This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
TERF as a generic term for a woman not on board with trans agenda must be a brilliant psy-op. "Oh, some lady doesn't think that Chris Chan is as much of a woman as her? She must be the reincarnation of Valerie Solanas from Society for Cutting Up Men!".
It's not a generic term, socially conservative people who are both anti-feminist and anti-trans just get called bigots or w/e.
TERF is specifically for people like JK who consider themselves feminists and enlist in 'protect the women' arguments into their anti-trans rhetoric.
As a neutral observer who just thinks it's fun to watch women destroy each other, the existence of TERFs strikes me as intuitively obvious.
If "what is a woman" is a fight worth fighting, women who have fought to advance the causes and benefits of women will see their work undone. They see what power they (believe) they've wrested from the men slipping through their factory-broken, labor-calloused fingers disintegrating, and they don't like it.
If even New-Labour-Government-neutered, "wizards invented magic to disintegrate their own shit" JK has figured it out, the midwits who haven't are really in for a rude awakening.
More options
Context Copy link
JK Rowling is a middle aged rich woman who votes for labor and agitates for women's rights in Iran (far, far away and completely UK regime approved) on twitter. She's extreme only in that she's extremely milquetoast.
Trans-Exclusive Regular Feminist
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
In this case if you follow the links in my post I am referring to self-identified actual TERFs.
Psy-oped. There's nothing radical about being TE.
I don’t think you’re using “psy-op” in the same sense as the other commenters.
More options
Context Copy link
That seems to fundamentally misunderstand how words work together? That's like someone linking to an organization for self-identified gay Republicans and someone else replying "There's nothing gay about being a Republican". Yeah, sure, but that doesn't mean there aren't gay Republicans.
People are perfectly capable of being both gay and Republicans and identifying with both those labels, just as they are perfectly capable of being both radical feminists and anti-trans and identifying with both those labels.
What is so radical about those broads then?
Radical Feminism is (and especially was) primarily defined in contrast to Liberal Feminism and Marxist Feminism. While Liberal Feminism is primarily concerned with women gaining equality before the law and Marxist Feminism is primarily concerned with dismantling capitalism (as it sees oppression of women as downstream from exploitation of labor and the ownership of private property), Radical Feminism holds that the oppression of women is part of a broader system of patriarchy where women are dominated by men and that equality cannot be achieved by equality before the law or the dismantling of capitalism as the patriarchal social structures would still remain.
Most modern western Feminists who actually actively call themselves Feminists are in fact Radical Feminists, though they usually identify primarily with one of its offshoots. Think of like how a wide variety of different Christian denominations are still Nicene Christians, despite their other disagreements on matters of theology and identification. Someone specifically identifying themselves as "Nicene Christian" or refusing to get more specific than "Christian" probably tells you they have some theological disagreements with other people who would also be accurately described as "Nicene Christians", but they agree on some key elements.
Arguably a lot of Marxist Feminists are more "Radical" in their beliefs/methods than actual "Radical" Feminists, much like "Gay" Republicans are probably not that much happier (if at all happier) than straight ones.
More options
Context Copy link
They are actual literal radical feminists. They hate trans women because they hate men(which trans women are), not because of anything against gender transition.
That's not quite right. They hate men but they also hate the idea of a transition itself, since the radical feminist thinking is predicated on there being fundamental, inalterable biological differences between sexes, at least on the level of bodies (not necessarily brains, or if there are, they are conceived as being different from what is traditionally understood). Transition, then is sort of like cheating these differences; either an attempt to present oneself as a woman for nefarious purposes, or an attempt by a woman to try to rid themselves of the (social) burdens of a female body by trying to become a man, which is viewed with pity-often-turning-to-hatred.
No, like jericho says, what defines radfems is belief in the patriarchy. There are Trans-inclusionary radfems, including famous ones:
All feminists believe in patriarchy. Radical feminists, however, have derived their belief precisely from the idea of fundamental, inalterable biological differences, as far as I've understood.
