Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

I think it's worth asking what we mean by "insane." He was someone who thought about things in a way that we consider (rightly) grossly unacceptable and way outside the norm, but I think she's suggesting that he may have been a "rational" person who carried ugly and wrong ideas to their extreme conclusions. I got a similar feeling from Breivik. IDK. Like he wasn't hallucinating, he wasn't convinced there were voices telling him to do something, he might be described as "paranoid" in a way I guess, with his sense of the entire way gender and sex works being designed to fuck with him.

Like would we describe a racist white supremecist who went on a killing spree of black people as "insane"?

yes

I think she's obviously right about porn not being at fault for the way men see women (after all, it's a much older problem than porn)

Well yes, that is obvious. Which is why, as far as I can tell, no one is blaming porn alone for Rodger's massacre, and in general no one blames porn alone for misogyny. I would say it's equally obvious that porn is a prominent part of the culture of misogyny of which Rodger was a product, much more so than the "secretly sexist"(?) Facebook.

and her "didn't see nearly enough of it" I take to mean that he didn't see enough varieties of it -- perhaps an overly optimistic thought since I presume she means kink or stuff that is way outside of the porn realm that most young straight males frequent.
― ₴HABΔZZ ¶IZZΔ (Hurting 2), Tuesday, June 3, 2014 10:02 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I interpreted it that way too, and it doesn't make any sense to me. Rodger felt entitled to conventionally attractive women, and was obsessively jealous of the men who dated and slept with those women. I can't think of a good reason to suppose that seeing other kinds of people depicted in porn would have helped.

Many sentences begin with incisive, timeless, and true generalizations (“The most beautiful women choose to mate with the most brutal of men”)...

God that first sentence is like a Didion cover version. Great piece though.

I dont really know where to put this and am just kind of thinking aloud - but Ive been feeling a lot of commonality between sociopathy and sexism of late. The inability to see or acknowledge the experiences felt by others, means those experiences are invalid, they dont exist?

Anvil, I might be wrong on this because I do not entirely understand sociopathy. But sociopathy seems to involve, as you say, the *inability* to see or acknowledge the experiences of others. I think with sexism and misogyny, it is much more a *refusal* to recognise that women are people or even human beings, and therefore are capable of having experiences to acknowledge.

It's not "incapable of acknowledging others"; it is sorting others into "people, and not-people/things".

pretty much everything bad looks like sociopathy cuz it's an empathy disorder and so is pretty much everything bad

Yeah i mean i dont know! its just until recently i wouldnt have even thought of them being linked! and ive only come to understand sociopathy a lot more, recently too. dont think they are the same thing but ive just started wondering about overlap, or how they link. like if one comes out of the other...or can come out of the other. Sociopaths dont value the opinions or thoughts of others, so they are already in the right kind of place for sexism. Sociopaths also get angry when they dont get validation/attention, and the validation has to be constant. It doesnt matter if one gets validation for 16 hours in a row - if the 17th hour involves no validation, they get angry. For the sociopath your views are of no value, you exist purely to give them validation, that is your purpose in life. Their views are always objectively correct, and anything that opposes this is wrong and therefore emotional and subjective (which are both 'bad'). It is an inability to see the experiences of others, but if you bring your views up, then it becomes a refusal. Of course they will lie, obfuscate, wilfully miss your points, but your views have no relevance (even if they are your own experiences, they will understand them better than you, and they will always have an answer)

oops to add to the above, sociopaths value highly the opinions of people who agree with them...as long as they agree with them!

so for me, like in that cartoon with the woman in an all-male boardroom and theyre saying 'theres no sexism here', anything that woman might say that contradicts the sociopaths experience simply has no value and contradicts objective reality because their experience IS objective reality. if they didnt experience it themselves, then it doesnt exist.

many ppl have that viewpoint who are not sociopaths

i don't see any value in associating sexism w/ sociopathy besides painting bigots as outliers

or that sociopaths arent the outliers we might think they are (and of course everything is to a degree), but most sexists dont actually think they are sexist! they just 'dont see it' when pointed out

That whole "sexists are sociopaths" and therefore outliers thing is a wrong-headed line to pursue for many reasons. For the reasons that 1staethyr has outlined, but following on from that, it's painting it as a problem with the failings of individuals. It's misguided to see it as something that only specific individuals indulge in, when really it's more like this constant soup we're all floating in; a tide or current that everyone is pulled by (some to their benefit, some to their detriment.) It's easy not to notice the current when it's working in your favour. In fact, it takes some effort to even notice there *is* a current when it is working for you.

But these things are patterns, they are taught, they are reinforced, they are inculcated at a group level, though it may display most pronouncedly at the individual level.

