Let's talk about feminism

Humanism
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Just listened to a talk of Abnousse Shalmani about gender roles.

Like Madeleine Pelletier, the first French woman psychiatrist in 1905, I believe, and I quote her, that “the suppression of female servitude requires the suppression of coquetry, restraint, exaggerated modesty, mawkishness of mind and language.”
I’d like to never hear again: “A girl doesn’t do that!”
You have to sit properly, but that has nothing to do with being a girl.
It’s just more polite.
You have to avoid raising your voice, but not because you’re a girl, just because you don’t make yourself heard by shouting. (DeepL translation checked by myself)

Tout comme Madeleine Pelletier, première femme française psychiatre en 1905, je crois, et je la cite, que : « la suppression de la servitude féminine passe par la suppression de la coquetterie, de la retenue, de la pudeur exagérée, des mièvreries de l’esprit et du langage. »
J’aimerais ne plus jamais entendre : « une fille ne fait pas ça ! »
Il faut s’asseoir correctement, mais cela n’a rien à voir avec le fait d’être une fille.
C’est juste plus poli.
Il faut éviter d’élever la voix, mais pas parce qu’on est une fille, juste parce qu’on ne se fait pas entendre en criant. (Original)

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@mriana

Mriana, may I ask who is your favorite feminist thinker, or figure, if you have any?

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Feminism seems to matter far more online than it does in real life. I’ve never met anybody who cares that much about it. Personally, I am not a feminist at all.

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Why aren’t you a feminist?

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Complete equality between men and women is impossible due to the tremendous differences between the sexes.

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This might be only one understanding/definition of feminism.

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Gloria Steinem of course. She’s been around all my life and she fought for the ERA, was against Vietnam War, supported abortion/reproductive rights, among other things. I read MS magazine before I was even a teenager. My favourite section to read was “A thump on the head”. Her only mistake, IMO, was not supporting Shirley Chisholm. Even so, she was an all around feminist.

Part of her address to Women of America:

This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.[[61]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem#cite_note-61)
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You haven’t met me in RL. You have no idea how much I care it about it.

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See my Gloria Steinem quote above. Guess you enjoy being superior over others. rolling eyes

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Ok. Thanks.

To me, the goal is the life and autonomy of the individual.

I am an individualist philosophically and methodologically.

But left-leaning people such as Gloria Steinem focus on groups.

However, groups don’t exist. They are just names to refer easily to parts of reality.

True, sex differentiates between “men” and “women”, but sex is only one of the many features that differentiate each individual.

Feminism is only a means to ensure life for each individual and to reach higher autonomy for each individual.

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I don’t see how the goal could be anything else.

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You can see my post above.

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I have never heard this description of feminism. Frankly, it sounds like Liberalism.

1 Like
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This is called liberal feminism and that exists. → Liberal feminism - Wikipedia

IMK, it existed before communist feminism, which became the most well-known form of feminism.

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It reads like standard Liberalism. Respect for the individual and equality before for the law are probably the main tenets of liberalism.

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(From Hi! I’m Lozenge - #10 by lozenge)

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“The most successful feminist movie ever made is in favor of market, is not socialist at all.” Deirdre McCloskey about Barbie

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I loathe Barbie. Even as a kid I wasn’t a fan of Barbie. She’s an unrealistic portrayal of a human female. She’s not even human for that matter. She not even about feminism.

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None of what you said made any sense. How is fighting for abortion rights and reproductive rights not a group thing? Yes, it does deal with the individual, but you also have to have health care rights for everyone and abortion and reproduction IS health care. It needs to be codified just as voting rights have been codified and again this is a group thing, not an individual thing. In order to have rights for one, everyone in that group must have that right too. It is/was the same for voting rights too.

I’m “left-leaning” and as I said, you have to focus on groups of people and in this case the focus is on women’s rights, which includes health care rights. You can’t just focus on the individual in these cases. It is men who attempt to take rights, especially things that deal with health care, from women, which is where the biggest difference is. Men can’t have abortions, yet they do have more reproductive rights than women. However, abortions are health care for women in that it can save their life, it can give them a chance to grow up (young girls raped or victims of incest), it can give them a totally different life then if they carried said pregnancy to term, it can keep them from dealing with a baby that dies minutes after birth, among many other reasons for abortion. The thing is, it has to be a safe abortion and that has to be done under the care of a real doctor.

1 Like
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Left-leaning feminist care about the group, not about the individuals. This is what translates in their rhetoric, in their modes of action, and even in their goals (talking more about “women” as a group of people, than as individuals).

Condorcet and Mill were among the first feminists…

The rhetoric you have well illustrates what I say above: it tends to antagonize groups of people.

For instance when you say “It is men who attempt to take rights”, I feel quite offended as a feminist man.