 15 years or so, which Democrats and progressives routinely use to describe select GOP policies they consider unfavorable to women. Which may be true – the problem is that the WoW meme doesn’t invite debate over the policies in question – it brands the GOP en masse as evil misogynists and, by extension, labels every Republican woman who supports those policies as helpless duped brainwashed victims of privileged white male patriarchy. Which is kind of sexist, maybe.
Apparently some IANAF women (who may or may not even be Republican) resent that label too – at least as applied to the situation in the US. You want to see a real war on women? Go to countries where women can’t legally drive or vote, are punished for being raped and generally need permission from men to do anything. As full-on misogyny goes, the GOP isn’t even trying.
Lesson learned: maybe we should stop resorting to simplistic labels on Facebook and start having real productive discussions about these issues.
Ha ha. No. Just kidding. This is 2015. No one does that anymore. Intellectual discussion is for turkeys. If you can't say it in a meme or emoticon or Instagram, it’s tl;dr. Hell, I’m lucky any of you are still reading this. If you are, I appreciate the effort, anyway.
Nowadays a woman’s gotta hit a man,
This is dF
