Identity Politics, Feminism and Nationalism
 

Okay, so with the veritable scrummage going on in the "It's Election Time" blog, I figured we open up that whole can of worms and have a structured debate. Because why not, right?

I tried to sum up the comments under the blog into three broad church topics that can be interlinked, so I guess I'll address them one at a time, give my opinions, get the ball rolling and all that. Can we try to be civil with each other? There's a lot of personal bull shit being tossed around over there, I always kinda assume that the moment you switch from theoretical argument to just insulting a person, you've run out of ammo for your points and you're pretty much just running your argument without any evidence. You know, let's kinda just have a brainstorm and see what happens. Also I'll skip the pretext; everyone is familiar with what caused the argument, Trump vs rationality, the nuance of voting for him as a statement vs racists vs pragmatic reasons.

First of all, I wanna put down the argument as to why we need feminism and identity politics currently. I spend a lot of time in my own progressive-leftist bubble so I do often forget there are people who equate feminism to some sort of bizarre man-castrating secret order. I do genuinely understand why some men get this idea; for instance with the "Hugh Mungus" incident, where a woman willfully chooses to be upset by this man's fairly innocuous comment that--according to him--was referencing his weight. It was a stupid over reaction.

Moving on from that, I'd like to put it to the forum that 'feminism' has a definition. There is this argument from MRAs that feminism exists to make men subservient. This is of course bollocks, and to just clarify what feminism is, here's the dictionary definition:

I think this lays it down fairly clearly and simply; feminism is simply the want and fight for equality between the sexes. It is not a crusade against men, it is not even a binary argument. All feminists want is for women, men, intersex etc. to be equal in society and economically. It's a fairly specific definition, it leaves little up for debate. There's no ulterior motive, no subtext, just plain and simple, "we want gender/sex equality".

So, I'm hoping that will allay the go to 'argument', "but but, I've seeeeeen femiNAZIS on the internet," because I think it clearly shows that if a woman on a shaky youtube video is screaming 'death to men', she's not a feminist.

With that in mind, can anyway say feminism is a bad thing?

Now then, 'identity politics' have been turned into a buzzword, with the fascists (and I refuse to call them 'alt-right' just like they refuse to use G/N pronouns) and Breitbart/Fox listeners using the term to discount the trend for politically conscious minority groups to form their own blocs. It's the same way the term, 'triggered' has been hijaked and normalised by the right to refer condescendingly to anyone on the left of the political spectrum who gets upset when social issues are raised and mocked. (This is something that upsets me, as I've had a partner who received years of torment and physical and sexual abuse, including rape, I've seen what 'being triggered' is like, and it's horrific).

Unfortunately, the hardest thing to do when someone gets upset when their pronouns are misused, or when minorities fight their corners so hard, is to be understanding. I'm lucky in the sense that I am a white woman, so therefore I have an inbuilt sense of 'privilege' (groooooan I know, but just hear me out) which sometimes makes me naive to the struggles of other people. For instance, a black Xhosa speaking lesbian woman in England will face more adversity than I do. So will a trans-woman undergoing gender reassignment, who has had to repress who they are for years because of their religious parents. Some people on the left often try to turn people's problems into a hierarchy, but there's such a danger of simplifying and trivialising people's issues by doing this, you're only gonna make people side against you.

Let me pick Nepsotic as an example. I hope you don't mind me doing this, but you've been a critic since I joined this forum, throwing jabs at me often at irrelevant times when it's been uncalled for. Nevertheless, I want to demonstrate that I can empathise with you; I've read some of your blogs, I've seen that you've struggled with mental health and depression and I want to say that sucks. I'm sure you've had to deal with people trivialising your problems, for instance when someone has a bad day at the office and they say, "oh man I'm so depressed, I had so much shit to do today," it takes away from the severity of what you go through. If I was you, my instinct would be to draw inside myself and lash out because of society's stigma of MH issues. In the UK I know it's so shit how it's treated. So I would expect someone such as yourself, not to debate people like me who agree with the 'SJWs' about the importance identity politics, but to understand and maybe actually support the disenfranchised.