Men are taught at every step of the journey, women are objects, women are not people, women's experiences are not real and anyway women are not people so their experiences do not matter. Men are taught by example that women exist only to provide validation to male actions and male sentiments. When men react badly to being denied the attention of women, either as individuals or as groups (and we had a pretty flagrant example of this yesterday!) it is *not* down to ~sociopathy~, it is down to entitlement. It is not a lack; it is a failure.

yup. also i forgot the other value of associating sociopathy w/ bigotry, which is further stigmatizing ppl w/ mental illnesses and/or personality disorders

Im not saying i think "sexists are sociopaths" - in fact im not sure what im saying yet, just thoughts that have been formulating. Obviously sexism is a system and obviously children are taught this system - and definitely at the group level - which is why some people can unlearn this thinking and behaviour too!

I definitely dont want to say the two are the same thing, but im also not really even quite sure what i am saying.. (wasnt really sure whether to put it here or the check your priviledge thread instead, or somewhere else again!),

pretty much everything bad looks like sociopathy cuz it's an empathy disorder and so is pretty much everything bad

― difficult listening hour, Thursday, June 12, 2014 8:05 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Men are taught at every step of the journey, women are objects, women are not people, women's experiences are not real and anyway women are not people so their experiences do not matter. Men are taught by example that women exist only to provide validation to male actions and male sentiments. When men react badly to being denied the attention of women, either as individuals or as groups (and we had a pretty flagrant example of this yesterday!) it is *not* down to ~sociopathy~, it is down to entitlement. It is not a lack; it is a failure.

― Branwell with an N, Thursday, June 12, 2014 9:05 AM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You can teach sociopathy, or at least something very like it. What you end up with is bigotry (and Republicans).

yup. also i forgot the other value of associating sociopathy w/ bigotry, which is further stigmatizing ppl w/ mental illnesses and/or personality disorders

― 1staethyr, Thursday, June 12, 2014 9:15 AM (43 minutes ago

DING DING DING DING DING

Thing is, even for neurotypical people, empathy is work, it is emotional labour. Empathising, especially with someone who is *not* like you, is something that has to be learned, and often, more importantly, has to be modelled*. But it is still something that requires effort.

*And learned/modelled as a 2-stage process. 1) learning that other human beings are also people, just like you, with needs and emotions! 2) That other people can also be *unlike* you, and may have had different experiences which have produced different needs and emotions. Many people never seem to make it to that second step.

For people who are marginalised (or to use the more old fashioned word, oppressed), learning to empathise with "people who are not like them" is a survival skill, that *has* to be learned. People of Colour are forced to learn to empathise with White People. Women generally *have* to empathise with men. Because on one level, those are the only stories that get told. But on another level, you *have* to learn to empathise with an Other to help predict their behaviour when they may be violent towards you. If you are an African American walking across a parking lot full of white cops, or a woman trying to negotiate a street full of lairy drunken dudes (or even an office full of hostile men) the ability to empathise with, and predict the actions of and smooth the reactions of the Other is pretty crucial.

It seems pretty salient in a lot of the discussion recently that has been happening here and all over the web, which has been grouped here under the telling phrase "creepy liberalism" and things get tossed around like the idea that "you can't legislate empathy, maaan!"

Whenever I hear that phrase, what comes through to me is that *they* want to control who it is that they do or don't empathise with. There's a lot of reactions which just read like people refusing to be *forced* to empathise with the experiences or needs of the other. Like, the idea that "empathy" is something which you can choose to extend or deny. Which on one level, I understand, because why the fuck should I be forced to empathise with misogynists? (Except, I have to, because there have been many, many situations in my life, where the ability to do so has kept me alive, or even just kept my employed.) But when you look at the list of who, exactly, people want to deny their empathy to, and you see the familiar list includes women, survivors of sexual violence, people of colour, people who suffer from mental illness, especially poorly understood mental illnesses like PTSD - yeah, it start to look a little bit like "I want to reserve the right to deny my empathy" and a little bit more like "I reserve the right to deny some people their humanity."

So I am very suspicious, when talking about these things, and the idea of "empathy" when it's genuinely a question of "can't" and when it is just a simple "won't".

yup. also i forgot the other value of associating sociopathy w/ bigotry, which is further stigmatizing ppl w/ mental illnesses and/or personality disorders
― 1staethyr,

Yes, I have run into problems with this in a previous post - it is something I'd like to explore thinking about more - especially in terms of power relations, but I also see that its problematic. The difference between thinking about something, and thinking outloud as well to an extent

http://m.vice.com/read/i-watched-the-guys-choice-awards-and-all-i-got-was-this-pesky-reminder-of-the-patriarchy

https://twitter.com/AvoidComments

http://m.vice.com/read/i-watched-the-guys-choice-awards-and-all-i-got-was-this-pesky-reminder-of-the-patriarchy

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Friday, June 13, 2014 10:57 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It interests me how stuff like this operates not only to objectify women but to attempt to enforce and police what is supposed to be proper "guy" behavior, like guys get the message that they SHOULD act MORE like this in order to prove that they have testicles or something.

cf yr performances on the other thread?

that's come out flatter than it was Mmeant, sorry- but aren't there parallels?

If there are, so what? Peer-pressuring others into treating other people decently is probably the best, most desirable use of peer pressure and it seems borderline insane for me to feel like this is a statement that actually needs to be made.

http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/06/i-was-raped-its-not-a-coveted-status.html

cf yr performances on the other thread?

