We're All Anti-feminists Now

Feminists often say that feminism is just a movement for the social, political,  and economic equality for women in relation to men. They go by the 'dictionary definition' of feminism. With a quick Google, we get:

the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.

Nothing groundbreaking there. The thing is that there are many different brands of feminism: radical, sex-positive, sex-negative, equity, intersectional, and a few others that I'm not familiar enough to talk about. The problem is that some of these brands of feminism are mutually exclusive (sex-positive vs sex-negative, for example). So what does Feminism really mean? Looking at these categories, it depends on who you ask.

Summary of some Feminisms (not an exhaustive list)
Radical Feminism: Gender is purely a social construct that should be abolished, and that men have been ruling over women through the patriarchal cultural norm. They tend to look poorly on trans individuals. They also tend to be somewhat sex-negative.

Sex-Positive: This feminism views sex as a generally good thing, and celebrates women's choices with respect to sex. They look favorably on sexual liberation. They try to reclaim terms like 'slut' to make them positive terms, rather than smears.

Sex-negative: This is mostly a secondary trait of the particular brand of feminism, and is usually paired with a Marxist view of men = oppressor, women = oppressed. They view sexual choices of women as shaped by the patriarchy so that some choices aren't really choices. Prostitution, pornography, and 'sexual liberation' are considered oppressive and damaging to women, even between consenting adults.

Equity: This is just the view that women and men should have equal legal rights. That's it. No other baggage that I'm aware of. If I have to pick a feminism, this is it for me.

Intersectional: This is a relatively new buzzword, but it is basically looking at the Venn Diagram of oppression and marveling at all the different ways that the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy oppresses everyone except straight white males.

White: This is the label applied to upper middle class feminists by intersectional feminists for not looking at the oppression of non upper middle class white women.

So with all these different feminisms, what is anti-feminism? It doesn't have a nice dictionary definition like Feminism does, but the wiki article gives a decent working definition: An ideological opposition to feminism. The problem: which feminism? The thing is, there are a few mutually exclusive 'feminisms,' like the sex-positive vs sex-negative feminisms. To be one, you must be against the other. This is also illustrated later in the wiki, where some feminist writers are labeled as anti-feminist by other feminists. This means that the people labeling other feminists as anti-feminist are in fact opposed to that form of feminism.

What I take from this is that in order to be feminist, one must also be anti-feminist. To be in favor of one form of feminism is to be against other forms of feminism with which you disagree. This means that you are against feminism, and therefore anti-feminist. So even feminists are anti-feminists, and the term anti-feminist has no meaning.

Apathy is the Target

Something that bugs me about the identity politics and the debates around it is that the end goals of the movement are never really discussed. What are the ultimate goals of LGBT? Of #BlackLivesMatter? Of feminism? How are these ultimate goals articulated, and then how do we get there from here?

To me, apathy should be the final goal. Are you a woman? I don't care. Are you black? I don't care. Are you gay? I don't care. Some other identity? I don't care. That's not to say that people shouldn't care about those close to them, to a degree. An example would be if I'm trying to play matchmaker, knowing the sexual preferences of both matches is important, and shouldn't be ignored. In public life, however, it shouldn't matter. Someone I don't know and will probably never meet is gay? OMG STOP THE PRESSES! Actually, no, I just don't care, and neither should you.

One of the problems with current identity politics is that I think they loose sight of the goal. Instead of trying to make the identity of the class unimportant, they make it the ONLY important attribute. Arguments can hinge on whether the person making the argument is white, black, LGBT (and indeed which of the letters they identify with), man, or woman. The way I see it, the argument should not be based on the identity of the writer. We shouldn't care. If the argument is from personal experience, it may matter, but that is just an anecdote, so there is no way to evaluate it objectively anyway.

