Feminism! Hooray!
Thanks for a thought provoking reply. Nevertheless, I think that there are some major
problems in your analysis and argument. First, you present the issue of feminism as being about the accrual of more rights. This, I think, is a misunderstanding of
present day feminism, and overlaying historical notions of feminism (particularly the objectives of first
and second wave feminism) with that which exists today. As we have both noted, historical
feminism was geared towards legislative changes designed to ensure equality. Today,
feminism is more to do with ensuring that this legislation actually translates into
reality " i.e. that equal pay and anti-gender based violence legislation is properly
enforced. Moreover, modern day feminism is also about deconstructing modes of patriarchy
and encouraging both men and women to think about society and popular narrative of
gender. To quote Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler: "anyone who protests that a focus on
pop culture distracts from "real" feminist issues and lacks a commitment to social
change needs to turn on the TV"it"s a public gauge of attitudes about everything from
abortion " to poverty " to political power. " The world of pop culture is " the marketplace
of ideas".[1] This is, I suggest, absolutely true. The representations of femininity
are often dismissive, sexualised and present women as objects. It does not take long,
flicking through TV channels, playing video games, or going to the movies to note
mass-media archetypes of femininity. Take for example, the film Spring Breakers, which
on the one hand purported to be about female empowerment but was, in fact, incredibly
leery and shot in a way designed to titillate male viewers. Of course, recently Hollywood
and so on have started to sexualise and objectify males (see Twilight for example)
for the titillation of female audiences, but this, I would argue is not a good thing
either. And even if it were, we have yet to come even close to reaching equality in
pernicious negativity. Similarly, the Steubenville rape case, in which significant
elements of the media spent more time worrying about the future of a talented group
of high school football players, who raped a comatose teenage girl and humiliated
her by proceeding to brag about their actions online and by post humiliating images
and recordings, than they did about the victim. CNN correspondent Poppy Harlow said:
"[That she fund it] Incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what
happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players,
very good students, literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart"[2]
Meanwhile, there is a rather pernicious element of modern society that reinforces
a culture of victim blaming. For instance, when the personal nude photographs of various female celebrities were
stolen and splashed across the internet, a common refrain was to blame the victims
of the crime.[3]So, I would suggest that there is still manifestly a need for feminism to highlight and challenge these forms of narrative. I also remain unconvinced that
existing legislation designed to grant equal rights under the law translates to equality
in reality, and I"d like to take some time responding to your points. ---- "I only
see us moving forward or standing still, I haven't seen any sort of recession in the
two decades I've been alive, and from research I've done, I haven't seen any since
some time before that." This, I feel misses the central point I was attempting to
make. It is not necessarily that we, as a society, are moving backwards (though I
cited concrete examples of forces of reactions attempting to do precisely that) as
a whole " but rather that a feminist movement is necessary to challenge attempts to
do so. Without feminist groups highlighting reactionary legislation and efforts, most
notably around the subject of abortion at the moment (see my previous example in Round
1), the rights of women, even to control their own bodies, will be challenged. ---
I note that you have challenged the existence of the pay gap, and cited several sources
which suggest, wrongly, that the pay gap can be explained by, among other things,
personal choice. Sadly, this is not the case. The author of the Huffington Post article,
quite frankly, has clearly never studied the issue. Those of us who conduct professional
research in what is called "gender studies" (full disclosure, I"m a professional gender
specialist and lecture in a UK university), refer to a phenomenon known as "gender
occupational segregation"[4] and the historical "separate spheres"[5] ideology that
continues to have a baleful influence on the modern workplace. Arguments which relegate
the issue of pay down to "personal choice" miss the wider social-super structures
which dictate behaviour patterns. The also ignore the fact that women, even doing
precisely the same work as men, are typically paid less.[4] This is actually illegal
under US law, but the law is simply not enforced, thus: "women supervisors of retail
sales workers earn 79 percent of what their male counterparts make; women nurses earn
88 percent of what male nurses make; and male elementary and middle school teachers
earn 9 percent more than their female colleagues."[4] Also problematic is the fashion
in which work is gendered. Work typically associated with women is undervalued, thus
they tend to pay less.[6] As such women face a duel disadvantage in that they are
regularly discriminated against regarding pay illegally, and that their labour is
undervalued. --- On the topic of domestic violence, I suspect that the figures you
cite are misleading. 85% of the victims of intimate partner violence are women.[7]
That is not to diminish the destructive and malevolent phenomenon of violence perpetrated
against male partners, but rather to show that domestic violence disproportionately
effects women. To quote the US Department of Justice, "raped, physically assaulted,
and/or stalked since age 18 were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabiting
partner, boyfriend, or date. In comparison, only 16.2 percent of the men who reported
being raped and/or physically assaulted since age 18 were victimized by such a perpetrator."
Also, qualitatively, women tend to suffer more being significantly more likely to
be injured. Again, to quote the US Department of Justice: "Women are significantly
more likely than men to be injured during an assault: 31.5 percent of female rape
victims, compared with 16.1 percent of male rape victims, reported being injured during
their most recent rape; 39.0 percent of female physical assault victims, compared
with 24.8 percent of male physical assault victims, reported being injured during
their most recent physical assault."[8] It also seems rather crass to suggest that
feminists are being sexist by highlighting that domestic violence is a major "hidden"
problem that disproportionately affects women. That is simply a fact. It is also worth
noting that feminist groups have also been at the forefront in highlighting that domestic
violence also, to a far lesser degree, affects men too. They highlight what I talked
a little bit about in Round 1, about pernicious gender stereotyping. One of the resulting
problems is that men are less likely to report that they have been victims of domestic
violence to the police, because they do not want to broadcast what they deem to be
a form of emasculation. This I think addresses your question regarding what is wrong
with gender roles. In addition, they are illogical and serve no purpose. As noted
above, they are the reason why women are undervalued and under paid, why the myth
of the 1950s domestic goddess continues to hold sway, why women are less likely to
receive promotion, and why women are disproportionately subject to objectification.
[1] Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler, bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from
the Pages of "Bitch" Magazine (New York, 2006), pp. xxi"xxii. [2] http://gawker.com... [3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com... [4] https://www.psychologytoday.com... [5] https://renazito.files.wordpress.com...
[6] https://www.psychologytoday.com... [7] http://www.huffingtonpost.com... [8] https://www.ncjrs.gov...
Pro vs. con view
Topic space view
