Feminism is a tainted word now, and there's a growing backlash against it and self-described feminists.
The problem of course is that we have this one word 'feminism' that labels a wide variety of ideas ranging from basic gender equality to 'all men are rapists,' and when someone criticizes 'feminism' they may be criticizing something entire different from how you define feminism. That's why the first thing you should ask a critic of feminism is "How do you define feminism?" Their definition might be a give away to exactly what your disagreement is.
And this is exactly why I think we need a term like toxic feminism to distinguish it from feminism simpliciter.
Traditionally feminism meant and stood for gender equality: men and women should be treated equally and not discriminated based on gender. Most people, and even many conservatives today are down with that. But in recent years many new ideas spread under the label of 'feminism' have gone way past the basic common sense notions of gender equality. And these more extreme views are what I like to call toxic feminism; it's the female counterpart to toxic masculinity.
For example, some feminists today are spending all of their time complaining about the "patriarchy" as if sexism is as bad as it was in 1960. They're saying things like "everything is sexist...and you have to point it all out," and they're applying wicked double standards clearly biased against men. Case in point:
As the old saying goes, if you think like a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. In other words, if you're convinced that everything is sexist, you will start to see sexism everywhere — even where there isn't any. You will get many false positives, and it will be very hard to admit you're wrong because your whole identity will be wrapped up in pointing out sexism.
This is very dangerous, especially to the good, rational feminists, because the toxic feminism being promoted is making all feminists, and feminism, look bad. There's a whole industry of people gaining notoriety criticizing and exposing feminism's uglier ideas, from Sargon of Akkad, to Paul Joseph Watson, to TJKirk, to Milo Yiannopoulos, and women like Laura Southern. Toxic feminism is giving the Right legitimate arguments against liberalism, and that's why I consider it so poisonous.
And I don't deny toxic masculinity (which I will be writing more about in the future). There is no ridiculous either/or dichotomy. You can acknowledge the feminist's claim to toxic masculinity is at least in part legit, and you can acknowledge that 'feminism' has some terrible ideas being promoted under it.
Nuance people, nuance!
For example, some feminists today are spending all of their time complaining about the "patriarchy" as if sexism is as bad as it was in 1960. They're saying things like "everything is sexist...and you have to point it all out," and they're applying wicked double standards clearly biased against men. Case in point:
As the old saying goes, if you think like a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. In other words, if you're convinced that everything is sexist, you will start to see sexism everywhere — even where there isn't any. You will get many false positives, and it will be very hard to admit you're wrong because your whole identity will be wrapped up in pointing out sexism.
This is very dangerous, especially to the good, rational feminists, because the toxic feminism being promoted is making all feminists, and feminism, look bad. There's a whole industry of people gaining notoriety criticizing and exposing feminism's uglier ideas, from Sargon of Akkad, to Paul Joseph Watson, to TJKirk, to Milo Yiannopoulos, and women like Laura Southern. Toxic feminism is giving the Right legitimate arguments against liberalism, and that's why I consider it so poisonous.
And I don't deny toxic masculinity (which I will be writing more about in the future). There is no ridiculous either/or dichotomy. You can acknowledge the feminist's claim to toxic masculinity is at least in part legit, and you can acknowledge that 'feminism' has some terrible ideas being promoted under it.
Nuance people, nuance!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment