3d ago

Are you a feminist? (If so why, if not why not?)

Might help also to describe what you think feminism is, since it's one of those terms that is overloaded.

I once had a physical therapist tell me she wasn't a feminist because she thought women couldn't be as physically capable as men when serving as soldiers, and seemed to believe feminism requires treating women exactly like men.

I told her I was a feminist because I believe in equal rights for men and women, an idea she did not seem so opposed to.

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263 comments

Feminist as fuck!
Feminism is the fight for equality, with a particular focus on the needs of women and folk perceived as women. Men are included in feminism, but indirectly, in that improving equality for women necessarily requires addressing systems, norms and issues that negatively impact men as well.
Sure, it's easy to say that you're "egalitarian" or believe in "equality for all", but those sound bites, whilst heading off the anti feminist folk, completely fail to address the fact that inequality is not equally spread between men and women. When everything else is equal, women still deal with more inequality than men, and feminism is exists because of that fact
- When everything else is equal, women still deal with more inequality than men, and feminism is exists because of that fact
  this is such a succinct and eloquent point about why "feminism" is focused on women at all ... this point seems lost on so many men, who seem to think "equality" demands we ignore the way inequality and power is distributed, as if the only approach to the situation is a kind of gender-blindness, and anything else is hypocrisy
- Can you explain how women deal with more inequality than men?
  
  Until 1972, birth control pills were not accessible to unmarried women.
  Until 1973, women in most states could not serve on juries in the U.S.
  Until 1974, women were unable to obtain a credit card or open a bank account without their husband as co-signer (and unmarried women were entirely unable to have a bank account or credit card).
  Until the 1970s, women were not permitted at most Ivy Leagues (e.g. Harvard did not allow women until 1977).
  Until 1978, women could be fired for becoming pregnant.
  Until 1980, sexual harassment was not considered a form of sex discrimination, and the first legal case where a court agreed a woman was sexually harassed in the workplace was in 1977.
  Until 1993, husbands could legally rape their wives in the many states of the U.S.
  Until 2010 health insurance companies were permitted to discriminate against women and charge them higher prices than men for the same coverage.
  Until 2013, women were not permitted to serve in combat roles in the U.S. military.
  One in three women have experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner (compared to 1 in 14 for men).
  Women still earn 82 cents to the dollar compared to men, and in 1982 that was 65 cents to the dollar (the situation has not improved since the 90s).
  Women experience greater job gaps and unemployment than men.
  Only 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women.
  In 2022, only 33% of university presidents were women.
  Women currently make up less than 30% of the U.S. House of Representatives, and 25% of the Senate.
  For more: https://www.un.org/en/un75/women_girls_closing_gender_gap
  
  There are a lot of good points in there, the historical part especially highlights good parts why feminism is necessary.
  However, studies show that women simply don't want to be CEOs at the same rate as men. Women personally want to be more in domestic/caretaking roles than men. Women want to take more maternal leave than men. Now of course you might try to explain these in terms of existing structures that push women to think like that, but how do you explain that women in "more equal"/more feminist societies actually more heavily lean into these differences?
  Have you ever thought about the remaining gender pay gap being because women want to work less, thus having less experience, thus being paid less for less experience? There are studies that, when adjusting for these differences, find that the gender pay gap is actually 1% or less. It then stands to argue that the gender pay gap has not changed since the 90s because since then, for all variables adjusted, women already get paid the same as men. (Logically, if women were paid "too little", in our hyper-capitalistic world, you would see that companies made of women would severely outperform those made of mixed/male workforce, since companies made out of women workers would have severely lower costs. The fact that this is not the case tends to point towards pay being roughly equal. Anecdotally, I personally know 2 women who were unhappy in a "feminism-pushed" leading role and switched to a more classically women-associated work, and becoming more happy as a result of that.)
  I love feminism and it is overall a good thing, but the sole problem I have with it is that it wants to eliminate "too much" inequality. Some inequality is desired because men and women are different in some ways. The hormonal mixture is very different, with hormones strongly affecting our behavior. Thus, it is expected that behavior between men and women is different, thus differences should exist. I don't think the work is done for feminism, but I also think it's doing too much/the wrong thing in some places. Obviously, there's also a massive difference between regions in the world, Finland needing feminism much less than idk, Afghanistan.
  
  From my feminist perspective, I want similar pay for similar tasks and experience, so your point could be construed, I think, as reductionist of all feminisms. I don't know any feminist in my circles that would argue that a man willing to do a dangerous job should be paid less to be equal to a woman doing a safer version of the job for example. The problem is that where I'm from, a woman and a man with the same diploma don't have similar salaries for the same job.
  
  For each of those examples women were disadvantaged and men were advantaged. So they both experienced inequality.
  
  You really missed the point on this one, huh
  
  Your original question was to ask how women deal with more inequality than men.
  Most people use "inequality" to refer to the short end of the stick in the dynamic - when Ada talks about women experiencing more inequality, she means women are more disadvantaged.
  So it seems like your question to me was to ask how women are disadvantaged compared to men, but your response shifts the meaning of "inequality" so that you were originally asking ... what, exactly?
  
  Yeah sorry, I meant inequality is non directional. It might seem like I'm being pedantic with language. But I was unsure if you meant that men's experience was more homogenous than women, so women experience more inequality even within their gender. Which I don't think it's the case. There are more male billionaires and CEOs, but also more male homelessness and suicide.

263 comments