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

i don't care abt empty seats but sitting right next to me & splaying yr legs is literally a dick move

^things that can only be said from the privileged position of not having a big dick xp

A very haughtily delivered 'close your legs' command takes them by such surprise that they actually close their fucking legs.

Late to this, but ...

it just seems like rosin is arguing that feminists who speak out about gender inequality are just big irrational baby whiners who love to complain, and that any anger towards institutional sexism is overstated

Am I just missing the thing that makes it seem this way? I mean, from what I've read, it's certainly not the literal text of her argument -- usually, the core of what she's saying is that there have been these large and under-recognized shifts in employment, education, and family structure (especially among working-class women) that really complicate our old models of how this stuff works. Which, in an of itself, seems pretty evidence-backed and uncontroversial and actually really useful to a feminist project, just as a way of saying that some of the challenges are shifting, some women's needs are changing.

So I always find myself wondering how she's wound up discussed in such a super-contentious way -- obviously Slate's contrarian framing and headlines are a big part of it, but is there stuff she's actually written or said that's as aggressive as what comes back? Is there some sense that she's purposefully baiting or needling feminists and then hiding behind an innocent "but I only said this simple thing" facade? It just seems like whether or not people agree with it, the core idea she's trying to introduce into the conversation -- that facts on the ground for the average American women she studied no longer entirely match the way some people would frame those women's struggles -- shouldn't be such a flamey eye-rolling Rosin-versus-feminism argument.

Anyway, I'm mostly asking, here -- am I missing some really galling element of what she's doing? I grant that it's a little bit of a pose to be like "I wanted to convey that the 'patriarchy' was not a fixed monolith we could never get around but something shifting and changing and open to analysis AND THEN IRRATIONAL NUANCE-PHOBIC IDEOLOGUES YELLED AT ME FOR SAYING SOMETHING INNOCUOUS," but it's kind of a role other people have handed her just as much as she's adopted herself...

(FTR I have not read her book, just lots of the ensuing discussion, so I am not being rhetorical when I say "did I miss something," I am very likely missing something)

The Slate article is written by her though, and contains the line "In the real world it’s hard to find a young woman who spends her time scanning for sexist insults. But on the Web it’s a steady job."

Sexist insults just happen, unbidden, so it's not like women who note them are out looking around for them, on the web or off.

if you have a tumblr collating instances of sexism/moderately wide leg stances i suppose you wld be on the look out for content somewhat. i think rosin is concerned w/ the way experiences are concentrated/filtered into rote forms (i.e. tumblr of male leg angles), & how the resultant taxonomy might shape ppl's subsequent experiences (becoming v aware of male leg angles)

But the reaction in my experience isn't "Oh I'll keep an eye out for that", it's "I recognise this, let me tell you about a dozen other examples I saw this week".

i don't think she's talking about individual conscious responses to those structures so much as their broader effect on discourse/ppl's collective mental architecture. as w/ discussions of patriarchy, individual instances are often ambiguous/weak but looking at them on the macro level you can do yr structural critique or w/e.

Ah come on now, at least stick a lick of paint on "I'd rather discuss theoretical responses than real ones". The quote above isn't talking about macro levels of critique - it's saying "These people (who exist) don't really".

I mean, the point is that no-one would describe themselves as "scanning" for sexist insults, but that's just question-begging in favour of the fucked worldview that you need to go out with the deerstalker and magnifying glass to track down the wily sexist.

i've not read to much substantial from her to feel very strongly about her, but, trollsome phrasing aside, pondering the effects & workings of structures that systematically/professionally dismantle the patriarchy for entertainment does not seem like 100% garbage. what i've seen of her's has been identifying things rather than analysis, but arguing about discourse and method is a healthy feminist staple, & there have been fairly pointed complaints raised about this recently cf. #solidarityisforwhitewomen

I'm kind of getting the impression you didn't read the article here? 'scanning' isn't just awkward phrasing - the last paragraph literally says "And you can, if you look hard enough, find some sexist bastard at a tech company or a hedge fund or a frat who says insulting things every day."