I think that a decent part of the population is getting to the apathy point. I would like to think that I'm more or less there. The problem for me is that social justice types tend to bring up these identity politics so that they can't be ignored. Why should I care more about the plight of women than men? Or blacks more than whites? Instead of trying to get people to care about other people, the social justice advocates will try to get us to care about blacks specifically, or women specifically, or gays, lesbians, bi, and trans. But not about people generally. Aren't blacks, women, LGBT people too? They aren't people any more or less than white men. In order to combat prejudice they end up espousing prejudice.

Institutional vs Cultural Privilege

When getting into discussions about things like affirmative action, feminism and general identity politics, I find that the topic of privilege comes up a lot. White men are privileged, which is why they are at the top of society or in power in various positions. They have privileges to which they are blind, and to combat this, programs like affirmative action are necessary. Suppose we take this as a given, that white men are privileged over everyone else. There are, however, no laws which explicitly privilege white men over other groups (at least as far as I know). There are no legal disputes which hinge on the color of the skin as a matter of law. The privilege that white men enjoy is not an institutional privilege. It is not codified in the rules at the legal institutions, or in any major institutions generally. Instead, privilege must be social or cultural, not institutional.

First, let me be clear: whites most definitely did benefit in the past from institutional privileges, and it would be stupid to think otherwise. Slavery and Jim Crowe laws are clear examples of this. Whites were given advantages in laws and rights. Today, there are no such laws that make this distinction between whites and blacks. Whites are no longer institutionally privileged. The privileges that white men have are therefore cultural and social. Cultural and social privilege is very hard to correct, and I'm not sure that anyone really knows a good way to go about it.

Cultural privilege is something that cannot be corrected institutionally, because it will create backlash. Affirmative action tries to combat the socio-cultural privilege of being white and male with an institutional privilege and preference for other demographic groups. This, instead of making the problem better, creates additional cultural privilege for the white men. Why? Because the white men who made it managed to do it without help from the system. Everyone else? They got help. They couldn't hack it on their own merits. This new white male privilege now exists because they are viewed as having achieved, as making it through an institution that is biased against them.

You see some of this happen in the tech industry nowadays, with articles saying that white men are privileged for being taken seriously for their achievements. The problem is that the proposed solution just makes that problem worse. Creating institutional privileges for the 'underprivileged' just give the culturally privileged additional privileges.

Thoughts on Feminism

With Emma Watson's recent speech to the UN, and starting a campaign #HeForShe, I think now is a good time to express some of my thoughts about feminism. By dictionary definitions like the one that Ms. Watson recited in her speech, I am a feminist. I support equal rights, privileges and responsibilities for men and women, and all people generally. I don't usually take the label of feminist, though, because I don't think the definition she cited is the only, or the most accurate definition. Even in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, there is a second definition: "organized activity in support of women's rights or interests." Feminism is not just about equal rights.

Something I see fairly frequently in feminist rhetoric is language that excludes men from concern or consideration. For example, on the HeForShe website, we have the following text introduction:

"A solidarity movement for Gender Equality. The movement for gender equality was originally conceived as a struggle led only by women for women. In recent years men have begun to stand-up in addressing inequality and discrimination faced by women and girls. Now it’s time to unify our efforts. HeForShe is a solidarity movement for gender equality that brings together one half of humanity in support of the other half of humanity, for the benefit of all."

The commitment statement is as follows:
"Gender equality is not only a women’s issue, it is a human rights issue that requires my participation. I commit to take action against all forms of violence and discrimination faced by women and girls."

So gender equality is not only a women's issue, but we are only taking action against violence and discrimination faced by... women and girls. So I guess it is a women and girls issue? This is just the latest example of feminist rhetoric that is poisoned by being too specific, while claiming to be supporting everyone. Even HeForShe admits it "...brings together one half of humanity is support of the other half of humanity, for the benefit of all." Wait, so only one half of humanity gets support? In an equality movement?

I would be much more inclined to support, at least nominally, these campaigns if they, at least nominally, were willing to correct the gender of these statements:
Gender equality is not only a women's issue, it is a human rights issue that requires my participation. I commit to take action against all forms of violence and discrimination faced by women and girls.