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Eugine_Nier comments on I've had it with those dark rumours about our culture rigorously suppressing opinions - Less Wrong
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I've asserted occasionally that post-modern moral theories (like the worthwhile parts of feminism) are consistent with empiricism. That is, they look at what as happened before and make predictions about will happen in the future.
That is often down-voted. I suspect that this is because taking feminism seriously would require people to re-think their methods of interacting with others, in a way that would be extremely challenging to their personal identities. That way leads to mindkilling (By the transitive property: The personal is political + Politics is the Mindkiller => The personal is the mindkiller).
My experience is the exact opposite.
Let me put it this way: If Marxist history were true, that would falsify Foucault. As I understand it, one of the purposes of Foucault's philosophical project was to explain why Marxist history could sometimes say insightful things even if it was wrong.
And I'll say again the post-modern thought is often co-opted by more mainstream thought. What's left behind is not representative of the insight-fulness of post-modern thought.
Unfortunately the result appears less insightful then the original Marxist theory.
Ok, how about a pair of feminist prediction:
I suspect this one is somewhat true.
The evidence seems clear that this thesis is insufficiently nuanced at best, and probably wrong. But consider what social messages might be successfully conveyed by E.E. Cummings and his idiosyncratic punctuation.
I fail to see how this is a particularly "feminist" prediction, i.e., just about any other social theory makes some version of this prediction.
Ok, let's do a cross cultural analysis based on whether the native language has this property and attitudes towards women. You will find this prediction rather easily falsified.
A substantial amount of modern social theory of all kinds draws heavily on feminism. Folk social theory doesn't seem to agree, as evidenced by the fact that people still make rape jokes.
First, you say this like I didn't know this already, when I already said it was wrong in my comment. Second, other empirical fields make wrong predictions as well, so this is hardly proof that feminism is not empirical.
I was actually thinking of the implicit social theory based on what was considered "acceptable" and/or "respectable" in pre-feminism days.
Then why did you select it as one of your two examples showing that feminism is empirical? Also, to the extent that the statement is meaningful, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis predates feminism.
What precise time period are you talking about? In post-war America, rape jokes, like racist jokes, were relatively common. In the Victorian era, who knows the prevalence of the jokes, but I'm doubtful their social theories suggested a connection between rape-joke-frequency and actual rape-frequency.
You are right, it's not a good example of the point I was trying to make.
Perhaps, but the moralists of the day also condemned them. See the Hays code for an example of this. If you were to ask one of these moralists what was wrong with having rape jokes in movies, they'd probably answer some version of arguing that it promotes rape.
If you mean relatively common compared to today, it doesn't sound right to me. You're far more likely to see a rape joke on TV these days than in the 1950s and 60s. Racist observations are a large part of the output of modern professional comedians.
Although kids entertainment is probably less racist these days than ever before.