What does being a feminist mean to you?

Not that the experience wasn't horrifying, or that the victim's justified feelings of upset, trauma, etc would be 'invalid', of course they're valid. Her personal space as a human being is being violated, of course she would/should be terrified, upset and in fact angry at this person.

But I feel as though, we humans have our own personal power, first we have power over ourselves(I could easily be a degenerate if I wanted to be, but because I have power over myself, I refuse to degenerate and to become that which I despise), and that power, if properly exercised allows us to have the power to shape society.

Where Feminism was positive, was in encouraging women to use their own personal power to protect themselves. However, as 42 has noted, Feminism has perverted into something of a dismal-in-distress/yet villify the male type of movement, that actually disempowers the feminine.

If it is to expand so much to encompass all genders it would be out of sense to call it "FEMinism" as its not about the female only anymore.

PS: If you're talking about Crenshaw's work, I find it completely misguided. It's pretty much like Pierre Bordieu theory of "symbolic violence" (which was very stupid) changed to accommodate feminist ideals. That's why the theory is so easily changed to accommodate Marxism as well.

I agree. But the problem is, such teachings are taught mostly to females only, from what I hear/see/read of others' experiences. My own schools taught rather well, but I cannot speak for all.

Most males I know have not been made to learn that sex with a drugged/drunken/sleeping/otherwise impaired individual is not merely "faux pas", but against the law. Some, further still, do not beleive that coercion into sex is also a form of this.

Male students (and older men, to boot, as well as a shocking amount of women) are not discouraged from perpetuating stereotypes among themselves that rape is merely a "cry wolf" claim from those who "just regretted sex the morning after" or "are out to make money". Trust me, ask any victim of sex crime: if it was really about that, do you think they would go through the emotional, public upset of a trial?

The issue stems from the flaw of trying to bring 'justice' to the victim through monetary compensation in the first place! It literally devalues the crime that was perpetuated on the female victim. In my mind, you cannot place a dollar sign on a rape victim, nor should you. The only fitting punishment for a rapist is a long sentence term, and I mean at the least 25 years-to-life.

I think we kind of step over the boundaries when we attempt to regulate sex. As your example of "Drugged/drunken/sleeping/otherwise impaired individual" occurs. Let's take for example, a honeymoon. A couple will typically go to a fine wine resturant, order cocktail and after a few hundred kisses, eat to their hearts content.

After which, they probably are a bit intoxicated as they go to either A: a neutral romantic site or B:The home, where they then proceed to make love.

Is it against the law? Both parties are intoxicated. Similarly, a couple may be sleeping and one day the male(heck, in some cases even the female), wakes up and proceeds to sexually advance on his/her partner. Hell, to me, it's hot and I wouldn't mind my significant other doing it to me one day.

I know that, you're trying to highlight situations where the female obviously wasn't able to give consent, but what I'm trying to point out is:There's no blanket that covers all situations, we can only uphold a sense of morality to govern human laws and nature.

When we victimize situations however, sometimes we tend to lose that morality in a sense of vigilant justice.

First point: sexual assault victims/survivors don't make money very often on a case; in fact, most lose some paying the various fees and personal expenses needed to attend a trial. It is suits of sexual harassment where one might. I agree: monetary compensation isn't exactly a great route when a crime is perpetrated against someone, but in some cases it makes sense. But determining which cases is a tricky matter. Even so, most who have had sexual crimes committed against them simply want the perpetrator put behind bars for their crimes to spare others (and themselves!) further harm, not much more.

Second, yes. People can be intoxicated and have sex and be happy with it. It does happen. But it is not wise. However, just because someone is in a relationship with another person and their partner wants sex (and they don't or cannot consent) doesn't mean the partner is entitled (through said relationship) to more sex.
Just because you think it is "hot" does not mean people the world over do.

And it's not just females I'm talking about here: it's anyone.

I think it's unfair to say preventative measures/knowledge shouldn't be encouraged. If you live in New York City, you don't just go out to the worst part of town in the dead of night wearing a $500 suit or a diamond necklace with wads of cash taped to your shoulders. Anyone would say you were an idiot. "But I should be able to do/wear what I want." Yeah, technically, but that doesn't mean you won't get mugged. And you can tell people "don't steal" all you want, but some will still do it. You're free to learn self-defense, as you mentioned, but not everyone has the time, money, or even mobility to. So the easiest solution is to just be smart. Yeah, you're letting the thieves and rapists have the power, but can you really eradicate all of them? No.

In short, yeah, teaching people not to do something and having them actually listen would be ideal, but there will always be criminals (or a lot of people would be out of jobs lol), which is why preventative measures and common sense should still be taught and encouraged.

I agree. However, those "prevention" measures are emphasized far more often than measures to encourage (potential) rapists to not rape, and bystanders not to belittle/blame victims of sexual assaults. Or for people to respect others' bodies.