Lastly, nationalism. So, I noticed there does seem to be a support for nationalism, not across the board but I do think that it's mad in the 21st century that people are against the mixing of 'races' and the strengthening of borders. For this I'm really more curious to see what people have to say, because I just think that borders should be deconstructed and people should be able to go anywhere and do whatever they want providing they register with the nation they're residing in.

Anyway, that should be enough tinder to get the fire going. As you were, citizens.

Also, apologies if some of that doesn't make sense, I'm perpetually tired at the moment and I can barely keep my eyes open like, all day.

For many, the definition of feminism is different than yours, and quoting the simplest one (which, I agree, should be the standard) might not give you the results you want. Those people like the aforementioned Zarna Joshi and other less mentally stable do call themselves feminists, yet they fight for superiority, not equality.

Equality is also a word that can be described in almost any way. For me the true equality is cloning. Clones are equal, more or less.

That's funny, because the woman on a shaky youtube video screaming 'death to men' does consider herself a feminist. Maybe she doesn't even consider *you* as a true feminist.

Jokes aside, there's a reason for the recent heck-ton of intellectually dishonest feminists start popping up in America saying things they say.

That is, the situation where there's no need for feminism in America.

There's no real wage gap between men and women, women can vote, they can run for presidency (and lose, if they're morally bankrupt puppets of big corporations) be astronauts, millionaires, go to war, do mass presentations about how being morbidly obese is not a bad thing and you should just accept it, pretty much do anything.

That situation causes problems. There are many, many employed people that get paid for fighting inequality among men and women. What do these people do when all the major problems have been resolved? They try to grasp to their jobs as long as they could, desperately attempting to justify their employment with more and more bullshit reasons.

Same applies with other, more developed countries. Meanwhile, numerous women get beaten by their husbands on a regular basis in Saudi Arabia, and Turkey is planning a bill that a man gets cleared from statutory rape if he marries the victom. Those issues are what will never be mentioned by the people in previous paragraph, because there's no money in trying to fight it for them.

In the same way as someone can say communism is a bad thing, despite being so great in theory for many people.

It wasn't exactly 'hijacked' by the right. It was being used by this clearly over-exaggerating woman (I think she considers herself a feminist, but I'm not 100% sure on that), and people thought the sole idea of comparing shell-shock to just being fat is so ridiculous they started mocking it by using the word the same way. It's not the right who came with the original comparison.

I do understand the people who aren't willing to learn at least 50 new words just to be able to refer to that person, it's ridiculous. I don't, however, understand the people who get instantly pumped up when a stranger uses a non-bullshit one, while the stranger didn't even know they're trans and just assumed their gender.

Language is abstract in and of itself. Feminism is also an abstract concept. Therefore, when putting these things together into a monster mash, working definitions and a definitional consensus is hard to come by.

The definition you suggested of feminism is very simple, and (as Varrock pointed out previously) not a working definition that I or many others would necessarily subscribe to. Gender and sex issues are highly complex and nuanced, and whilst at face value Occam's Razor seems intuitively right, I think we're really looking at a sort of Hickam's Dictum. Because of this complexity, different people will subscribe to different definitions, behaviours, and cognitions associated with feminism. Like most abstract things I guess it's very difficult to make all people use one definition.

Anyhoo. IMO Equality is not equity.

Regardless I believe that there is a need for equity between the sexes. From seemingly basic issues (at least they seem basic now) such as stopping discrimination against women when applying/retaining jobs based on pregnancy or offering men the same paternity rights as women's maternity. To more difficult challenges such as global equal education for both genders or breaking through that glass ceiling for women in high-powered management roles. I think that looking at the world and saying that there isn't an issue is, like the above definition of feminism, too simplistic and narrow in scope.

