Do you identify as a feminist?

[Eloi]

Haha, I got so annoyed by reading that I neglected to pay attention to the rest of the post. Sorry!

No problem, its a peeve of mine too.

 

[Butterfree]

Look, you really can't say what is or isn't offensive to someone else. Personally it is hurtful; maybe not for days/weeks/whatever but it is hurtful. The point is, though, that you can't tell people how they should feel in any given situation. Sure, maybe they need therapy, maybe they're in therapy. Or maybe their reactions are perfectly sound.

I can't say what is or isn't offensive to someone else, no, but I happen to believe (unlike some people, I realize) that there truly comes a point where your being offended or hurt is your problem and not society's problem. For the sake of distinguishing those cases from those I would truly agree are society's problem, I tend to say that the former 'offend somebody' and the latter are 'offensive', in a general sense. I believe incorrect pronouns used by strangers who don't know any better, even if it 'offends someone', are not 'offensive' in this sense because 1) the words themselves carry no negative meaning, 2) they are not being used in a derogatory way, 3) they do not have a history of being used in a derogatory way, 4) they do not have a negative impact on the social status of the people in question, 5) the only reason it's happening is because of a quirk of the language and an honest mistake, and 6) it happens all the time to all sorts of people by such honest mistake and the vast majority of them are at most mildly irritated by it.

There is no way society can tiptoe around everything that can conceivably hurt or offend people. It can and should make an effort to avoid things that are generally offensive on some reasonable basis, such as by applying a word with negative or derogatory connotations to a minority or being outright prejudiced or having a potential impact on how society perceives some group of people or some important issue. But there is just no such reasonable basis on which to conclude that using gendered pronouns in reference to a stranger who might in fact be the other gender is generally offensive. Having your gender mistaken by a stranger who knows no better is completely harmless, in a general sense, the same way somebody, say, mistaking you and a friend for a couple is completely harmless. If you are personally hurt by it, well, that's too bad and I sympathize, but it is unreasonable to expect society to take the ridiculous measures that would be required to accommodate you and everyone else who is similarly unusually sensitive about something generally innocuous.

I'm finding it hard to articulate my response to this. I can't help but find your argument more or less the same, in principle, as saying "I don't accept evolution because I don't see how small changes could have produced every living thing". And it's hard to argue against that, because, well, I accept that sexism in linguistics has an effect on sexism in society, but I don't know how to convince you of that.

The crucial difference is that there is a mountain of evidence that small changes did produce every living thing. There is no evidence (to my knowledge; do correct me if I'm wrong) that "he" as a default pronoun or most other linguistic 'sexism' contributes to actual real-world sexism; it's all hypothetical. Unless you have reasoning to support your hypothetical being more likely than my hypothetical, your hypothetical is in no way better than mine.

It's hard to deny that 'he' being the default hasn't led to this:

That's the thing: I sincerely do not think default "he" or "female" have anything to do with women being the marked sex in general, such as by being drawn as male characters with added bows/eyelashes/etc. Or rather, they may derive from the same root cause, but I don't think the grammatical features of the language have much of anything to do with establishing that convention in people's minds. Words are labels; as a rule people do not think much about words, especially common everyday words, and I find it really, really unlikely that the subconscious will ever start breaking words down to find 'aha, "woman" is just "man" with a "wo" at the front! Clearly women are merely anomalous men!' Meanwhile, the conscious mind is the part that knows concluding anything about men and women from the words 'men' and 'women' is clearly silly.

Especially since, again with the Anglo-centricism, this is an incidental feature of English, not a universal linguistic rule that underlies Western civilization as a whole. In Icelandic "male" and "female" are "karlkyns" and "kvenkyns", "man" and "woman" are "maður" and "kona", and "he" and "she" are "hann" and "hún". (And "history" is "saga", which is a feminine word and a woman's name.) And yet women are still othered over here and have been since long before recognizably modern English came about! Fancy that.

 

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

For example: if you don't fit into gender binaries, you start to realize just how sexist the world is. This isn't something that can be so easily explained if you do fit the gender binaries because you have never stopped to examine them. But if you have, if you don't fit them, you wonder why there are gender binaries to begin with. Why you're called 'fag' all the time if you don't fit them. Why girls can't wear tuxedos to prom, why barbie looks like she does, why girls = pink and boys = blue from birth. From before birth. From the moment a baby is identified as one gender or another, attitudes change; that is sexist.

Um, I'm a cisgendered male who contemplates such things on a daily basis, so I feel compelled to call bullshit on "if you're cisgendered, you don't examine gender binaries".

This is one of the major reasons that I don't identify with the feminist movement. They seem to believe that men and women are interchangeable. They should have equal rights, but there are differences between the two - namely, in this case, that the man wasn't pregnant and just didn't undergo huge convulsions and have a nine-pound baby emerge from his rectum. It takes time to recover from childbirth. It does not take near as much time to recover from your wife giving birth to a child.

Okay, I know that you didn't mean it in a literal sense but-

Rectum, really?

Also, I voted yes initially but after thinking about it, I'm gonna give say no (and would appreciate if my vote could be altered as such). I support feminist principles but I don't identify as a feminist.

 

[shy ♡]

Um, I'm a cisgendered male who contemplates such things on a daily basis, so I feel compelled to call bullshit on "if you're cisgendered, you don't examine gender binaries".

I don't recall saying 'if you're cis you don't examine gender binaries', and I'd appreciate it if you didn't put words in my mouth.

 

[Pwnemon]

For example: if you don't fit into gender binaries, you start to realize just how sexist the world is. This isn't something that can be so easily explained if you do fit the gender binaries because you have never stopped to examine them.But if you have, if you don't fit them, you wonder why there are gender binaries to begin with. Why you're called 'fag' all the time if you don't fit them. Why girls can't wear tuxedos to prom, why barbie looks like she does, why girls = pink and boys = blue from birth. From before birth. From the moment a baby is identified as one gender or another, attitudes change; that is sexist.