I agree: feminism as a term should be changed, but as of yet, no one seems to have breached that hurdle. Even degree programs are only beginning to call gender studies "gender studies" instead of "women's studies". Language is a problem.

Sorry, I can't say I recall the two figures to whose work you are referring, though.

I have to agree that rape prevention classes are predominately attended by women. This more than likely stems from the idea that rape is a female issue. Though I do not know how effective it would be at preventing a would be perpetrator from attempting the act of rape.

Towards the question of my thoughts on feminism, my thoughts have been greatly affected by my empirical experiences and the media. Most of the people I have met that have identified themselves as feminist have tended more toward the extreme; not claiming equality but superiority. This is not to say that I have never seen moderate people support feminism or other feminist goals. But I cannot help avoid my own experiences and the media giving feminism a negative connotation.

While it was a few posts ago, this is a very interesting video on the topic of the 70cents to the dollar discrepancy.



I can say it was interesting to see that in my core classes for math majors the guy to girl ratio was about 4:5, yet in the master program it was 7:1. There was a time when I thought that the reason for this was that in male dominated professions there are stigmas against women entering.

A humorous example:


It was in a Math History course were this topic of females in math was asked to our female professor. The reason for the discussion was we finally had mention of the female mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, who to this day is questioned as being worthy of being one of the seven great Alexandrian mathematicians and is questioned whether she is only mentioned for being female. She said the she had never encountered any major difficulties or obstacles, but she had heard from other female math professors that did not have a similar case. We were then directed to an article which studied the affect of having female elementary teachers who were uncomfortable/anxious with math and science and how this more readily transferred to the girls in the class. Sadly I could not find the original article, but this one is fairly close.

http://hpl.uchicago.edu/Popular%20Press/ABC.pdf

Edit: I spent way to long looking for that link, missed two posts.

I cannot sadly speak for the world, just as I cannot speak for the world as it regards BDSM and whether one would constitute that as 'abusive', it's subject to opinion and open discussion between the partners. I can only say what I feel about a certain situation.

I've no doubt, that most, if not all victims simply want the perpetrator put behind bars for their crimes, it's what I and it's what everyone else wants. What should be openly discussed, and it's not: Is how do we fix the problem of the lack of successful persecution of rapists, sexual criminals?

I do not believe, it is majorly a part of "sexism"(as much as you'd like to believe otherwise.) Proof of sexual violation is often actually very difficult due to the delicacy of the evidence(IE:Sperm) and how long sperm cells actually last.

Then there's the difficulty of matching up the DNA of the prepetrator with someone, etc. I don't make "excuses", but there are logical reasons to an extent of the difficulties.

We should think of ways of making it easier to catch prepetrators of sexual violence.

I find it interesting that the video brought up this, also mythical, idea that all women have some sort of mindset that they want to stop working to have children, or somehow refuse to enter STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math) fields.

In fact, new and current generations of women ARE being encouraged to work in STEM type careers. Which rules!
But when they get there, they encounter not only (somewhat humorous, as you show with that appropriate comic) situations where they are not taken seriously as workers, but also make less than their male counterparts of the same skill sets and educational background.

All because their employers beleive that their viable uteruses are a risk to their productive ability. Employers even (illegally!) ask potential female employees about their plans to have children or become married, seeing family creation as a threat to their workforce... while males, some of whom undoubtedly go on to have spouses/kids are never bothered with such profiling.



That's the thing: the reason so many sexual criminals are never found is because... surprise surprise, the rape kits collected by police and hospitals are often NEVER examined. No follow through. Just sit on the shelf.
It's an national issue. Just a quick Google search for "rape kit testing" brings up countless stories regarding the problem, but here is a summary of the issue. Thankfully, it IS being addressed, but very slowly.
http://www.kintera.org/c.nlIWIgN2JwE/b.5706887/k.37FC/Eliminate_the_Rape_Kit_Backlog/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx

This odd need to sort and seperate people, wheather it be by race, age, or in this case gender fascinates me. every individual is different. there are many people of different genders, ages, and races that can do things better than me, and many that i can surpass.

one thing that i've always thought was odd was the seperation of gender in many sports. the main excuse i hear is, "it wouldn't be fair because men are physically stronger". that doesn't hold up for many of the skill based sports like golf, shooting, bowling, etc. i've seen collage level softball teams that could easily crush some pro baseball teams. i think it has a lot to do with the often fragile male ego and the stigma of being beaten by a girl.

i think a lot of the anti feminist attitude comes from the same place. many men have some sort of personal inferiority complex to begin with. adding the possability of being out done by a female(percieved weaker sex) is intlolerable.