However, there are people, cultures, and societies who would disagree with me. That their gender norms or cognitions about what a woman (or a man) is should be all that the individual can achieve. So many people can (and do) feel that feminism is a bad thing or unnecessary.

I feel like we also have to acknowledge the normalisation and minimisation of things like 'trigger warnings' by the left (I'm looking at you Tumblr). A decade ago trigger warnings were useful tools for people with mental health difficulties to allow them to safeguard themselves from potential distress. Now you can find trigger warnings about the ending of the Harry Potter series.

I like to call that Shitty Life Top Trumps.

You're describing discrimination based on simple in-group/out-group processes, surely?

TL;DR: Almost everything is super complex. Let's go get a beer.

Beer is bad for you.

Wanna grab a beer and play shitty life top trumps?

MY victim card trumps YOUR victim card!

Edit: It's actually good that Sybil Ant is here, because now FA has a mouthpiece to spew shit from without having to blow pus everywhere.

Hi. You really had to be gross about it didn't you.

That's what I do. It's who I am.

Can't you just like disagree with someone without being so vitriolic and personal. It makes for an unhappy atmosphere.

yeah maybe Sybil will be the next one to bend me over their knee and spank me raw for referring to a transvestite as a transgender when i should have called them a transsexual or some fucking shit i don't know

FA knows her dickchicks, man. she's a pro. don't fuck with her.

Maybe try to not be a fucking asshole? I corrected you on a minor thing and you flew into a fit of rage, and now you're being offensive on purpose. But I don't know what I expected from this fucking forum anyway.

I might bend you over my knee, but you might like it.

For real though guys just be nice to each other SHEESH.

I would. But since you're a feminist you're probably fat.

No, but seriously. I'm just being a dick to you because you're a feminist, but it's all in jest.
I've talked to a lot of feminists on the internet and you're legitimately the first one I've met who isn't a cunt, you're actually quite civil, even if I do disagree with your ideas.

I can count like ten Tumblr stereotypes in this one sentence.

Hahaha

Nothing wrong with a little extra cushin' for the pushin'. Not that I am, but you're missing out if you ain't been there.

ANYWAY, OBJECTIFICATION ASIDE.

I don't get what you disagree with me about? Do you think women should be equal or, as Rex better said, have equity to (with?) men? If yes, we're the same, bro. If not, I mean, that's your loss.

Oh, they are completely equal in the Western world. This is why feminists annoy me, because they get up in arms about the tiniest shit when women over in Islamic countries are actually oppressed, living in a legitimate rape culture and patriarchy. They don't seem to care about that. In fact, they defend it, saying that it's their culture and that we should "respect it". That's fucking stupid.

I didn't respond to your original post because it's just the same old shit I've heard before and it gets tiring. Varrok actually made a pretty good rebuttal though and you failed to respond to it. How come?

Let's have a more interesting debate. Name one straight up oppression women face in the West and we'll talk about that.

I mean, there's a little extra cushin', and then there's mounds of butter and cottage cheese in a sack.

for a start you didn't just politely correct me, you did it like a cunt which was unwarranted considering i was being jocular. you were looking for an argument, you were looking to get offended, so i thought i'd oblige and try to give you something to be offended about.

yeah, you like complaining about the forum. you've been doing it since the day you first staggered onto here. i can't remember a time when you weren't pissing and moaning about us. i remember you on Oddchat whining about everyone non-stop, actually wishing certain members would get banned (who you don't even know) and complaining about your fucking life. yeah, at this stage i'm just being offensive on purpose, mainly because i genuinely don't give a flying fuckarette anymore. most of the people i really care about on here have either formally left, very rarely make contact or just disappeared one day. then there are people like you, the 'replacements'. wandering around making picky remarks and spoiling fun and getting TRIGGERED whenever someone dares make fun of someone else in an innocent way just to alleviate the boredom. you think it's bad now? were you ever here to see OANST or DI start raping someone's soul? this place right now is fucking tranquil (and dead) compared to how it used to be, and has been that way since before you decided to grace us with your presence.

if you don't like it here, fuck off and take your perpetual moaning with you. i won't miss you, that's for fucking sure. compared to other characters that have been and gone, who i still miss and think about to this day, your contribution to this community is insulting to me.

and yes i know i'm derailing the thread. i don't give a fuck.

im still here ma ;_;

and i'm glad you are. honestly. i've had the privilege of watching you grow and develop here over the years. i'm not gonna list people but i think anyone who knows me knows if they're included in that or not.