― dn/ac (darraghmac), Friday, June 13, 2014 1:04 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean, maybe? But I don't think pressuring men not to be assholes is the same thing as pressuring them to be assholes?

lol/not lol: http://feminist-phone-intervention.tumblr.com

as long as everyone agrees on when's it's ok I spose. that should be a short and easy process to decide, right?

everyone doesn't agree, of course, but we're still allowed to push back where it seems appropriate, right? i felt bad for piling on mordy (having too often been on the bottom of such clusters), but it seemed clear to me that he was going about things in a notably ass-backward manner. and was, more to the point, p much demanding engagement.

Sincere good-faith question from an overpriveleged middle-aged white guy: if I am walking out and about with a female friend who is verbally harassed by asshole men, should I speak up and risk looking like I'm swooping in to protect the damsel in distress, or be quiet and let the female friend take the lead in the situation, which risks looking like tacit approval of the harassment? Is there a one-size-fits-all answer to this?

I would say no, because women/harassed ppl are all different and harassers and different situations where SH happens are different, and what mostly matters is her safety (also for inst she may have to walk down that street a lot in her daily life and you might only be visiting, so maybe she feels safer keeping her head down for now, that kind of thing). The first time it happens: ask her to talk about it, let her tell you what she's comfortable with. Don't worry, it'll happen again. :/

Thank you, IO! That's kinda where my instinct was leading me.

Thing is, even for neurotypical people, empathy is work, it is emotional labour. Empathising, especially with someone who is *not* like you, is something that has to be learned, and often, more importantly, has to be modelled*. But it is still something that requires effort.

*And learned/modelled as a 2-stage process. 1) learning that other human beings are also people, just like you, with needs and emotions! 2) That other people can also be *unlike* you, and may have had different experiences which have produced different needs and emotions. Many people never seem to make it to that second step.

For people who are marginalised (or to use the more old fashioned word, oppressed), learning to empathise with "people who are not like them" is a survival skill, that *has* to be learned. People of Colour are forced to learn to empathise with White People. Women generally *have* to empathise with men. Because on one level, those are the only stories that get told. But on another level, you *have* to learn to empathise with an Other to help predict their behaviour when they may be violent towards you. If you are an African American walking across a parking lot full of white cops, or a woman trying to negotiate a street full of lairy drunken dudes (or even an office full of hostile men) the ability to empathise with, and predict the actions of and smooth the reactions of the Other is pretty crucial.

It seems pretty salient in a lot of the discussion recently that has been happening here and all over the web, which has been grouped here under the telling phrase "creepy liberalism" and things get tossed around like the idea that "you can't legislate empathy, maaan!"

Whenever I hear that phrase, what comes through to me is that *they* want to control who it is that they do or don't empathise with. There's a lot of reactions which just read like people refusing to be *forced* to empathise with the experiences or needs of the other. Like, the idea that "empathy" is something which you can choose to extend or deny. Which on one level, I understand, because why the fuck should I be forced to empathise with misogynists? (Except, I have to, because there have been many, many situations in my life, where the ability to do so has kept me alive, or even just kept my employed.) But when you look at the list of who, exactly, people want to deny their empathy to, and you see the familiar list includes women, survivors of sexual violence, people of colour, people who suffer from mental illness, especially poorly understood mental illnesses like PTSD - yeah, it start to look a little bit like "I want to reserve the right to deny my empathy" and a little bit more like "I reserve the right to deny some people their humanity."

So I am very suspicious, when talking about these things, and the idea of "empathy" when it's genuinely a question of "can't" and when it is just a simple "won't".

― Branwell with an N, Thursday, June 12, 2014 3:25 AM Bookmark

booming post

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/06/26/infant_gender_assignment_unnecessary_and_potentially_harmful.html

we'll need to reform naming conventions

I thought that article was quite bad.

https://medium.com/matter/speaking-up-every-fucking-time-a61a24aa7629

I saw the 'setting the record straight' post about that last month when the authors were in the middle of it.
I don't feel I know that much more after reading that article, except that the main difference between 'unacceptable angry woman' and 'acceptable angry man' is the latter uses greater levels of *snark*

wait who is the acceptable angry man in the article

we are all the acceptable angry man

The bit about how her anger would be perceived if she were a man. The men in the tech community that I follow on Twitter etc get angry but always express it through snark and 'right guys??' or feigned resignation
whereas I don't really see many tech women express anger other than through more careful reasoning or like 'this is wrong, isn't it?' (not saying it doesn't happen, just my experience of it) so someone of her level just raging in the way outlined in the article seems unusual

People whine all the time about how mean Glenn Greenwald is on Twitter

this picture from that article is something else

have we not discussed esquire's ode to 42yo women

Their what?!

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/42-year-old-women

decent responses

http://thehairpin.com/2014/07/42

http://gawker.com/esquire-writers-were-willing-to-fuck-early-middle-aged-1602918511