My Theory About Why Feminism is Currently Irrelevent to Millenials

[loramin]

Originally Posted by Jimjam [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I didn't want to relay my own experience without others having a chance to share theirs first, but I never had a female employee ask me for a raise, whereas this was a pretty frequent thing among the guys that worked under me.

Men's magazines (from my stunted experience) occasionally run articles advising how to get a rise or promotion. As a guilty pleasure I will read ladies magazines (you know, if a friend or relative has one, if I'm in a waiting room at the surgery, or whatever). Those ladies magazines always seem to be about 'how to blow your man's mind in bed', but rarely address real women's issues, such as the paygap, and when they do, they don't go into the most obvious solution (ask employer for more money please).

This is exactly it! Some conservatives seem to think "well disadvantaged group X just stopped being officially disadvantaged by law: they're perfectly equal now!"

Ummm ... for literally hundreds of years men were the providers, and our society/culture was built around that. For the past past 60-odd years feminists have made immense strides towards equality, but to expect something as deeply woven into our culture as "what people write about in men's/women's magazines" to change overnight is just unrealistic. And without that change, women aren't going to ask for raises as often.

Women won't truly get equal pay until they ask for it as often as men, or until the system changes so that asking for a raise isn't part of it. And given how slow social progress is vs. how quickly AI is progressing and taking over more and more parts of business, I think we'll see the latter before we see the former.

[JurisDictum]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This is exactly it! Some conservatives seem to think "well disadvantaged group X just stopped being officially disadvantaged by law: they're perfectly equal now!"

Ummm ... for literally hundreds of years men were the providers, and our society/culture was built around that. For the past past 60-odd years feminists have made immense strides towards equality, but to expect something as deeply woven into our culture as "what people write about in men's/women's magazines" to change overnight is just unrealistic. And without that change, women aren't going to ask for raises as often.

Women won't truly get equal pay until they ask for it as often as men, or until the system changes so that asking for a raise isn't part of it. And given how slow social progress is vs. how quickly AI is progressing and taking over more and more parts of business, I think we'll see the latter before we see the former.

This is the one thing Hillary Clinton said that I remember thinking "I like that woman."

When the BLM crew came in to talk with her and they said "they want to change hearts and minds," Clinton calmly explained to them that was stupid. You don't change hearts in minds with marches and protests. That is for changing laws. Hearts and minds respond to kindness over a long period of time. You won't hate blacks if you live next to them, make some friends with blacks, and don't get robbed hopefully by black people before the first step (it happens).

Protesting is to change laws. Social Justice Movements are being treated like god damn social clubs. They are social clubs these days! But that's highly counter productive in some sense -- because SJM also create division. It's supposed to be temporary -- to change laws.

Modern Feminism practical impact is to divide people more then bring them together -- without any concrete legal goals that can possibly make any of this worth it. Keep in mind, pro-choice isn't a feminist-only stance....yet whenever I say something like this people bring up feminists protecting abortion rights.

Whatever. That can be completely separated from feminism. Evidenced by how many pro-life feminists there are. Most of this stuff can besides the pay gap.

We are over-using the lens. That's what conservatives do. They pick a lens to see the world through -- and have a hard time taking it off and putting new ones on. But man can they rationalize how that one lens is always right. Liberals have more lenses but know them less well.

Modern feminism is a sanctuary for conservatives. But that word is only used to connotation Republicans in this country...I mean conservative in the traditional since. They want to keep what is old more than progress what is new.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by JurisDictum [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This is the one thing Hillary Clinton said that I remember thinking "I like that woman."

When the BLM crew came in to talk with her and they said "they want to change hearts and minds," Clinton calmly explained to them that was stupid. You don't change hearts in minds with marches and protests. That is for changing laws. Hearts and minds respond to kindness over a long period of time. You won't hate blacks if you live next to them, make some friends with blacks, and don't get robbed hopefully by black people before the first step (it happens).

Protesting is to change laws. Social Justice Movements are being treated like god damn social clubs. They are social clubs these days! But that's highly counter productive in some sense -- because SJM also create division. It's supposed to be temporary -- to change laws.

Modern Feminism practical impact is to divide people more then bring them together -- without any concrete legal goals that can possibly make any of this worth it. Keep in mind, pro-choice isn't a feminist-only stance....yet whenever I say something like this people bring up feminists protecting abortion rights.

Whatever. That can be completely separated from feminism. Evidenced by how many pro-life feminists there are. Most of this stuff can besides the pay gap.

We are over-using the lens. That's what conservatives do. They pick a lens to see the world through -- and have a hard time taking it off and putting new ones on. But man can they rationalize how that one lens is always right. Liberals have more lenses but know them less well.

Modern feminism is a sanctuary for conservatives. But that word is only used to connotation Republicans in this country...I mean conservative in the traditional since. They want to keep what is old more than progress what is new.

I strongly agree with most of your post, but when you (or anyone in this forum) starts talking about "modern feminism" the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Assuming you're not involved yourself with the modern feminist movement, how do you define "modern feminism"? To put it another way, is it possible your beliefs might be based on a few crazies who are good at getting TV airtime and choose to identify as "modern feminists"?