it's not awkward so much as indignant. i don't think reading her uncharitably is instructive

you can if you look or if you dont look really

but who decides what counts as a squint, what's a glance? this is the real issue you are avoiding

i'm always squinting, that's my defense

hey dyao when you've stopped making racist jokes could you let me know how far off i am in guess the city, cheers

you were misled by nakh, it's his fault really

i'll never read his posts again

way to swear off ilx's most redeeming feature

that slate piece just seems to be about the old question of how you acknowledge and track the contours of progress while there is still work to be done with a side of eye rolling at the tumblrization of discourse

shes seems to be asking which patriarchy are we talking about the one from 1950 or is it different now what are its qualities

its def somewhat provocative but is prob highlighted by the classic set up of assuming youre talking to friends when no such mutual feeling exists on the other end of the conversation

http://feministjosebautista.tumblr.com

A+

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/10/03/228809153/why-gorillas-arent-sexist-and-orangutans-dont-rape

according to this website i'm a fucking feminist. it seems a tad reductive to me tho?

http://www.amiafuckingfeminist.com

^NO WAY SNA FOR PAY

http://theaerogram.com/surreal-media-reaction-today-show-marriage-proposal/

Thought this was interesting

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/20/in_defense_of_rape_fantasies/

no thanks

dude

that's kind of par for the course for the author, isn't it?

now if it were on slate, and by yglesias, THAT would be... something

by the same author: In defense of funeral selfies

Suddenly all the feminist rights advocates in my twitter are posting selfies as some sort of solidarity thing.

some of them are pretty cuet

http://theaerogram.com/surreal-media-reaction-today-show-marriage-proposal/

Thought this was interesting

― 乒乓, Monday, November 18, 2013 2:21 PM (3 days ago)

it's great and she is otm

it's sort of surprising that salon still exists.

I've been too busy this week to think about this thread but I don't think I have a problem w the defense of rape fantasy, which the title makes sound way more sensational than the article actually is, iirc.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/it-s-true-male-and-female-brains-are-wired-differently-1.1615484

yeah i read that, apparently the differences are so marked that you can see exactly whereabouts on Venus women come from

has to be v marked because you know how terrible women are at maps

yeah but they can't help it because science

but seriously folks, and you'll excuse my science dilettantism because i'm a shallow person, i've seen no account of or connection to neuroplasticity in the reports on this research. doesn't current understanding of the way brains can rewire themselves indicate that brain function cd have just as much of a socially conditioned component as an evolutionary one?

tbh i didnt even bother reading it but nv was moaning that it was quiet and it was onscreen and..

lol you know you've got a winner in science journalism when the headline starts: 'it's true:'

ha i feel like a study on that would be well merited indeed

http://io9.com/5651462/brain-scams-the-real-science-behind-sex-differences

Take English class, for example. In the girls' class, you will find teachers asking their students to reflect on story protagonists' feelings and motives: how would you feel if? . . . sort of questions. But not in the boys' classroom, because "that question requires boys to link emotional information in the amygdala with language information in the cerebral cortex. It's like trying to recite poetry and juggle bowling pins at the same time. You have to use two different parts of the brain that don't normally work together." The problem for boys and young children, according to Sax, is that emotion is processed in the amygdala, a primitive, basic part of the brain — "that makes few direct connections with the cerebral cortex."  (In fact, the amygdala appears to be richly interconnected with the cerebral cortex.) This supposedly renders them incapable of talking about their feelings. But in older girls, emotion is processed in the cerebral cortex, which conveniently enables them to employ language to communicate what they're feeling. The implications for teaching are clear: girls to the left, phylogenetically primitive ape-brains to the right! Yet this "fact" about male brains-variants of which I have seen repeated several times in popular media — is based on a small functional neuroimaging study in which children stared passively at fearful faces. It's doubtful whether any negative emotion was involved during the study (except perhaps boredom); the children were not asked to speak or talk about what they were feeling and, critically, brain activity was not even measured in most of the areas of the brain involved in processing emotion and language. As Mark Liberman has pointed out, "the disproportion between the reported facts and Sax's interpretation is spectacular."  Even if studies did show what Sax claims (questionable), why on earth would we assume that the language parts of the brain wouldn't get involved if the child wished to speak? Shifting information from A to B is, after all, what axons and dendrites are for. Yet Sax describes with admiration a boy-brain-friendly English class in which boys study The Lord of the Flies by reading the text not with an eye on the plot, or characterization, but so as to be able to construct a map of the island.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2013/12/03/men-women-big-pnas-papers/#.Up5yzLtFTr0

http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/12/reading-while-female-misogynists-masturbation.html

This was a good read

You should buy the n+1 issue too