„Abschiedsbrief an den Feminismus“

Rachael Lefler schreibt einen Abschiedsbrief an den Feminismus, was doch ein guter Weg ist das Jahr ausklingen zu lassen:

Da spricht sie einige gute Punkte an, zB den feministischen Mythos, dass Unterschiede = Unterdrückung sind, weil alle Unterschiede soziale Konstruktionen als Ursache haben.

Predominantly, I think that the biggest feminist myth is that women and men are not significantly different in psychological makeup. Therefore, everything, and good Lord I mean everything that women do that men do not do, and vice versa, are criticized as a result of sexist culture, rather than what they usually really amount to, which are biologically-based sex differences. See, biology does not just simply boil down to „some people have penises, some people have vaginas“. It really does impact everything about being human, from hair growth, bone and muscular structure, to yes, behavioral traits. And to me, it’s simply dishonest of feminists to put everything under the umbrella of patriarchy theory, when there are sex-based differences in psychology and behavior. I do not think these differences ought to result necessarily in discrimination, in fact, I think that because of these differences, women and men complement each other and should share in power equally in society.

Der Gedanke, dass Unterschiede im Verhalten und in sonstigen Punkten immer das Ergebnis von Macht und Unterdrückung oder sozialen Strukturen sein muss, ist in der Tat eine sehr simple Sicht der Dinge, die allerdings den Vorteil hat, dass man sich sehr einfach als Opfer generieren kann.
Ihr eigenes „weil sie sich so gut ergänzen sollten sie auch die Macht in der Gesellschaft in gleicher Weise teilen“ ist zwar auch etwas inkonsequent, aber das ist eine andere Sache.

Der zweite Punkt ist das Berufen auf die Lexikondefinition des Feminismus (dazu hatte ich auch bereits einen Artikel):

Basically the line has become something of a cliche response to whenever women, or anyone, criticized feminism. They’ll point to the dictionary definition of feminism and say, hey, if you think men and women deserve equal legal treatment or equal political rights, you’re already a feminist!

To me, this is as dumb as saying „ISIS follows Islam, if you follow Islam, congratulations, you’re already a member of ISIS!“. If feminism were just about gender equality, I think more than 90% of people would be feminists. But feminism describes stances on many political issues. I used to like feminist Jessica Valenti for her book „He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut“, which was about gender-based double standards common in society. But Jessica does NOT think feminism means mere equality, and when you read feminist blogs, or watch feminist Youtube videos, it becomes apparent that that is not what they’re about.

Eine ähnliche Argumentation, die diesen Unterschied hervorhebt, hatte ich hier bereits hier zitiert. Es ist beretis dann, wenn man tatsächlich meint, dass Feminismus für Gleichberechtigung ist (und sonst keine Forderungen hat) ein klassischer „Alle VW Golfs sind Autos, aber nicht alle Autos sind Golfs“-Fehlschluss. Allerdings kommt eben noch hinzu, dass der moderne Feminismus eine Vielzahl weiterer Forderungen und Theorien aufgestellt hat, die über diese Aussagen weit hinaus gehen und eher Gruppendenken, Feindbildaufbau und Verantwortungsverschiebung bewirken als einen Kampf um tatsächliche Gerechtigkeit.

Weiter geht es mit der Darstellung, dass Feminismus eine Ideologie ist, die Andersdenkende ausschließt:

Feminism is an ideology and a worldview. Feminists reject people who don’t agree with the majority on matters such as abortion, taxpayer-funded birth control, patriarchy theory, and people who think like I do about gender being rooted in biological differences between men and women, not the official feminist platform that all gender differences are caused by oppression. Feminism labels women as oppressed, but ignores problems where sexism also negatively impacts men. Somehow, men are just so darn stupid they’re oppressing themselves, apparently. Silly men.

Eigentlich sind in diesem Modell auch die meisten Frauen doof: Sie erkennen nicht, wie schlecht die Welt für sie ist, wie patriarchisch verseucht, wie sehr gegen ihre Rechte. Sie haben den Sexismus zu stark internalisiert. Alle doof, außer Feministinnen.

