because the word feminism has different meanings for different people. for some it means equality and a way to get there. for others it means men are bad and women should get priority treatment. communication is hard when there is no objective meaning for any of the words we are using.
No one? There are 8 billion people screaming out whatever random ideas occurs to them for hours a day across the planet. You can’t make that statement about anything anymore.
Also there is also just plain misinformation campaigns. People creating strawman arguments pretending to be on the other side.
The No True Scotsman fallacy isn’t about people who claim to be something arbitrarily. Its about gatekeeping to preserve some kind of integrity or quality for the sake of an argument.
If I say “I’m a communist” but then espouse only fascist beliefs and display an ignorance of primary tenets of communism, am I really a communist just because I say I am?
The reality of the situation is that a movement is full of factions. People aren’t a monolith and they think differently and feel differently. Jk Rowling considers herself a feminist, and she is an iteration of what a feminist can look like sadly.
Think of religious sects, they all fall under the same umbrella of Christianity or Judaism or what have you, but have radically different beliefs and feelings.
They get involved in protests and push their agendas just like any other group of people.
Or tankies! They fucking suuuuuuck and they are communist! I like communism by the way, but tankies can eat and then shit out some Lego blocks.
Because a lot of modern (so-called 3rd wave) “feminists” are just greedy people demanding things that will advantage them but doing so behind the cover of the group so that it doesn’t look like all the other greedy bastards - it’s rightwing thinking disguised as “for the group”, which is why they worry way more about “the glass ceiling” (which disadvantages high middle class people who aren’t in an “old boys network”, which includes almost all women from thst social strata) rathar than, say, the very low salaries for women who are blue collar workers.
The previous waves of Feminism were of the “we want to be treated like everybody else” (or as I like to think of it: “get out of my way and let me be all that I can be”).
People react very differently to the “gimme shit” crowd than they do the “stop hindering me” one, and sadly the former are a lot louder (as usual for people driven by greed) and have come to dominate the image of Feminism in Anglo-Saxon countries.
With “a lot” you mean the handful of loud obnoxious people who only do that to get attention?
Because that isn’t even close to the majority.
There still are differences in treatment between the sexes, even if you yourself don’t notice them.
For example, just look up what the Bechdel test is and the difference between the reverse Bechdel test. There is still a huge difference how women get treated compared to men in media.
But the other way around also happens. Mothers still get more custody over kids than the Father. Which is ALSO something Feminists fight to fix.
For starters, I’m keenly aware of the disgustingly discrimination against women, especially in the old days - for example, in my home country of Portugal back in the 60s women weren’t allowed to leave the country without authorization from their husbands, very much a “we own you” disgusting level of discrimination - but also in modern days the cultural, legal and economic factors that transform childbirth into a massive torpedo to women’s careers and the main reason in modern days for the clear chasm in income that appears at around the mid-30s between highly educated men and women.
Further, I’m involved in a leftwing party in my country and the “gimme shit” discourse imported from Anglo-Saxon countries is sadly quite common amongst self-identified “Feminists” (mind you, that’s far from the only self-defined group demanding to be given things not given to others - “greed is good” seems to have been interiorised by a whole generation that grew up in the last 4 decades and who think personal upside maximization disguised as “compensation for a group of people identified by things they were born with were otherwise completelly different people than me were discriminated against” is being “Leftwing” because they’re not directly demanding it for themselves), though it’s not the dominant one.
Having lived in that country for over a decade and having also been involved in Politics there, I’ve also seen a lot of that amongst the upper middle classes in Britain around the ages of 30 and below, were it comes from the various flavour of liberals (who are invariably neoliberals, as Britain currently has no real leftwing beyond the Green Party) who again think they’re Leftwing so long as their “gimme” is voice as “give us”.
Meanwhile I’ve met older Feminists and they’re a whole different breed, not to mention women that fought for a better life for all, their whole lives, without ever holding the “Feminist” flag (my country has quite the Leftwing tradition and that was as much women as men).
Sadly it’s got to a point were somebody loudly claiming to be Feminist is almost invariably a “gimme shit” person that’s probably doing more to damage the broader cause of Equality that the much larger mass of Women out there fighting for equal treatment: as I said, what I believe is genuine Feminism is the “get out of the way and let me be all that I can be” kind - capable people who are discriminated against for being women rather than social players who are not against the system being gamed, they just want it to be gamed in their favour.
Mind you, the subversion of the Fight for Equality into competing groups defined by characteristics people were born with (the very same kind of way of reducing people to categories and then generalizing that anchors far right thinking) dominated by people driven by personal upside maximization is not at all specific of the fight for Equality for Women but a far broader phenomenon of subversion of the Modern Left through Divide et Impera techniques.
because the word feminism has different meanings for different people. for some it means equality and a way to get there. for others it means men are bad and women should get priority treatment. communication is hard when there is no objective meaning for any of the words we are using.
But that second meaning is a bogeyman. No one says “I am a feminist” and means that.
