I don't think you are approaching this right. You are painting an entire group of people under the same brush... Also, feminism is promoting equality.
> People ask me sometimes, when — when do you think it will it be enough? When will there be enough women on the court? And my answer is when there are nine.
This is from Justice Ginsburg, and a widely shared quote by a lot of feminist articles. This claim feels pretty vindictive to me and definitely not about equality. In the other words, it is not about REDUCE the inequality, it is about REVERSE the inequality.
But ideally, if equal, shouldn't the court, if we assume both gender are equal, split 50:50?
If you are advocating for opportunity equality, that is fine with me. But in reality, a lot of companies, as inspected by the media, seems like to hail a 50:50 gender split goal. Those are not compatible with each other.
I never said it was simple and I fully recognize there are countless gradients of all sorts in feminism. I believe it's unnecessary as a concept. Pursuing and agreeing with the concept of equality nullifies feminism - that is my opinion. It's a very unpopular opinion with the left today. I've been having discussions about feminism for two decades online, there is hardly any conversational ground I haven't covered in the process.
You can claim that's the definition of feminism, I believe what you're saying is untrue. I don't believe what you quoted is the definition of feminism - there are more likely almost as many definitions of feminism as there are feminists. I think it's absurd to claim that there is one definition given the rather elaborate diversity of belief on the matter just among feminists.
(Edited for more civility).
Of course, as with anything, there are a very small number of people who call themselves feminists who are extremists who believe in sexism against men. That is a vanishingly small group, however, and mainstream feminism, even the more fringe wings, want equality, not revenge.
Your claim is just misrepresenting the ideology.
I think I'm approaching it exactly right.
Your response is conceptually exactly why I no longer post opinions as myself on social media now. If this were a personal discussion on Facebook or Twitter, the left's censorship/control attack wave would be rolling in right now, calling me countless labels (instead, here you'll just get downvotes, your life won't be ruined and your business won't be threatened with boycott for not being in favor of eg illegal immigration).
It's no longer acceptable to have discussions about such topics. It's no longer acceptable to just not stand in the way of such topics (I'm not against people being feminists for example, I don't care) - you must agree, or you're regarded as being against.
Unless you specifically agree with illegal immigration and feminism, then you are against them. That is the present approach taken by the left in the US (the right does it with various topics as well, such as gun control). We now live in an us-vs-them society, you have to choose a side or else.
This is a discussion forum and people are discussing the opinions you shared... because that's what happens on discussion forums.
Do you expect to only receive praise and agreement?
I'm not being attacked on HN / in this thread. HN tends to be about 10x more civil than public social media.
I can't post any of what I said on here - none of which was very inflammatory - without practically enraging dozens of my Democrat/liberal/left-oriented (is there a PC term for that?) friends on eg Facebook. These are good people I'm talking about, and they now lose their minds at the drop of a hat on discussing these topics (post Trump, it has all gone into another gear). And if this conversation were being held on Twitter, I'd be getting death threats (or something close to it; maybe I'd just get called horrible names and proclaimed as being a racist Trump supporter etc) by now for not specifically being in favor of feminism / illegal immigration (as two examples).
It's not agreement I seek, I don't need it. I can't voice opinions about these subjects on public social media, as myself, without people being enraged about the discussion (and or possibly worse, people taking what I say out of context, or failing to understand what I'm arguing (either of their own fault or mine) etc), that response is a business risk that I can't tolerate.
Do you not see the irony in this complaint? You're bemoaning the end of free-speech because people who disagree with you engage with the commentary that you broadcast on a platform for sharing speech. If you don't want to invite public commentary on your political opinions, don't broadcast them to the public. It doesn't matter what the opinion is, who is responding to it, or (short of threats) what they are saying in response, even if they are demonstrably and objectively incorrect; free-speech means other people are free to speak in response to your speech; period. And as an aside, if you want to limit the visibility of particular posts to a subset of individuals who respond within what you consider to be the acceptable range of discourse, Facebook does allow you to do this.
> These are good people I'm talking about, and they now lose their minds at the drop of a hat on discussing these topics (post Trump, it has all gone into another gear)
So what? Do you wish they would just stop expressing their opinions? Do you wish they'd just stop expressing their opinions on your posts? Do you wish they'd just be "more reasonable" in their opinions? Or is it more that you'd prefer they expressed their opinions in a way that makes you feel comfortable? What about their speech do you wish would change so that they would meet your standard for acceptable expression of their opinions?
> And if this conversation were being held on Twitter, I'd be getting death threats
This is a universal truth of the twitter cesspool regardless of the topic and has nothing to do with "PC" or "the left". I've seen plenty of rape and death threats directed towards feminists on twitter and I've seen my own kid addressed with death threats because of his opinion on PlayStation vs Xbox.
> I can't voice opinions about these subjects on public social media, as myself, without people being enraged about the discussion
Free-speech means you get to express your opinion, it doesn't mean you get to control how other people feel about the opinion you express.
That's not a free-speech problem. In a discussion about free-speech, you broadcasted your particular personal opinions regarding notoriously controversial topics and castigate "the left" as anti-freespeech, and then when someone responds to you with a civil disagreement, you exclaim that is what's killing free speech. This is how free-speech works, it means that people can respond freely to the statements you made freely, where is the problem?
Feminism has more than accomplished its goals of equality. Women can do anything they want, yet they also get these benefits: If accused of a crime less likely to be convicted If they hit a man far less likely to be charged with harsh domestic violence laws If convicted, men get 60% longer sentences If another Vietnam happens, women will stay home while men are forced to get killed, get their arms and legs blown off in war. If they have a child out of wedlock they get free money from the government If there is a divorce, they get custody 80% of the time.
The reason men make more money is because on average, they have a higher iq than women (this is scientifically proven), because they have more natural drive than women, and because they have fewer emotional insecurities that prevent them from succeeding in the workplace.
Feminism has achieved equality of opportunity in every regard. Today it is no longer about equality of opportunity, but equality of results. If feminists are going to fight for equal pay, regardless of merit, they should also fight for mandatory longer prison times, and mandatory higher conviction rates just for being women in order to match men. Or if they think things should be decided on relative merit of the individual, then they should quit whining about being women. Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. Find your niche, instead of trying to win at someone else's and then cheating because you came in second and wanted first.
Edit: As for the dogmatic downvoters, why don't you at least present some sort of rebuttal against these facts, instead of a media-ingrained fear downvote?