Notes for a talk at ICMI with the following title: Feminism: Not “progressive”. Not “egalitarian”. Not “liberal”. Not “left-wing”.
-
Feminism is not “progressive”: It’s regressive; it is based on misandry, sexist discrimination, hate & bias; it suppresses science (esp. on domestic violence, on female violence and on criminology in general); it is conspiracist; it asserts the existence of a non-existent entity “Patriarchy”; it is ultra-conservative, in its treating women as helpless infants. Infantilism about women is conservative, not progressive.
-
Feminism is not “egalitarian”: It demands, and achieves, preferential treatment for a privileged group (women). By definition, this is anti-egalitarian.
-
Feminism is not “liberal”: To the contrary, it is socially conservative—women are infants, without agency; it is illiberal & authoritarian; it demands increasing state power; it uses the police and institutional power as a tool of social control; it is moralistic & Puritan. More or less by definition, these are central principle of state-enforced illiberalism, social illiberalism and social conservatism.
-
Feminism is not “left-wing”: It has no interest in economic fairness (esp. those at the bottom of society); it is openly anti-working-class. Marxism and socialism are, by definition, left-wing because their primary concern is with economic exploitation, wage slavery, alienation of the worker, co-erced theft of their labour, and so on. Feminism is, in no way, “left-wing”. Feminism is a form of Identity Politics. This, in general, is an anti-left-wing position. Furthermore, it is a form of Identity Politics closely aligned with the State, policing, punishment and incarceration (so-called carceral feminism). Again, these are not “left-wing”. They have been traditionally right-wing positions for centuries.
The ICMI20 talk is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZQf1JDa28Y&list=PLOXfnai0-o0I8BtOpmjbn_3FGYBHiV64S
I read it and thought you made some salient points. There’s aspects I disagree with and I think we could have an interesting discussion around them. But I don’t have the patience to create multiple comments with sources that you have, I’ve done it all before and really don’t want to get down in those reeds. I didn’t watch the video either, so I’m going to assume that the video itself was poorly structured.
“There’s also a very very good paper critiquing Straus and others’ papers”
Could you give me the title of this specific paper (I tried clicking the link but it is saying the connection is not private - if it is the one I am thinking of, there is a good chance that Straus has already responded to it. Here’s Straus defending the scale https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22865343/ ). On this point though, I guess it comes down what methodology you feel is better. The organisations you mentioned look at arrest statistics. Whereas papers that find parity look at factors that may be impacting men (such as the theory they are less likely to report, and even less likely to see it as abuse when it is happening to them - some research backs this up). Erin Prizzey who set up the first domestic abuse shelter has been on record saying it is an issue with learned patterns of behaviour, rather than a gendered issue. For instance, was this study covered in your debunking https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261543769_References_Examining_Assaults_by_Women_on_Their_Spouses_or_Male_Partners_An_Updated_Annotated_Bibliography or this https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2968709/. There are many studies on this. There are reasons to doubt the CTS measure that Straus employs, but there are also reasons to doubt arrest statistics as men are less likely to be a part of arrest statistics, some would theorise this is because they are less likely to be reported and seen as less serious by society as a whole https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s11199-018-0949-x. There are more studies demonstrating this as well, though I would have to find them but here’s a couple https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666518220300061?via%3Dihub, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597820303630#:~:text=The%20moral%20typecasting%20framework%20proposes,facilitate%20categorizing%20women%20into%20the. I don’t think it is unreasonable to assume that these aspects may skew the statistics on perpetration rates between men and women.
“And do you think maybe we should prioritize so that jobs on both sides of the spectrum feel an inclination towards have decent pay? Why do we act like education, and nursery has so little value for instance”
In regards to this point. I wholeheartedly agree that education and nursery should offer more pay, but I think there is different value other than financial. It is also worth noting that the market decides the price. There is only costs in teaching and nursery etc. I really don’t think it is reasonable to expect their pay to be comparable to companies that make mobile phones (for example) at costs of around £700.00 a pop (that people willingly pay), this isn’t so much a decision on what fields are worth more but on market demand, that women make most of the contributions to.
“Gender pay gap reporting refers to the practice of collecting and disclosing data on the difference in average earnings between men and women within an organization or across a particular industry or sector, I don’t see an issue with this being enforced.”
I do, average pay doesn’t really give indication as to the factors. My company (in an attempt to close the gap) a few years ago put my team on the same pay. I thought this was great as it resulted in a pay rise. However, we where we were put on the same pay. My colleague, who had worked her way through the levels and was on more money than men due to the fact she had worker harder was now being paid the same as me who hadn’t put that effort in. This wasn’t fair on her. I don’t believe the mere fact of measuring averages is an effective way of measuring fairness.
I could touch on more of your points but - from your response - it does seem like your responding to a poorly constructed video and I don’t have the time or inclination to discuss these fully.
Thank you for your input, however. I found it an interesting read.
Assuming your colleague had gotten raises through merit, it’s obviously silly to roll that back, I would’ve thought that they’d account for raises given that it wasn’t actually implied that they had to act on this, just disclose the difference, and this reminds me I’m probably foolish in imagining such a thing would just be itself in a vacuum (ie not fuck up things that are kinda encouraging people to do their job better)
Sorry for the long wait, “Gender and types of intimate partner violence: A response to an anti-feminist” (literature review) by Johnson MP. in 2011, which was a year before
I use this paper most of all to show what feminist academics thought even 10 years ago, since the video seemed to still have these misconceptions, and they mostly argue against Straus for misrepresentations and ill conclusions of others’ works and beliefs.
Your second study doesn’t seem to support the point based on its abstract, from point a to f
First Study: References Examining Assaults by Women on Their Spouses or Male Partners: An Updated Annotated
is a bit of a mess, as most of the things citing it doesn’t really use it for the purpose of saying “women are as physically aggressive as men”, and it for some reason brings a child-abuse study(?), a bunch of anecdotes, and an internet survey from the middle of a sociologist’s book (not paper) up in its first part, but this put me down a further rabbithole of Gender Symmetry discussion which I hadn’t delved into before, 1 2 and I’ll admit it at the very least doesn’t seem like a settled debate, so I retract what I have to say about Gender Symmetry itself since idk anymore
I fully agree, (think my wall even says so) but from any not-radfem feminist perspective, this seems to be parts we acknowledge, it’s just also viewed as caused by Patriarchal society as it previously stood and perpetuated by how it currently stands
Thanks for your input as well, it forced me to learn a little more about what I don’t know