drethelin comments on Factions, inequality, and social justice - Less Wrong

23 [deleted] 03 December 2012 07:37PM

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Comment author: ialdabaoth 04 December 2012 01:33:53AM *  -1 points [-]

As a sane feminist, I was happy to discover sane MRA type sites such as ozy's No Seriously, What About teh Menz?, and the over-arching The Good Men Project. These sites opened my eyes to the valid concerns of the MRA movement, such as issues regarding male rape, child custody, and the censure and unavailability of feminine style toys (dolls, dresses, EZ Bake Ovens, etc) for little boys.

In my view, these are not MRA issues. These are feminist issues. There doesn't need to be a "Men's Rights Movement"; because men's rights should be an inherent component of the feminist perspective, which is that femininity should be nurtured and encouraged instead of being stamped out. Whether a feminine [i.e., nurturing, compassionate, cooperative and socially-conscious] personality happens to bud within a body with a vagina or a penis should be irrelevant.

It should be part of the feminist foundation, at the "bedrock" as it were, that people have the right to choose their orientation, their personality, their gender, and their social roles regardless of what kind of dangly bits they have, and that judgments about the worth or suitability of a particular person should be made based on that person's actual capabilities, rather than based on social assumptions or even aggregate statistical stereotyping. If rape is bad, then feminism should be against rape, not merely against rape of women. If gender stereotyping is bad, then feminism should be against gender stereotyping, not merely against gender stereotyping of women. If external reproductive control is bad, then feminism should be against external reproductive control, not merely against external reproductive control of women.

If using gender norms to devaluing the personhood of human beings is bad, then feminism should be against any process that would use a gender norm to devalue the personhood of human beings, including processes within so-called "feminism" that would say "our concern is only what happens to women."

This is why, as a human being with a penis, I feel that I can legitimately say "I am a feminist", rather than merely saying "I am a feminist ally".

Comment author: drethelin 04 December 2012 08:14:26AM 10 points [-]

Using feminism to refer to issue's of men's rights is like using the phrase white power to refer to issue's about african american rights. Whatever argument you then make about broadening the meaning of the term is obviously and instantly undermined by the linguistic problems present.

Also: a LOT of people use feminism to mean "more rights for women and who cares about men?". Your more broad species of feminism is inclusive almost to the point of being meaningless. It's like using the word feminism to mean "good".