It is true that women are not only getting more support and encouragement to go into STEM but the numbers are increasing, which I agree is a good thing. But statistically speaking women do appear less in higher paying in jobs and are less likely to work if married with children.

Women as a percent of total employed in selected occupations, 2011

Employment status of parents, 2011

I will not claim wage discrepancies or a lack of women in higher paying careers is ever a good thing. But it is not without reason. For example, I use to pay a higher rate for my insurance than a female friend of the same age with the same insurance company. We both were good drivers and had spotless records. The reason for this difference was that I was a young male driver which statistically has a much higher rate of accidents. Was I happy about this? No. Do statistics actually tell you what an individual will do? No. Statistics can only give us ideas for what may happen based from certain criteria and attempt to make plans for the future. Similarly women who are married and with children (which is illegal to ask about their plans) are more likely to leave their career than their male counterpart. Which makes women a larger risk than men to hire. This does not mean a man is more competent, more valuable, or even less of a risk than a woman. I have to agree with the video that one of the ways to fix this issue is to have men accept more domestic responsibility, so that there is not a societal pressure for the woman to bare the large responsibility of caring for a child.

I do not claim that sexism does not still exist in the workplace and feel that we still have a long way towards true equality, things are better than they were but we can do better. I feel that if we wish to fix the problem, our solutions must be based off the data in order to continue to progress.

If the solution is to simply make sexuality less open, then how come some priests(who are far less open about sexuality than the rest of society) ended up raping little boys?And in the Middle East where women have to cover there bodies from head to toe, but somehow rapists still pop up?

Rape is not something that was brought about by sex becoming less than absolutely sacred. Its been around as long as people existed.

I won't deny that, it goes both ways, there are some of the most perverse, evil men(and sometimes, even women) who hold these kind of secret fetishes that we in society generally don't accept, and/or violates the will of others.

I think what it goes to prove, is that effort is futile. Whether we open it up more, or whether we make it less open is not going to change the criminal behavior of the thousands of perverse humans in our society.

But, we can at least hold to our own morality, I think Liberals don't understand the symbolic meaning of morality, a human being with a strong sense of morality, is a human being who is almost always productive in society.

Upholding a society based on morals, will lead to generally less of these crimes. Sadly, we can't entirely prevent them, but we can try to move closer.

Personally I'm an equalist, I want equality between all genders and races. You see it's not just women who get the raw end of the stick, men do too. If a man and woman commit the same crime, odds are the man will get a harsher sentence. Mothers tend to win custody cases over children. Men have to sign up for the draft. If a man causes harm to a woman he is hung at the gallows by his balls (so to speak) but if a woman causes harm to a man she gets hero status. I think they should remove the title of "Feminist" and call themselves Equalists.

I really can't take you seriously using when you link to tumblr and use the term CIS. I won't down vote you, but lets leave atheism Plus and Schrodinger's rapist out of this discussion

Feminism to me has lost it's original meaning of giving females rights and has been degraded into women asking for more than males.

Whenever I see someone labeled as a feminist I cringe, due to the negative connotations it has for me. Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle) is a self-proclaimed feminist, but you can see how he isn't one of those types of people. However I personally do not like that label.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all feminists are like that. Just a lot of them are, and I would rather people just stop using that label.

It's like being a member of PETA that's actually sane. You might as well just not mention you're part of PETA and just help animals.

I just noticed i didn't answer the question in my last post. so...

i guess the easiest way for me to describe what i think of when i hear the word feminism, is by compareing it to the civil rights movment. i think of feminism as somewhere between MLK jr's nonviolent aproach, and the black panthers more militant way. where it falls in between those two depends on the context at the time.



also, after seeing this:


it reminded me of something that happened to one of my brothers friends;
he was dating a girl, they were having consentual sex for a few months, she got pregnant, her parents got mad, she claimed rape. lucky for him, so many people knew she was lying.

i also remebered this:


and a conversation overheard on the bus;
girl A, "what if your dad finds out you're fucking a black guy?" girl B, "i'll just say he raped me."

and then there's a story i heard third hand of a girl who went out with the intention of having sex, then claim that she was to drunk to consent, just so she could extort the mark. there was also a rumor that she claimed rape on a dude who never even had sex with her just because she was mad at him. i don't know if either ever happened, but i did know the girl, and i believe she was capable.

as a male, considering the above examples, i am very, very afraid of being wrongly acused of rape. almost to the point of asking for writen proof of consent before begining a sexual relationship with a new partner. my only security so far has been having a friend(preferably female, and when i'm not there) casualy ask about it after. that way i at least have someone who can corroborate my side.

It has been my belief for quite some time falsely accusing someone of rape is one of the worst things a women(or man) can do. All it does is make things that much harder for actual victims to get justice

i supose being wrongly accused of rape is pretty close to baing raped.