For feminist blogs that aren't horribly ideological echo chambers, I recommend Clarisse Thorn and Ethecofem.
I'm a big fan of Finally Feminism 101. It shows how badly certain feminist arguments fall down when actually articulated. For instance, good luck parsing the argument for why male privilege exists, but female privilege doesn't:
No, what is commonly called “female privilege” is better described as benevolent sexism.
If I understand this correctly, FF101 would look at "women and children first" situations like the Titanic, HMS Birkenhead, and Srebrenica Massacre and say that women disproportionately being protected is not "female privilege," but rather "benevolent sexism." And keep in mind that by "benevolent sexism," FF101 means sexism towards women, not towards men. Even though it's the men who end up dead.
Because it's so much more sexist to be patronized with a spot on a lifeboat, rather than being left to die. For some reason, men getting disproportionately assigned to death doesn't count as sexism (towards men) or as a lack of privilege in the eyes of FF101. Something is very wrong with their moral philosophy.
So, why do women lack privilege?
Also, it should be noted that, while men have what’s called male privilege that doesn’t mean that there must logically be a “female privilege” counterpart. This is because, although many strides towards equality have been made over the years, women as a class have not yet leveled the playing field, much less been put in a position of power and authority equivalent to that which grants institutional power to men as a class.
FF101 seems to argue that a group must have institutional power as a class to have gender privilege. Why? Because FF101 says so, evidently. (I won't even touch the sophistry enabled by the words "institutional" and "class" for now.)
This claim is not at all obvious. In the case of my above examples, the people in charge with "institutional power" were indeed male (officers on the ships, or both the Serbian and U.N. decision-makers in the case of the massacre). Yet these elite men did not behave as if other men were in the same "class" as them. Actually, they used their "institutional power" to throw other men under the boat (literally, in the case of the Titanic and Birkenhead), and into mass graves (in the case of Srebrenica).
Institutional power being held by people who are male does not seem to stop women from being massively advantaged over men in lifeboat situations, and in surviving conflict zones. Not calling this sort of advantage "privilege" makes it look like FF101 is defining it in an exclusionary and self-serving way. I'm quite sure that if the doctrine was "men and children first," FF101 would consider it to be sexism towards women, and an example of male privilege.
The other curious assumption by FF101 is that women would have to level the playing field for female privilege to exist. This assumes a unidimensional analysis of power, where one group (men) just hangs over another group (women) in all areas. Yet if in certain domains, women indeed experience unjust advantages while men experience unjust disadvantages (see examples above, for instance), then why can't we say that women are privileged in some domains while lacking privilege in others?
It's as FF101 thinks that there is a unidimensional hierarchy with men over women, and while that hierarchy exists, women can't have privilege... even in areas where they have advantages that would get called "privilege" if possessed by men. First, FF101 has not shown that such a unidimensional hierarchy exists, or that men occupy the dominant position in this hierarchy. Second, even if it did exist, I suppose we could define privilege to only be held by the "dominant class"... but why should we define it that way, when it's rather counter-intuitive (e.g. defining protection of female lives over male lives as "not privilege"), and when it gives at least the perception of double standards? Given multiple ways of conceptualizing oppression, why pick the one that is least inclusive, and most alienating to people you are trying to turn into allies?
I believe that inclusive conceptualizations of privilege and oppression are not only more accurate and humane than the FF101 conceptualization, but also potentially more effective for getting more groups involved in social justice without making them into the bad guys. As I suggested to you in my other response, recognizing women's advantages could make it cognitively easier for some men to recognize their own. With more inclusive concepts, social justice would actually live up to its name rather than be "social justice for me, but not for thee."
Of course, if FF101 isn't just concerned with social justice, and is also trying to maintain power over the terms of gender discourse, while self-servingly brushing harms towards women and advantages of men with a conceptual secret sauce that makes it more special than the reverse... then their language makes more sense. Another plausible explanation is that they are simply uneducated about all the harms towards men and advantages of women they call "benevolent sexism," in which case their theories are based on highly incomplete data (and we have to wonder how much feminism contributes to that lack of education).
Regarding "women and children first" etc.
I agree with you completely that being put on a lifeboat is better than not being put on a lifeboat. Full stop. The men are clearly getting the raw end of this deal. They're being treated as disposable while the women and children are identified as precious. That is sexism, it's against men, and it's bad; the 101 FAQ is just wrong about that.
However, that doesn't preclude the conceptualization of "women and children first" from being sexist against women (although a mere conceptualization doe...
I'm seeking some feminist consciousness-raising, and I'm hoping some LWers (Alicorn?) can help.
Specifically, I've never understood why "objectification" is wrong.
I'm a tall white American male, so sometimes it takes a bit of work for me to understand what it's like to be a member of a suppressed group. I still need regular training in avoiding sexist language, etc.
First: my background. When I was 10ish I encountered the word "feminism" for the first time. I asked my mom what the word meant.
