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FrameBenignly comments on Open thread, Feb. 9 - Feb. 15, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: MrMind 09 February 2015 09:12AM

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Comment author: gjm 10 February 2015 11:20:33PM 8 points [-]

Most of the complaints I've heard about it have nothing much to do with feminism (unless you define that term really broadly). The complaints are (1) that it's really badly written and (2) that it appears to celebrate abuse in the guise of BDSM. (I am told that actual BDSM folks are generally very, very careful about consent, for obvious reasons.)

I am not endorsing either criticism, not least because I haven't read the book. (It seems to me that #2 might be an unfair criticism, on the grounds that FSOG shouldn't be thought of as a book about domination fantasies and how people play them out, but as a domination fantasy itself.) But unless "sexual abuse and rape are bad" has become a specifically feminist (or even faux-feminist) claim now, I don't see that feminism should get either credit or blame for these criticisms.

Comment author: FrameBenignly 11 February 2015 06:40:35PM 2 points [-]

Given the weird nature of broad political categories like feminism, I wouldn't think it's almost ever fair to claim this is feminism or this isn't feminism. It seeems to me to be one of the most ambiguous terms in politics.