Okay maybe what this thread needs is some actually critiqueable bigotry, so here I go.

I can understand where MA is coming from. I remember years ago on this forum I was condescendingly told by Wings Of Fire "Ugh, gender does not equal gentials doncha know" as if it were supposed to be the most obvious fucking thing in the world. Actually he was right (for the wrong reasons), because gender is a class that nouns can have in Indo-European languages. Because "man" and "woman" in every language were different genders, gender became a metaphor for sex. Then somewhere along the line someone (probably Americans) felt uncomfortable saying a dirty word like sex so gender became an accepted synonym.

This redundancy has been seized to validate the trans ideology of "Actually I am a real woman because biological sex is irrelevant, womanhood is all about your gender." in complete disregard to popular and historical usage and without anyone ever actually bothering to explain what gender is.

The narrative used to be "I have a woman's brain trapped in a mans body" but it turns out the idea of a "woman's brain" has some ridiculously sexist implications. So now what they go with is the paradoxical "a woman is someone who identifies as a woman", no further questions asked. Oh and despite the assertion that womanhood has nothing to do with biology, the universal route for a transwoman is to undergo HRT for some reason. Anyone who complains about doctors assigning sex at birth and then alters their body to look somewhat like the sex they magically identify with is a hypocrite.

So with these layers of contradictions its only natural that sometimes someone like MA falls afoul of the cognitive-dissonoance-supressing party line. The usual response when someone, out of ignorance, says something unorthodox on trans issues is to imply that they're some sort of awful bigot. Recently their was some drama in The States concerning transwomen's right to use women's facilities such as change rooms and toilets. Apparently it's some sort of hate crime to think that women's opinions on the matter should be considered, after all these facilities are segregated on the basis of sex (not magical brain identity) to give women safety from physical and sexual violence.

EDIT
I don't want to give the wrong impression here. I acknowledge gender dysphoria as a serious mental health issue and acknowledge the psychiatric consensus that the best way to alleviate such is to let the sufferer present as a woman. I of course used preferred pronouns out of common courtesy. Within reasonable limits I think transwomen should be treated like like an otherwise real women. What I lament is the the ideology being pushed by some.

Yeah, but I hardly think someone who undergoes HRT and various surgeries is doing so just so they can harass women in bathrooms. Both sides are dumb. All sides are dumb. People on this planet are dumb.

Well, it's true. Men and women's brains have loads of differences, but that contradicts the feminist rhetoric of "men and women are the same in every way!"

I'm not implying that. I'm not even saying they should be barred. I just found it disturbing that from the onset women's opinions on the matter were completely disregarded.

Also I'm pretty sure that requiring HRT to access women's spaces is considered problematic in itself.

Fucking. This.

People like Anita Sarkeesian need that statement printed on their fucking head. Going after how females are represented in video games; The smallest non-issue in the first world and making out it's the biggest crisis facing woman everywhere. All the while, Ignoring actual problems woman face in other countries that DO actually need help.

...Also hi again.

You do know that your favourite YouTube entertainer; Jim Sterling, was on her side, right?

Is this a joke?

This thread makes me want to shut down OWF for good.

Can people please continue to report offensive posts? I don't want to have to read this shit in any detail.

What's wrong with feeling pride for your country? The concept of retaining cultural identity is a recurring issue in history (heck, Mudokons assimilating into the oppressive, globalist Industrialist culture is no different). You see communities of minorities all over the world that, rather than mix in with the majority, hold on to their culture. This is a good thing in terms of diversity, but, if you look at America and Europe, you see that immigrants' culture can often be incompatible with the local one.

