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Comment by pron | Hacker News Reader

Feminism is not femininity and so is not to be contrasted with masculinity [1].

Feminism is originally about gender (power-) equality (and so is orthogonal to femininity and masculinity), but has been extended to other forms of power equality. I think that in this context it's about concern for certain things that established practices don't show concern for. Such concern could perhaps translate to certain power dynamics.

[1]: One of the feminist icons in recent popular culture is Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation, who is also an icon of butch masculinity. I don't know if he would have loved or hated this. On the one hand, the description sounds hippy, which he would have hated; on the other hand, it's about do-it-yourself, non-industrial craftsmenship, which he would have loved.

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Yes, that's exactly the focus of modern feminist studies. Figures like Donna Haraway have pushed for a field of study that goes beyond identities of womanhood.

> She advocates for political organizing based on "affinity"—conscious coalitions and political choices—rather than essentialist identities based on biology or shared oppression.

If the goal is to decouple feminism from feminine identities, which by definition means it then also needs to apply to masculine identities, then I think they need a new name.

Also, it appears that >99% of feminism researchers are publishing their scientific papers with a feminine name. I can easily understand why the general public might confuse the 2 groups with each other.

Which brings me back to the question: what do you think the authors hope to gain by invoking this association? Especially now that we have established that their word choice is highly likely to be misunderstood?

First, confusing feminism with femininity or, conversely, patriarchy with masculinity is such a basic error - and not one of nuance - that shows at least an intentional disinterest. There is no "goal to decouple", because if an ideology believes a certain group is disempowered then it strives to empower it and there is no "decoupling". But if you can't tell the difference between, say, being white and being a white supremacist, then you should probably find out what it is.

Second, every academic discipline, from history to physics, suffers from misinterpretation by "the general public", and the disciplines don't generally let this problem shape their work. Non-introductory writing doesn't cover the basics. That's what Wikipedia is for.

Why's feminism so tone deaf on the fact that, it's basically a divisive and elitist branch of conservatism now?

The Democratic Republic of Congo holds between 60-80% of the world’s coltan reserves, a key input to capacitors and other discrete electronics. UN investigators have identified systematic rape and sexual violence as a strategy of armed groups controlling regions containing these minerals, over 113k individual instances in 2023 alone. Phones keep getting made.

To me, this project is arguing that we don’t necessarily need to tolerate systemic rape, exploitation, economic inequality, and other forms of violence to have our little circuits.

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