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

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

I clicked on the Esquire and immediately sussed that "the 42 year old woman" is typified by a few successful movie actresses and supermodels.

did the huge photos of successful movie actresses and supermodels tip you off?

btw that article reminds me of dudes who pride themselves as liking "real women," i.e. women with some body fat.

i guess we shouldn't expect any more from a "men's magazine" as we would a "men's television network"

And then they reference Kate Winslet or someone similarly sized as one of the "real women" they go for.

Is a machine writing this copy?

Lots of x-posts now, but OK, yeah, there are still a lot of interesting arguments to be had about the way that "female anger" vs "male anger" is constructed.

And I think this is not only gendered, but is, in general, about the way that power and privilege (of all kinds) legitimise anger, and anger legitimises power and privilege.

That men can express anger, without losing others' perception of their sanity, their rationality/reason, their legitimacy.

While women, expressing anger (even if their anger is totally justified) usually lose being viewed as all three.

However, when I read this long profile of this woman, and the things she is trying to do, the accomplishments she has already achieved, being aware of the levels of sexism and erasure of women in the tech industries, and this whole article and the reactions to it, about what she's up against and the endless war, all seem to boil down to... "is she an ~angry~ person?" My reaction to that is a heartfelt FUUUUUCCCCCKKKK YOOOOUUUUUU, as well.

But important work gets done every day by flawed people, sometimes even by assholes. No one should be more aware of that than people who work in the tech industry, where many of the vaunted innovators and revolutionaries were not warm, fuzzy people. Ultimately, they’re judged by their work. (The unspoken coda always added onto that statement always seems to be "...unless they are women."

re: shanley

https://twitter.com/shanley/status/489837214109429760

BOOM <3

see also http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/it-s-not-you-it-s-the-system

Not sure where else to put this but after seeing how ILM reacted to criticism of weird Al, I don't know that I'm cut out for most boys clubs anymore

...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

idg how gender was involved in the weird al thing

lots of men on ilx find lex very "annoying"

It's not directly, just a pattern,I notice here and elsewhere of defensiveness around humor and it's almost exclusively male.

I find his routine hilarious, best comic we've got around here

xp

one might say the "reaction" to lex is a little disproportionate to the "offense"

I think lex's point about laughing at other's suffering being central to comedy is actually very cogent (stopped clock right twice a day etc). and since the power relationship implicit in that is one of (white) men laughing at others, well you can see where I'm going with this... the problem in this particular instance is a) lex does not actually understand comedy at all, b) weird al's comedy is definitely not like that, and c) the specific word he was calling out as being abusive/derogatory DOES NOT ACTUALLY HAVE THAT CONNOTATION IN AMERICA. This last point seems to be lost on Britishers, like we Americans are in denial about the inherent offensiveness of the term "spastic" when in actuality the offensive connotation of the term is *all* on the UK, and outside the UK those connotations are completely absent.

xp

also it's hard not to pile on lex when he expresses opinions about comedy - professing as he does to hate all of it, in all of its forms. I mean he really is absolutely humorless, by his own admission.

nobody in the U.S. is offended by the word spaz, just accept it.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, July 17, 2014 6:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nobody in the netherlands is offended by black peter, just accept it

There is no justification of shit comedians using disablist slurs and this isn't some transatlantic misunderstanding. It is the kind of shit that needs stamping out.