I had an Ancient Greek Literature class (I don't know why all these conversations take me back to college, but they do). In that class we watched a short piece from the History channel, which included a "feminist historical expert" who went off about how the myths were full of phallic symbolism and a bunch of other nonsense. Afterwards our teacher explained that while most of the stuff in the video was relevant, that one lady was just some crank the History channel had found somewhere. None of the stuff she was talking about was supported by anything, and no other serious Greek scholar believed any of the ideas she espoused.

This was fine for us watching the segment in class, but it made me think: what if you're just a random person watching the History channel? You see this supposed "expert", and you certainly aren't an expert on feminist ancient Greek literature, so the only natural thing for you to do is believe it, or at least believe that's what feminist historians as a group think ... because you don't have a knowledgeable professor in your living room who can tell you that the"expert" on TV (who supposedly represents a certain group) is actually just a lone crank (who doesn't).

I'm not saying that what you wrote is wrong (again, I agree with the bulk of it), but I just really wonder if a lot of what everyone here thinks is "modern feminism" is similarly distorted.

[JurisDictum]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

when you (or anyone in this forum) starts talking about "modern feminism" the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Assuming you're not involved yourself with the modern feminist movement, how do you define "modern feminism"? To put it another way, is it possible your beliefs might be based on a few crazies who are good at getting TV airtime and choose to identify as "modern feminists"?

Well to be fair to Feminism as a label -- its all people identifying as feminist. You can add a qualifier so that real wack jobs and trolls don't count -- This is what Muslims argue about ISIS (but not every radical group).

But I think its helpful to seperate 2 things labeled feminism:

1) Academic Feminism as a form of scholarship -- usually OK unless from a werid institution.

2) Your run of the mill feminist that follows media trends.

Now 1 is the intellectual basis for 2...but a lot gets lost in translation. Like basically all of it but a slogan or two.

Academic Feminism as a college subject -- important stuff (but don't oversell the B.A. in it IMO).

Media feminism and popular feminism and what most feminists do most the time...not as much. It can be useful when mobilized for a legal goal IMO. But there isn't one really strictly feminist policy. And frankly -- they got a bad rap in the media. It doesn't help the cause usually to say "feminists believe x."

Why does 2020 need to be about sexual assault and Trump? We aren't going to win that. Even if we do -- yea us, we got ourselves a fucking Clinton or some centrist that makes rich feminists happy. The media is all about girls in their pussyhats -- but wouldn't cover Occupy Wallstreet worth a shit. Except for when it was time to make fun of the bums showing up.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by JurisDictum [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Well to be fair to Feminism as a label -- its all people identifying as feminist. You can add a qualifier so that real wack jobs and trolls don't count -- This is what Muslims argue about ISIS (but not every radical group).

But I think its helpful to seperate 2 things labeled feminism:

1) Academic Feminism as a form of scholarship -- usually OK unless from a werid institution.

2) Your run of the mill feminist that follows media trends.

Now 1 is the intellectual basis for 2...but a lot gets lost in translation. Like basically all of it but a slogan or two.

Academic Feminism as a college subject -- important stuff (but don't oversell the B.A. in it IMO).

Media feminism and popular feminism and what most feminists do most the time...not as much. It can be useful when mobilized for a legal goal IMO. But there isn't one really strictly feminist. And frankly -- they got a bad rap in the media. It doesn't help the cause usually to say "feminists believe x."

Why does 2020 need to be about sexual assault and Trump? We aren't going to win that. Even if we do -- yea us, we got ourselves a fucking Clinton or some centrist that makes rich feminists happy. The media is all about girls in their pussyhats -- but wouldn't cover Occupy Wallstreet worth a shit. Except for when it was time to make fun of the bums showing up.

Amen. Once again I agree with the almost all of your post, but just one thing: I don't see it as just academic feminism vs. media feminism, or that either is "popular" feminism.

To me at least, "real modern feminism" ("popular feminism") is in Facebook. I have one artist friend (not from college, surprisingly) who makes things like Elizabeth Warren "she persevered" t-shirts and pro-Planned Parenthood coffee mugs. I have have several friends from my college rape prevention peer education group; only a few are still active, but they all still hold ("modern") feminist values. I also have (way) more friends who would identify as feminist, but have never actually been "active in the movement".

To me the real "popular feminism" are both the boots on the ground protesting (literally or virtually) AND it's the ones who just (say) consider their senator's position on rape in the military when they're deciding who to vote for. Numerically there are far more of these people than there are either academic or media feminists, yet unless you happen to have them on your Facebook feed all you'd ever know about "modern feminism" is the media and maybe the academics.

When MLK or Malcolm X led their respective segments of their movement it was clear that they represented them. I just don't feel that the people on TV with the word "feminist" underneath their name represent the "real feminists" the same way, and so I don't think it's the best idea to lump them all into one "modern feminist" lump ... especially since many of those non-representative media feminists say some crazy ass shit (which is likely why the TV channel put them on in the first place).