She said, "It's the idea that women should have the same rights and privileges as men do."
And I thought, "They have a word for that?" It seemed too obvious to deserve its own word. It felt like having a special word for the idea that left-handers and right-handers should have the same rights and privileges.
So I've always thought of myself as a feminist.
Of course, some activists (the word has positive connotations to me, BTW) pushed too far, as is the case in all large movements. At some times and places (1980s academia, I think), it was common to assert that there are almost no (average) significant differences between men and women that aren't caused by enculturation, except for genitalia. That is of course false. Hormones matter, especially during development.
Such overreaches made it psychologically easier for some non-feminists to dismiss legitimate feminist demands and resist thousands of much-needed feminist advances (which are still ongoing).
Now, on this matter of objectification. I've never understood it. I've tried to get people to explain it to me before, but they were (apparently) not well-trained in rationality. I'm hoping a rationalist can explain it to me.
Here's my confusion about objectification. Depending on what you mean by "objectification," it seems to be either something that (1) is very often perfectly acceptable, or that (2) means something very narrow and is usually not being exemplified when there is an accusation of it being exemplified.
Let me explain.
Earlier, when I tried to figure out what "objectification" was and why it was wrong, the leading article on the topic seemed to be one by philosopher Martha Nussbaum. She lays out the goal of her paper like this:
Using examples, she then outlines seven ways to treat a person as a thing. Rae Langton added three more in 2009, bringing the total count to 10 ways to treat a person as a thing:
Consider a classic example of objectification from Playboy magazine: a photo of a female tennis player bending over, revealing her butt, above the caption "Why We Love Tennis."
The Playboy image exhibits at least eight features of objectification: instrumentalization, denial of autonomy, fungibility, denial of subjectivity, reduction to body, reduction to appearance, and silencing!
But, let's consider another example of objectification, what I'll call the Muddy People photo:
To us, these people are nothing but objects of our entertainment and pleasure. We have instrumentalized them. Moreover, they are fungible. It does not matter to us which people are covered in mud and looking silly. And just as with the Playboy example, this photo involves a denial of autonomy. Indeed, it is doubtful the permission to publish their photos was obtained. Moreover, we are not much interested in the feelings of these people but only their role in entertaining us as we gaze upon their mud-caked bodies – a denial of subjectivity. Often, nothing of these mud-covered people can be seen or known except their bodies – in many cases, only body parts, sticking every which way. This is the reduction to body. There is also clearly a reduction to appearance. Their mud-covered appearance is their only interest to us. In many cases, the emotions they might be having are totally obscured by the mud covering their faces. They are also, of course, silent to us.
So all the features of objectification found in the Playboy example, which we might feel is wrong somehow, are also shared by the Muddy People photo, which we probably feel is acceptable. Perhaps this suggests that our feelings are poor guides to moral truth. Or maybe what is wrong with the Playboy photo is something other than objectification.
Of course, there are disanalogies to be found. The Playboy example (especially with the caption) involved sexuality, and the Muddy People photo does not particularly do so. But if this is the line of thought that leads us to condemn Playboy but not the Muddy People photo, then we are bringing in another concept besides objectification.
For example, perhaps we want to say that Playboy‘s objectifications harm women by contributing to a culture of sexual prejudice, but the Muddy People objectifications do not cause any such harm. But then we are not appealing to this Kantian notion of "objectification." Rather, we are appealing to utilitarian principles. (Feminist philosopher Lina Papadaki makes similar objections to the notion of objectification.)
We all use each other as means to an end, or as objects of one kind or another, all the time. And we can do so while respecting their autonomy. I enjoy looking at the shapes and textures in the Muddy People photo while also respecting that the people whose bodies make up those shapes and textures are autonomous individuals of great value. But their value as individuals is not the point of the photo. The point of the photo, in this case, is that it's an interesting picture to look at. And that's okay, I think.
Good romantic partners use each other as a means to their own gratification while also respecting each others' autonomy. We use each other as sex objects, as emotion objects, as conversation objects, as knowledge objects, as carpool objects, and as other objects, all the time - while also respecting each others' autonomy and value. It's not clear to me what's wrong with that.
So if something like Nussbaum's analysis of "objectification" is what is meant by the term, then I don't see what's wrong with it. But if it means something much more narrow (what? I don't know), then I doubt it is exemplified nearly as often as people are accused of exemplifying it.
I reject Kant's epistemology, logic, and metaphysics - as I think any scientifically-informed person should. But even if you do accept all three, I still don't see what's intrinsically wrong with objectification as Nussbaum defines it.
Maybe I'm being dense. That has happened before. I'm not posting this with much confidence that objectification is a mostly useless concept. I'm posting this in pursuit of some consciousness-raising.
Understanding the problem is the first step toward fixing it. And right now I don't understand the problem. So if you have the time, please teach me.
Thanks.
Update: below, I'll keep an updated list of the most useful articles I've found so far.