No one? There are 8 billion people screaming out whatever random ideas occurs to them for hours a day across the planet. You can’t make that statement about anything anymore.
Also there is also just plain misinformation campaigns. People creating strawman arguments pretending to be on the other side.
They absolutely do. I’ve met a few of them.
Then they’re not really feminists. Just like the people who say they’re Christian but then say helping the poor is socialist garbage.
I get where you’re coming from, but I vehemently disagree. That’s just the no true Scotsman fallacy.
The No True Scotsman fallacy isn’t about people who claim to be something arbitrarily. Its about gatekeeping to preserve some kind of integrity or quality for the sake of an argument.
If I say “I’m a communist” but then espouse only fascist beliefs and display an ignorance of primary tenets of communism, am I really a communist just because I say I am?
Again, I get where you’re coming from.
The reality of the situation is that a movement is full of factions. People aren’t a monolith and they think differently and feel differently. Jk Rowling considers herself a feminist, and she is an iteration of what a feminist can look like sadly.
Think of religious sects, they all fall under the same umbrella of Christianity or Judaism or what have you, but have radically different beliefs and feelings.
They get involved in protests and push their agendas just like any other group of people.
Or tankies! They fucking suuuuuuck and they are communist! I like communism by the way, but tankies can eat and then shit out some Lego blocks.
Take a look at the difference between 2nd, 3rd and 4th wave feminism… The consider post feminism arguments.
What most people consider feminism is typically called 2nd wave feminism.
But people do say “I’m NOT a feminist”, meaning not that
Because a lot of modern (so-called 3rd wave) “feminists” are just greedy people demanding things that will advantage them but doing so behind the cover of the group so that it doesn’t look like all the other greedy bastards - it’s rightwing thinking disguised as “for the group”, which is why they worry way more about “the glass ceiling” (which disadvantages high middle class people who aren’t in an “old boys network”, which includes almost all women from thst social strata) rathar than, say, the very low salaries for women who are blue collar workers.
The previous waves of Feminism were of the “we want to be treated like everybody else” (or as I like to think of it: “get out of my way and let me be all that I can be”).
People react very differently to the “gimme shit” crowd than they do the “stop hindering me” one, and sadly the former are a lot louder (as usual for people driven by greed) and have come to dominate the image of Feminism in Anglo-Saxon countries.
With “a lot” you mean the handful of loud obnoxious people who only do that to get attention?
Because that isn’t even close to the majority.
There still are differences in treatment between the sexes, even if you yourself don’t notice them.
For example, just look up what the Bechdel test is and the difference between the reverse Bechdel test. There is still a huge difference how women get treated compared to men in media.
But the other way around also happens. Mothers still get more custody over kids than the Father. Which is ALSO something Feminists fight to fix.
For starters, I’m keenly aware of the disgustingly discrimination against women, especially in the old days - for example, in my home country of Portugal back in the 60s women weren’t allowed to leave the country without authorization from their husbands, very much a “we own you” disgusting level of discrimination - but also in modern days the cultural, legal and economic factors that transform childbirth into a massive torpedo to women’s careers and the main reason in modern days for the clear chasm in income that appears at around the mid-30s between highly educated men and women.
Further, I’m involved in a leftwing party in my country and the “gimme shit” discourse imported from Anglo-Saxon countries is sadly quite common amongst self-identified “Feminists” (mind you, that’s far from the only self-defined group demanding to be given things not given to others - “greed is good” seems to have been interiorised by a whole generation that grew up in the last 4 decades and who think personal upside maximization disguised as “compensation for a group of people identified by things they were born with were otherwise completelly different people than me were discriminated against” is being “Leftwing” because they’re not directly demanding it for themselves), though it’s not the dominant one.
Having lived in that country for over a decade and having also been involved in Politics there, I’ve also seen a lot of that amongst the upper middle classes in Britain around the ages of 30 and below, were it comes from the various flavour of liberals (who are invariably neoliberals, as Britain currently has no real leftwing beyond the Green Party) who again think they’re Leftwing so long as their “gimme” is voice as “give us”.
Meanwhile I’ve met older Feminists and they’re a whole different breed, not to mention women that fought for a better life for all, their whole lives, without ever holding the “Feminist” flag (my country has quite the Leftwing tradition and that was as much women as men).
Sadly it’s got to a point were somebody loudly claiming to be Feminist is almost invariably a “gimme shit” person that’s probably doing more to damage the broader cause of Equality that the much larger mass of Women out there fighting for equal treatment: as I said, what I believe is genuine Feminism is the “get out of the way and let me be all that I can be” kind - capable people who are discriminated against for being women rather than social players who are not against the system being gamed, they just want it to be gamed in their favour.
Mind you, the subversion of the Fight for Equality into competing groups defined by characteristics people were born with (the very same kind of way of reducing people to categories and then generalizing that anchors far right thinking) dominated by people driven by personal upside maximization is not at all specific of the fight for Equality for Women but a far broader phenomenon of subversion of the Modern Left through Divide et Impera techniques.