Of course, we've been living in a sort of "Progressive Age." The immigrants don't want to assimilate, they want their new home to change to their whims. Sure, why not let them feel at home? But shame on those intolerant bigots who dare point to the rising crime (especially rape... Sweden is becoming the rape capital of the world). Or the fact that the "guests" are tearing up their tax-funded shelters because they ran out of candy.

With the fruits of multiculturalism going sour, many reject the heads-in-the-sand response to these ingrates loudly demanding their way (as in, from a war-torn country), or the high way. After being lashed by the whips of political correctness one too many times, the people of the Western world are taking action to ensure their descendants live in a safe world.

Yes, ideally, people could fluidly migrate around the world, but there's no denying that this mindset has led to disaster. And, if one were inclined to believe in the theories regarding a sinister globalist agenda... It's now or never. Democracy is the last line of defense. And from this comes Brexit, Trump, Le Pen... It's not going to stop any time soon, at least quietly.

Okay, there's a lot to get through here. People have asked me for responses to some issues, quoted me et cetera, and I'm sorry if my replies feel slow; I really struggle to put thoughts into words so I've spent a while taking stuff in and just trying to work out how to respond. I'm gonna do my best but bare with me if I can't adequately answer everyone's issues straight off the bat.

I'm a firm believer in statistics first, empirical evidence second, conjecture last. I see your dismissive statement that basically boils down to, "there is perfect gender equality in the western world," and it frustrates me. Not because of the sentiment, but because there is so much evidence to the contrary that you're being almost willfully naive. You cannot make a statement without proof to back it up.

There are still significant hurdles for women and intersex to jump over before we reach a degree of socio-economic parity.

It is often all to easy to dismiss "1st world" problems under the pretenses that someone somewhere has it worse. Why worry about a pay gap in France when women in Burkina Faso are dealing with horrific FGM? It is important that feminism remains an international movement, but we cannot export western feminism to these places because it would not adequately solve or target the problems women in less developed nations face. We can provide teaching, literature and methods to help feminist movements in nations such as Iran, Pakistan and Nigeria, however we cannot fight their battles for them. Moreover, women in these nations do not want us to do so, because if we did it would take their empowerment away.

So let me address specifically western gender inequality for now.

There is still a massive gender pay gap that varies across the Occident; the ONS has shown that the mean pay gap in the UK is 9.4%. In Croatia, the number is around 34%. To put that into perspective, if you are a man earning 10 euros/hr in Rijeka, your female counterpart will be making 6.60 euros/hr. I am fortunate in that I live in the UK, where the pay gap is shrinking, and the feminist movement is continuing to pressure businesses to make sure that we reach parity in the near future. A lot of pay gap differences in the UK--I feel--are hangovers of old attitudes towards a woman's "role" in society; something that has faded significantly after the 90s, as new generations are brought up to view one another as equal.

In regards to your comment about Islam; I personally believe that the issue is incredibly complex, and a lot of liberals have this sort of quantum theoretical crisis where they simultaneously call people who disagree with the tenets of Islam as racist, whilst decrying the treatment of women. This is why liberals are shitty. I believe Islam is a disgusting religion, as are most religions, however I believe that Muslims themselves do not necessarily have to be shitty people, obviously. Nevertheless, there are fundamental issues with Islam that many moderates hold, such as that same-sex marriage is wrong (I believe about 34% of Muslims in the UK believe this, according to a Channel 4 poll, which is much higher than the national average). We can fix this through comprehensive education, and over time immigrant Muslims will naturally convert to the social conventions of more acceptance. As it stands, I believe Islam is a fundamental evil of society, but there is an obvious distinction to be made between its teachings and its followers.