I'm not really sure how MacKinnon constructs his ideology, I haven't read enough of her, but here's how I understand it to go for the (trans-exclusionary) radical feminists:
There are fundamental, inalterable biological differences between men and women, as classes. The most fundamental one of these is the difference in reproduction, ie. women do the most of the reproductive labor (carry children in their bodies, give birth, mostly feed them etc.) and men's role is a lesser one. This also gives women vastly more possibilities to decide if children are born or not, ie. through contraception, abortion etc, as well as decide whose children they wish to carry. However, men, as a rule, are larger, stronger and thus have more capabilities for violence, and can thus use violence to effectively seize the control of reproductive labor from women to ensure the continuation of their own line.
The easiest way for men to seize control and reduce women, essentially, to property, is direct violence. However, this leads to conflict between men and - since the men know they are also implicitly and explicitly supposed to love and protect women and this is contrary to violence required to uphold the male rule - this leads to mixed feelings and emotional anguish. Thus, institutions are created to regulate male-to-male violence and reduce the need for direct male-to-female violence, thus allowing the maintenance of male rule with a minimal amount of direct personal violence.
All other things in society are derived from this fundamental fact. Religion - the invention of male god(s) to say that it's a God-given thing for men to rule and women to obey. Science - the invention of the idea of nature saying the same. Philosophy - further justification for the same through sophistry. Culture - reproduction of countless scenes of male dominance and female obedience to drive home the message. Law and courts - codification of male dominance of women (through marriage law, family law etc) and regulation of male-to-male violence to maintain stability. Tribalism and nationalism - justification of violence as a general concept to claim that violence is needed to protect our tribe's women from the men of the other tribe, who are the real threat. And so on.
None of these even requires conscious decisions to establish new institutions of male dominance, just that new things are built on top of old unquestioned assumptions. The accumulation of these institutions, often so taken as a given as to not be even considered as something related to male dominance, is what is called "patriarchy".
Once modernity comes, many of these justifications lose force and women begin to claim their rights, but this just means that the processes of patriarchy become subtler. There are new male-led liberation movements that give lip service to the women's cause to attract new supporters but still just implicitly focus on male-male conflict to distribute the women in a new way - like sexual liberationist males chafing against the previous norms of marriage closing off some women to them.
The construction of norms becomes less about the justification of male rule and more about its obfuscation. Some feminists - the libfems - recognize the dominance of men over women but still fall for the obfuscatory processes, unlike the radical feminists, who strike at the root (ie. the etymology of the word radical). In the TERF view, trans rights are yet another obfuscation, and quite a serious one, since they aim to diminish precisely the root, ie the biological view of the sexes. Thus, whatever pro-trans feminists claim, they still would, according to the TERFs, work for the maintenance of patriarchy.
Of course, even if you accept all these assumptions, there exists the serious problem that there's no clear route to enact actual social change. If women are, by definition, less capable of violence than men, then that route is effectively closed - but violence has, in the end, been one of the most effective tools of social change ever, and some would argue that it lies, in some form, behind all social change. Separatism to feminist communities is a most commonly proposed answer, but it would seem this requires these communities to be powerless enough to not pose a real challenge to patriarchy, since if it did, it would quash them anyhow.
The only remaining option is working with other movements to attain some goals through reformist efforts and hope that these other movements aren't able to subvert your enough fast enough for it all to turn to naught. Some TERFs have cooperated with the conservative right, which shares the idea of biological differences through differs in many other things, but presumably other radical feminists would still consider liberal feminism the lesser threat, which would require the ability to build some bridges.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That is common sense thinking that was the norm for thousands of years until yesterday.
Sure, I didn't intend to say that only radfems share that general view, though their interpretion is, as said, different from the traditional view - just that they do have actual ideological reasons to oppose transition, it's not just man-hating.
More options
Context Copy link
Well yes, it is. But it's also radical feminist thinking(that's what radical feminist means- it's not a synonym for "particularly extreme feminist")- most feminists deny the obvious differences between men and women and claim that -whatever- will make the differences go away.
What makes them feminists is that they support reordering society(in admittedly vague and poorly defined ways) to put people exhibiting the things making women different from men on top just by nature. It's totally possible to be a moderate radical feminist. JK Rowling is probably an example.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link