Why would you reference a list of "female privilege" that includes circumcision? That's not exactly helping you prove your point.

Could you please taboo "oppression" and its synonyms? You seem to be using it as a sort of discrimination/cognitive bias affair which doesn't seem to fit colloquial use of oppression.

Oppression in common usage appears to signify systematic stereotyping with a net negative effect for the population group in question, or specific behaviors associated with oppression of a group, in which case neither males nor white males are oppressed, even though there are indubitably cases where discrimination and cognitive biases turn out negatively for specific subgroups (such as male nurses, cuckolds, divorcees, etc.)

"Objectification" is another such concept. We know that it's yet another piece of jargon for a bad thing that men do to women. But we don't really know what it and why it's wrong, nor it is demarcated from ethical forms of imagery.

Objectification is a well-defined and experimentally verified to exist phenomenon by which women in western society at least judge themselves by the impression others have of their physical bodies, which correlates, amongst other things, to eating disorders.

While the connection between sexual imagery and objectification is less easily findable with google scholar, here is a study which correlates violence in watched pornography with short-term aggressive behavior.

With this definition of objectification - the identification of women and their physical appearance (9 on the list) - it is obvious that the Playboy magazine is an example of an act of objectification, while people playing in mud is not: the playboy magazine serves to display a prime specimen of the female body, while the other image serves to display a prime specimen of people playing in mud.

Hence, the only assumption we need to make is that playboy magazines cause the same objectification which causes psychological damage to women is that objectifying specific women or seeing women being objectified causes the objectification of other women, which frankly does not seem unbelievable because it's basic "monkey see, monkey do".

It should also be noted that every last posited "defining characteristic" is directly implied by characteristic #9. #8 through specification and the others by negative phrasing, and that #9 is in fact the apparent scientific definition of the concept. So while the other characteristics increase the probability of objectification, they don't guarantee it.

Of course, social constructionism isn't the only objection to feminism. See this post for some other books that critique feminism. Keep in mind that not all feminists make these sorts of errors, but particular groups of feminists do, and don't get sufficiently called on it.

One last thing: Your statement that not all feminists are social constructivists implies that the truth value of social constructivism doesn't affect the truth value of feminism, but rather the truth value of whatever those feminists do believe that makes them social constructivists, assuming there are rational feminists who are not social constructivists.

PS: Hi, I'm new here. Please be patient with me if I'm in error.

lukeprog said:

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.

It's a high-status truism in polite, liberal middle-class society that white males are not oppressed (except perhaps on the dimensions of class and sexual orientation). That's exactly the sort of belief that should be interrogated on LW.

I propose that you have more insight into the oppression of other groups than you think, because you actually are a member of an oppressed group (males). You just haven't been trained to conceptualize your experiences as oppression, like women have been trained by feminism.

For many readers, the notion that men are "oppressed" may be controversial. This view of oppression is denied by mainstream academic feminists. Nevertheless, some feminists do believe that men are oppressed (though not "as much" as women).

Rather than argue that men are oppressed myself, I will refer to feminist sociologist Caroline New's amazing paper Oppressed and Oppressors? The Systematic Mistreatment of Men, which I discussed a while ago on my blog:

I shall argue that both women and men are oppressed, but not symmetrically. While men are positioned to act as systematic agents of the oppression of women, women are not in such a relation to men. Yet unsurprisingly, given the inescapably relational character of gender, the two oppressions are complementary in their functioning—the practices of each contribute to the reproduction of the other. In particular, the very practices which construct men’s capacity to oppress women and interest in doing so, work by systematically harming men.

Why do you think you aren't a member of a suppressed/oppressed group? What thought process led you to accept that premise?

I don't know about you, but I accepted that view in the past because I was encultured with it. Since you are someone who was socialized with another set of beliefs that you now question (religion), are alarm bells going off in your head yet? Even if it's most reasonable to conclude that white males are not oppressed, I hypothesize that most people who hold that belief do so for the wrong reasons, and can't actually show why it's true.

"Objectification" is another such concept. We know that it's yet another piece of jargon for a bad thing that men do to women. But we don't really know what it and why it's wrong, nor it is demarcated from ethical forms of imagery.

Back to you:

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.

Social constructionism is alive and well in Women's Studies programs today. For instance, I encountered claims that both sexual orientation and sex (i.e. male/female) are socially constructed.

Of course, social constructionism isn't the only objection to feminism. See this post for some other books that critique feminism. Keep in mind that not all feminists make these sorts of errors, but particular groups of feminists do, and don't get sufficiently called on it.

The reason you should ignore poor performance if you say "No, you're doing it wrong!" you are inadvertently punishing the effort. A better response to a mistake would be to reinforce the effort: "Good effort! You're almost there! Try once more.

I am probably unusual in this regard, but I think I would find both approaches equally aggravating. If someone points out that I've made a mistake, anything other than a concise detailing of exactly how what I did differs from what I was supposed to do, is just going to irritate me. Also, my brain tends to interpret being ignored as a signal that I'm doing correctly.

Yeah, there's kind of a perceptual/patternmatching arms race going on there -- if you're too blatant about it, or the intended recipient of the reinforcement is just that perceptive, then they're reading the script too and it won't have the intended result. It could backfire (as in your example; semantically-positive reinforcement becomes pragmatically-negative), or send undesirable information ("you wouldn't have put it that way unless something were up, and that gives me a clue"), or open you to counter social-engineering scripts if the part knows what they're doing.

Depends, the current "everyone is special, everyone deserves an A for trying" culture almost certainly overvalues positive reinforcement.

Depressive realism is an incredibly, well, depressing fact about the world.

It's not that depressing. If it was lack of bias that caused the depression, that would be bad, but I'm pretty certain it's the other way around.

Casey seems perfectly rational to me.

If you're in the hole 2.2.mil, what is the harm to you of doubling down? You'll have to declare bankruptcy twice as loudly?

This point was actually driven home to me over 20 years ago when I interviewed for trading position. If your company is way in the hole, it may as well take what assets it has and make a leveraged bet. Either it gets out of the hole, or it's twice as broke, which given limited liability, really isn't any more of a problem for the corporate officers.

Reading through the context confirms that the relevant probability is p(increased knowledge). I have no specified position on whether the knowledge gained is sufficient to justify the expenditure of effort.