Und auch gutes zur Legitimation über die Vergangenheit:

I also dislike the way modern feminism considers itself legitimized by legitimate feminist concerns that exist elsewhere either in time or space. Like if you go back in time, or look to very poor war-torn countries, you can find issues where women were legitimately being oppressed. First of all, this has absolutely nothing to do with modern, western feminism. Secondly, I would argue that men in such societies were oppressed just as much, if not more than, women in those societies. I mean, who is oppressed in Afghanistan, the women who wear burqas out of fear of Islamic radicals, or the men who are expected to become directly involved in the military action? I am grateful that previous generations of feminists fought for my rights to do things like wear pants, vote, and go to college. I’m especially grateful that women during WWII proved that women were capable of factory work.

However, I dislike that the mention of all these things we have PREVIOUS generations of feminists to thank for means we have to accept feminism wholesale today. I mean, there was also undeniable harm caused by feminists in history, who have done things like legitimize promiscuity, attack the nuclear family, and shot up the divorce rate. I personally think feminism is one of the main reasons American pop culture went from classy to trashy. So no, I think it is completely ridiculous to insist that I or anyone has to label themselves „feminist“ simply because they affirm a support for gender equality. And I think, in today’s society, to be a true advocate for gender equality might be closer to being an MRA (men’s rights activist). Defining your terms in such a way so that anyone who does not support you looks like an asshole is intellectual dishonesty.

Das Argument kommt in der Tat häufig „wenn du gegen den heutigen Feminismus bist, dann musst du gegen alles sein, was irgendwie mal als feministischer Fortschritt angesehen worden ist“ ist ein reines Scheinargument, denn ich kann natürlich bestimmte Punkte in der Vergangenheit gut finden, aber dennoch die modernen Feminismustheorien, die damit nicht wirklich etwas zu tun haben, schlecht.

Dann kommt sie auf das „Patriarchat“:

Patriarchy is often a word tossed around in feminist circles. The cynical side of me thinks it might be just a term they came up with to silence accusations that they hate men. „No, we don’t hate men, we hate patriarchy.“ Also tied to this view is the idea that non-feminist women are „participating in“ patriarchy, whatever the fuck that means, and so they have a very „with us or against us“ mentality when it comes to women. So much for a movement about, supposedly, women’s liberation. They don’t really WANT your liberation, they want your suffering. They want to jack off to your pain as another poor, pathetic victim of „the patriarchy“.

„Sie wollen nicht deine Befreiung, sie wollen dein Leid“. Das ist eigentlich eine sehr schöne Beschreibung des Feminismus: Man will sich dort darüber aufregen, dass Frauen unterdrückt werden, man braucht die Unterdrückung, weil man mit ihr das Feindbild aufrechthalten kann, den Hass schüren kann. Und sich Rechtfertigen, dass man eben nicht Männer hasse, sondern nur die Unterdrückung, die sie aufrechterhalten. Was natürlich gar nichts mit Hass auf Männer zu tun hat.

Das stellt sie auch noch einmal klar:

All conspiracy theorists do this, and to me, believing patriarchy is behind all the problems facing women and girls is not really all that different from saying our economic collapse can be blamed on the Jews. Both take a group that had nothing to do with anything and uses it as a handy scapegoat.

The feminists say blaming patriarchy is not blaming men. Seriously? Patriarchy is a word whose etymological roots derive from „father“, and simply describes any society in which men have most of the political power. The thing is, most societies, past and present, were patriarchies, regardless of culture, and I think of this as proof that men are simply more dominant and more predisposed to prefer political leadership than women, who seem across all cultures to prefer domestic and private leadership. This is not because of some lizard people thing, but just because of biology; women have the babies, the babies need to be fed and nurtured and protected at home, men have to go out and be the ones protecting them and getting food for them.