 

[opaltiger]

Attn: reposting something in a larger font size, bold, and underlined is not clever. Next person to do it is getting warned.

Also that was quite obviously not meant as a general statement.

 

[Eloi]

Attn: reposting something in a larger font size, bold, and underlined is not clever. Next person to do it is getting warned.

Sorry about me doing that, I see how obnoxious that is now.

Also that was quite obviously not meant as a general statement.

Indeed. Why do people keep on putting words and nonexistent context into Pathos' arguments?

 

[Zuu]

while we're on the subject of the English language and sexism, what about 'human'? which i believe also comes from Latin humanus.

 

[Tarvos]

Didn't it come from Latin "homo" which means human?

Latin homo is gender neutral and applies to all of humankind.

For men specifically, Latin used "vir" and "femina" for women.

 

[Zuu]

Didn't it come from Latin "homo" which means human?

Latin homo is gender neutral and applies to all of humankind.

For men specifically, Latin used "vir" and "femina" for women.

well yeah, 'homo' is the noun and 'humanus' is the adjective that came from 'homo'. i used 'humanus' because it looks closer to 'human'. :P

 

[Tarvos]

I suppose, but the point remains that Latin (and ancient Greek too) were better equipped.

Anthropos was "human", andro "man" and gyne "woman" iirc

 

[Sireafi]

In the simplest of terms, how does one support feminism but not identify as a feminist? I'm not trying to be condescending, I just don't see how this is possible.

 

[Dinru]

Basically, they support the ideas and the causes, but don't identify themselves as a Feminist because generally they aren't willing to be too... vocal, I guess is the right word? Another reason could be that they don't agree with all aspects of Feminism, just most.

 

[Tarvos]

In the simplest of terms, how does one support feminism but not identify as a feminist? I'm not trying to be condescending, I just don't see how this is possible.

Because I also support equal rights for males. For example regarding conscription or custody laws, which are most of the time blatantly sexist, also towards men (males are bound to conscribe to the army, while women don't have to face dangers and have it easy; males can't get custody of their children which always invariably goes to the mother, while it's as much their child, and furthermore the male can be a way better parent than the mother). I am against sexism in general.

I don't think feminism covers the rest really well as a term. Unless we start redefining feminism but that would lose the value of the word, to me. I know most feminists agree with me on the equal rights beliefs but the connotation of the word feminist implies equal rights for women (particularly in areas where they did not have them historically).

 

[Dannichu]

But feminism is about sexual equality. Just because some people think it favours women doesn't mean that it does. Again - women getting custody of children is because women are still seen as caregivers and the ones who "should" look after kids - feminism directly challenges that view.
Also, even if feminism did just mean equal rights for women, supporting that wouldn't be mutually exclusive from supporting other forms of equality. As said before, that's like saying "I don't support gay rights because I support transgender rights". Just because you support one doesn't mean you can't support others!

 

[Music Dragon]

the connotation of the word feminist implies equal rights for women.

Also, even if feminism did just mean equal rights for women

I don't get it. Equal to what?

 

[Tarvos]

But feminism is about sexual equality. Just because some people think it favours women doesn't mean that it does. Again - women getting custody of children is because women are still seen as caregivers and the ones who "should" look after kids - feminism directly challenges that view.
Also, even if feminism did just mean equal rights for women, supporting that wouldn't be mutually exclusive from supporting other forms of equality. As said before, that's like saying "I don't support gay rights because I support transgender rights". Just because you support one doesn't mean you can't support others!

Of course that is all very true, but I refuse to give priority to any of them. I support all sexual rights, I support all gender rights, I support equal rights for everyone. This implies I support feminism, but why would I go out of my way to highlight feminism specifically? Feminism has no more priority than gay rights have to me. It's not a question of being unable to support, it's a matter of priority.

 

[Dinru]

The main reason people use the word "Feminism" is because, in most of society, male is the "norm" and female is the "other". For instance, for some products (such as razors or deodorant) where there will be one, regular version and one "for women" version. The "for women" version is always pink and sometimes more "flowery" than the regular. You rarely see any of the not "for women" versions as being specifically targeted toward men to the same degree.

Also, in romance languages, the "masculine" forms of words (such as masculine "they" if it exists, or masculine forms of adjectives) apply when gender is unknown or in groups with at least one male- the female forms are only used when all people the word applies to are definitely female.

So, the female word takes precedence over the male one in the word about gender equality, because it actually does imply an equal rather than an other.

 

[Zuu]

The main reason people use the word "Feminism" is because, in most of society, male is the "norm" and female is the "other". For instance, for some products (such as razors or deodorant) where there will be one, regular version and one "for women" version. The "for women" version is always pink and sometimes more "flowery" than the regular. You rarely see any of the not "for women" versions as being specifically targeted toward men to the same degree.

Also, in romance languages, the "masculine" forms of words (such as masculine "they" if it exists, or masculine forms of adjectives) apply when gender is unknown or in groups with at least one male- the female forms are only used when all people the word applies to are definitely female.

So, the female word takes precedence over the male one in the word about gender equality, because it actually does imply an equal rather than an other.

i've definitely used shampoo (or conditioner or some similar product) that had FOR MEN stamped on it because the brand was typically made "for" women. and it was stupidly darkly colored and hardcore and shit. this works both ways.

grammatical gender? did you know that in Latin, the words "agricola" and "nauta" (respectively "farmer" and "sailor", more or less) are masculine but take feminine endings? so basically grammatical gender doesn't mean shit?

 

[opaltiger]

Wait, what? How are nouns assigned gender in Latin if not by how they decline?