Sexual harassment and a pay-gap higher than almost any other industry are not small non-issues. I'm surprised you'd bring up gaming industry specific examples considering it's one of the most toxic hobbies for a woman. A lot of that is down to a sheer lack of accountability, and I think perhaps men not wanting to share a space that has traditionally been a hold out for masculinity in the past.

I mean, even from personal experience; the amount of times I've had letchy comments from gross dweebs both online and offline is disgusting, and when you add in the fact that these people often don't know how to deal with rejection, there is a very real threat of physical violence or just the most awful harassment. If you are conventionally attractive woman 'gamer', you have to run a gauntlet, be that at gamer expos or just dealing with online gamers who know what you look like. I have female gamer friends who just pretend to be men online so as not to deal with the disgusting shit that spews like fountains from the mouths of these sweaty manlets.

Anyway, I will reply to Moxco's, UTS' and Varrok's posts in more detail after work, but damn guys, I'm surprised at the amount of sheer willful ignorance in the face of fairly insurmountable statistical and quantifiable gender discrimination.

Which is funny because I don't use tumblr except to post vaporwave shit I make when I'm bored.

@Sybil Ant, could you refer to the points made in this short video?

I don't need to (although I will after work), that video is supported by information from the AEI; a pro-corporatist, conservative think tank that has objective motives to dismiss the wage gap. They've been caught up in numerous scandals, including trying to bribe scientists to state that global warming is a myth. Oh and they also promoted Charles Murray's anti-regulation crusade to try and dismantle laws aimed to protect labour and the environment.

If you provide a credible source of statistical evidence against the pay-gap, I'll be inclined to take it more seriously.

e: ok fuck it watched it. The first 90 seconds is just posturing. The statistic she talks about regarding the wage gap is stupid. Yes the wage gap is a mean collective representation across many industries, but she speaks as though if you dug further you wouldn't find a million microcosms that lead to the same outcome. The rest of the video is just "oh but women don't go for higher paying jobs." And it's funny that the narrator (who laughably is the token anti-feminist woman) doesn't delve any deeper as to why women don't 'go for higher paying jobs'. Beyond that it's just willful ignorance and trite arguments.

A little something we callｔｈｅ ｇｌａｓｓ ｃｅｉｌｉｎｇ．

I never said they weren't. If Anita brings that up in her videos, fair enough. I was merely referencing the very minor stuff she brings up about the industry I've heard about.

Gaming is a toxic hobby regardless of gender. That's mainly down to the age and immaturity of certain people, And the fact there are almost no consequences for their actions. I won't deny woman can get it much worse than men in online games and on the internet in general. If a game is filled with angsty teenage boys, I think you have to expect it. It a luck of the draw who you find online. And it's not only woman either. If you are different in any way such as having a disability or the way you speak, You're a target for those morons.

As for the attractive woman gamer interacting with other gamers, I think it's simply the fact that the majority of gamers are men and the majority of men are heterosexual. And so if an attractive person from the opposite sex also enjoys and partakes in the same hobby, that's bound to strike a chord? Nothing negative about it.

Now if an individual starts to harass and demean the other person. That's when it become a problem. But either way yeah, I can see how that can be intimidating.

Obviously, I cannot imagine fully what woman go through, I'm just giving my two cents and saying I think it's very dependant on the person or people you encounter. If that upsets you, then I apologise in advance. No way I'm I saying they're aren't any issues within the gaming industry. Far from it.

The average gamer age is going up and hopefully, a lot of them are growing up along with it. Although I admit that's unlikely :(

I have a friend who also did that a while ago. But nowadays she just doesn't even mention her gender as she says it isn't really relevant. She's there to play a game with her friends. If she goes on mic to the server, I've not once heard someone reply back in the typical "ohmygosh are you a girl?" And if they have, it's been a joke.

Again. It's a luck of the draw who you find online and how you deal with the fuckers.

And just like that. Now suddenly I'm on Anita's side! Jim Fucking Sterling son can't be wrong!

In all seriousness. No, I didn't know that. But it doesn't surprise me that much nor does it change a thing.