Which doesn't justify attacking her choice in the matter at all.
Sure. But it does give a pretty decent explanation of what is going on and makes clear that this isn't useful as evidence for the initial claim (that she was being attacked for the choice made), when there are so many other circumstances,. (Feminism, like any other political movement has the same standard problems political movements have. This shouldn't be surprising and shouldn't be a specific strike against feminism any more than it is against any other group.)
MRAs - yes, but for a different reason. The men's rights movement is still unheard-of enough that few people have actual opinions on them. The reason I'd advocate -they- change their name is that I suspect a lot of the hazards feminism ran into was the gender bias inherent in the label.
So this seems like one of the stronger(strongest?) arguments for changing the name of feminism. But at the same time, the MRAs have a serious problem: in the same way that some people have extremely negative associations with feminism, many have similar issues with the MRAs. If someone were to want to seriously deal with gender inequality issues in custody disputes, I'd strongly advise them to keep themselves away from being associated with the MRAs.
The Tea Party and Occupy movements are too young, I think, to recommend changing their names. That would just be capricious.
Really? I suspect that most Americans at least at this point have opinions about both these two movements, and for many they aren't at all positive. See for example this study which shows that slightly under half the US has a negative view of the Tea Party.
They don't get to complain about the negative connotations if they're mining the word specifically for its connotations. That's just hypocrisy.
The difference here is connotations and having fuzzy boundaries, or a denotation of bad history. In this case, the connotations and denotations get sort of wrapped up. But it isn't unreasonable to use a term because it has some positive connotations and specifically use a variant of that term to mean "the version with these positives and not these negatives", e.g. "Third Wave Feminism" or something similar.
Moreover, if one makes a completely new term, one has the problem of then losing the identity, structure, and social support one gets
That's part of the idea, yes. Dissolve the old structures and start anew.
So this means you can't benefit from the old structures. Worse, when one does try to do this sort of thing, people who want to smear your movement can still connect you to the old term and accuse you (correctly) of essentially changing your name for marketing purposes. And when one does this sort of thing, often the end result is that you still get the negative associations. (See e.g. the whole debacle of trying to split off "intelligence design" from "creationism" for example.)
It might make sense to split off and form a completely new group or setting when there are serious problems. But that would require a careful evaluation of the pros and cons, and the opinion of someone who has a negative view already may not be very good evidence. Moreover, there's always the danger that repeated splitting leads to things like this, or more amusingly this.
But at the same time, the MRAs have a serious problem: in the same way that some people have extremely negative associations with feminism, many have similar issues with the MRAs. If someone were to want to seriously deal with gender inequality issues in custody disputes, I'd strongly advise them to keep themselves away from being associated with the MRAs.
I'm just wandering past your conversation, but I think many people are just offended by the concept of men demanding rights - y'know, because they have enough damn rights already, and so on.
That is, th...
Daenerys' Note: This is the last item in the LW Women series. Thanks to all who participated. :)
Standard Intro
The following section will be at the top of all posts in the LW Women series.
Several months ago, I put out a call for anonymous submissions by the women on LW, with the idea that I would compile them into some kind of post. There is a LOT of material, so I am breaking them down into more manageable-sized themed posts.
Seven women replied, totaling about 18 pages.
Standard Disclaimer- Women have many different viewpoints, and just because I am acting as an intermediary to allow for anonymous communication does NOT mean that I agree with everything that will be posted in this series. (It would be rather impossible to, since there are some posts arguing opposite sides!)
To the submitters- If you would like to respond anonymously to a comment (for example if there is a comment questioning something in your post, and you want to clarify), you can PM your message and I will post it for you. If this happens a lot, I might create a LW_Women sockpuppet account for the submitters to share.
Please do NOT break anonymity, because it lowers the anonymity of the rest of the submitters.
Submitter E
I'm a girl, and by me that's only great.
No seriously. I've grown up and lived in the social circles where female privilege way outweigh male privilege. I've never been sexually assaulted, nor been denied anything because of my gender. I study a male-dominated subject, and most of my friends are polite, deferential feminism-controlled men. I have, however, been able to flirt and sympathise and generally girl-game my way into getting what I want. (Charming guys is fun!) Sure, there will eventually come a point where I'll be disadvantaged in the job market because of my ability to bear children; but I've gotta balance that against the fact that I have the ability to bear children.
In fact, most of the gender problems I personally face stem from biology, so there's not much I can do about them. It sucks that I have to be the one responsible for contraception, and that my attractiveness to men depends largely on my looks but the inverse is not true. But there's not much society can do to change biological facts, so I live with them.
I don't think it's a very disputed fact that women, in general, tend to be more emotional than men. I'm an INFJ, most of my (male) friends are INTJ. With the help of Less Wrong's epistemology and a large pinch of Game, I've achieved a fair degree of luminosity over my inner workings. I'm complicated. I don't think my INTJ friends are this complicated, and the complicatedness is part of the reason why I'm an "F": my intuitions system is useful. It makes me really quite good at people, especially when I can introspect and then apply my conscious to my instincts as well. I don't know how many of the people here are F instead of T, but for anyone who uses intuition a lot, applying proper rationality to introspection (a.k.a. luminosity) is essential. It is so so so easy to rationalise, and it takes effort to just know my instinct without rationalising false reasons for it. I'm not sure the luminosity sequence helps everyone, because everyone works differently, but just being aware of the concept and being on the lookout for ways that work is good.
There's a problem with strong intuition though, and that's that I have less conscious control over my opinions - it's hard enough being aware of them and not rationalising additional reasons for them. I judge ugly women and unsuccessful men. I try to consciously adjust for the effect, but it's hard.
Onto the topic of gender discussions on Less Wrong - it annoys me how quickly things gets irrational. The whole objectification debacle of July 2009 proved that even the best can get caught up in it (though maybe things have got better since 2009?). I was confused in the same way Luke was: I didn't see anything wrong with objectification. I objectify people all the time, but I still treat them as agents when I need to. Porn is great, but it doesn't mean I'm going to find it harder to befriend a porn star. I objectify Eliezer Yukowsky because he's a phenomenon on the internet more than a flesh-and-blood person to me, but that doesn't mean I'd have difficulty interacting with a flesh-and-blood Eliezer. On the whole, Less Wrong doesn't do well at talking about controversial topics, even though we know how to. Maybe we just need to work harder. Maybe we need more luminosity. I would love for Less Wrong to be a place where all things could just be discussed rationally.
There's another reason that I come out on a different side to most women in feminism and gender discussions though, and this is the bit I'm only saying because it's anonymous. I'm not a typical woman. I act, dress and style feminine because I enjoy feeling like a princess. I am most fulfilled when I'm in a M-dom f-sub relationship. My favourite activity is cooking and my honest-to-god favourite place in the house is the kitchen. I take pride in making awesome sandwiches. I just can't alieve it's offensive when I hear "get in the kitchen", because I'd just be like "ok! :D". I love sex, and I value getting better at it. I want to be able to have sex like a porn star. Suppressing my gag reflex is one of the most useful things I learned all year. I love being hit on and seduced by men. When I dress sexy, it is because male attention turns me on. I love getting wolf whistles. Because of luminosity and self-awareness, I'm ever-conscious of the vagina tingle. I'm aware of when I'm turned on, and I don't rationalise it away. And the same testosterone that makes me good at a male-dominated subject, makes sure I'm really easily turned on.
I understand that all these things are different when I'm consenting and I'm viewed as an agent and all that. But it's just hard to understand other girls being offended when I'm not, because it's much harder to empathise with someone you don't agree with. Not generalising from one example is hard.
Understanding other girls is hard.