June 20, 2012

• The problem with feminism

  JDN 2456099 EDT 11:48.

  Basically, the problem with feminism is that it’s too easy to call yourself a feminist. There’s no admission procedure, no criteria you have to meet. 

  I’ve even seen people list criteria for what makes a feminist, but here’s the funny thing: By all those lists, I obviously qualify—and lots of famous feminists don’t. 

  Valerie Solanas wrote a SCUM Manifesto in which she called for the extermination of men.

  This person who calls herself the femitheist wants to castrate all men.

  Then there’s the whole Feminist Sex Wars, where we had people like Andrea Dworkin literally arguing that heterosexual sex itself is inherently evil and must be abolished. More “moderate” (if we can call them that) sex-negative feminists argued that pornography and prostitution should be banned. (Some defined pornography as material that oppresses women, in which case there’s an awful lot of porn that wouldn’t even be considered “porn”.) There’s “cultural feminism” and “difference feminism” which reject what ought to be the fundamental axiom of feminism, namely the equality of men and women.

  Much of this stuff is now called “satirical”, but it’s Poe’s Law: Satire is indistinguishable from fundamentalism. And if people had read the SCUM Manifesto and said “great idea!” I have little doubt that Solanas would have supported their efforts to implement it. (If you’re really writing satire, you make it clear, as Jonathan Swift did and Stephen Colbert does.) Dworkin has since denied the interpretation that all heterosexuality is coercive; but from the book it’s pretty clear that’s what she meant, and I took a Women’s Studies course where this was taken seriously as a “feminist view” to be considered.

  There is even a debate in feminism about whether men can be feminists. This debate is considered mainstream, and again Women’s Studies classes ask you to discuss it as a serious question. This also is in violation of the fundamental axiom of equality, since it’s literally saying that some people aren’t allowed to do something because of their gender. (Frankly I can’t call it anything less than sexism.)

  Now, if feminism had clear guidelines for what you must believe to be a feminist, none of this could possibly have happened. Solanas and Dworkin would say “I’m a feminist!” and actual feminists would say, “No, you’re not. You’re insane. You have nothing to do with feminism. You don’t even know what ‘feminism’ means.” But instead we have people saying things like “What does feminism mean to you?” which leads us into Humpty Dumpty’s world where words mean what you want them to mean.

  This is why ultimately I can’t call myself a feminist, even though I would fit the standard definition. I believe in egalitarianism. I even believe that gender is a fundamentally problematic notion, and ought to be replaced by a continuum or else abandoned altogether. I am appalled that women still get paid 75% of what men make for the same work. I want the Equal Rights Amendment to be passed immediately, and think it should have been passed decades ago. 

  Maybe I’ve been spoiled by science. (Or maybe those of you who haven’t experienced the scientific community don’t know what you’re missing.)

  See, in science, you don’t get to call yourself a scientist unless you’re actually doing science, and doing it correctly. If you start spouting nonsense about biology and calling yourself a “radical biologist”, actual biologists will reject your papers and write letters to the editor about how you’re not a biologist, you’re just a quack. There are no extremist ecologists—there are ecologists, who do ecology correctly, and there are non-ecologists, who don’t. There are no fundamentalist physicists (actually there a few physicists who are religious fundamentalists; but they’re not fundamentalists about physics.)

  I often hear feminists say things like, “Any group has its extremists.” But no, actually, some don’t—scientists don’t have extremists.

  What are scientists doing differently? We exclude people who do it wrong.

  It’s that simple. When someone says something that contradicts everything science stands for, but calls himself a scientist, we say: “No, that guy is not a scientist. He’s a quack; don’t listen to him.” 

  But when someone says something that contradicts everything feminism is about, but calls herself a feminist, what do feminists say? “Well, she’s a different kind of feminist. Too radical for my taste.” Such feminist-quacks are almost always women, because feminists are afraid to repudiate anything a powerful woman says. This remains true even if she goes against everything feminism is about. (Look no further than the feminists who tongue-tied themselves over Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. Yes, they have vaginas; no, they’re not on our side on this one.)

  Either that, or I’m wrong about feminism, and it doesn’t actually believe in equality at all. The standard definition is false; it’s not “men = women” but actually “men <= women”. That would explain a lot, actually; it seems more plausible every time I hear another prominent “feminist” get away with saying something appallingly misandrist. In that case, we should just give up on feminism, and go back to the original project of Enlightenment rationalism: egalitarianism.

  • 12:26 pm
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