In der Tat ist der Mann oder Männlichkeit im Feminismus häufig schlicht ein Sündenbock zur eigenen Identitätspolitk: Die (befreiten) Frauen bilden die Ingroup des Feminismus, die durch die Outgroup gestützt wird, indem man sie zum Feind erklärt.
Das es viel einfachere Erklärungen gibt, die diesen Hass nicht brauchen, kann in diesem Denken nicht vorkommen, weil das Outgrouping einem ein wunderbares Überlegenheitsgefühl beschert.

Auch interessant, dass sie anführt, dass die Angst vor einer Vergewaltigung als sehr effektives Mittel im Feminismus genutzt wird, insbesondere in der „Rape Culture“Theorie:

I didn’t realize until before this how much of feminism revolves around and depends on us women being perpetually shaking out of the fear of rape. There have been numerous instances that have shown me that this hypersensitivity towards all things dubbed „rapey“ seems like it’s less and less about concern for actual rape victims, especially male rape victims, who are totally ignored by this theory, and seems to have more to do with keeping women terrified of men at all times. If you’re enough of a crybaby, anything can be called „rapey“. Feminists just can’t get enough of talking about rape, as if it’s everywhere. They even make up bullshit statistics that make it seem like a scary-sounding number of women will be raped in their lifetime.

Die Rape Culture und ihre Übertreibung, in der nahezu alles ein Nachweis genau dafür sein kann, ist in der Tat ein gutes Mittel, um Angst vor Männern zu machen. Die Frau im beständigen Spiesrutenlauf durch ihr Leben, dass resultiert in Denkweise wie „Für ganz viele Frauen ist es extrem schlimm einfach schon auf die Straße zu gehen.“

Auch ihre Ausführungen zum Gender Pay Gap finde ich gut:

The gender pay gap disappears when you truly are, as feminists claim, looking at women and men who do the same job. The original „women earn 77 cents for every male dollar“ thing was NOT looking at women who do the same job as men and finding they still got paid less because they were women. It just so happens that women take jobs that are primarily indoors, domestic, and care-based like teaching, library science, and nursing, and that men tend to choose more outdoor jobs involving more muscle power usage and bodily risk, for which they get paid more, but also suffer a much higher rate of workplace injury and death.

But how dare a crab fisherman get paid more than a librarian?

Anyway, numerous studies have debunked the „gender pay gap“ argument, so I won’t waste too much time. Even ultra-liberal Huffington Post did an article on it, here. The wage gap is so obviously not a thing. And if it were a thing, wouldn’t the companies hire more women than men in all jobs and discriminate against men, because then they could cut costs if it were really true that society expects women to work for less. Another thing that is inconvenient for feminists is the fact that women make different work-life balance choices, favoring more personal and family time to long work hours. If anyone suffers from sexist expectations, it’s men, who suffer from the sexist expectation that men are work-machines who don’t need family life or rest, because demanding such from bosses makes men seem weak but to women it’s a given that they need these things.

„Wenn irgend jemand von sexistischen Rollenerwartungen betroffen ist, dann Männer, weil sie darunter leiden, dass sie Arbeitsmaschinen sind, die kein Familienleben und keine Pausen brauchen“. Das ist eben das Gegenstück zu „Karriere“ und „höherer Verdienst“. Im Feminismus kommt das vor, aber eben nur als Zeichen, dass Männer sich selbst unterdrücken („deswegen solltest du Feminist werden, wir sind gegen solche Rollebilder“). Allerdings kommt es niemals in einer Betrachtung des Gender Pay Gaps vor. Die feministische Fähigkeit Argumente sauber zu trennen und nebeneinander zu benutzen, ohne sie zu vernetzen ist da aus meiner Sicht häufig schon erstaunlich.

Auch gut finde ich ihre Ausführungen dazu, dass die Gesellschaft nach feministischer Theorie Gewalt gegen Frauen zu wenig beachtet:

Like rape culture, this feminist claim is that society has some kind of hidden prejudice or misogyny that causes people to disrespect female victims of violence or to take them less seriously than male victims of violence. But the media and the way society is set up (with way more shelters for battered women than battered men, for example) point to just the opposite being true. If anything, the fact that people like Anita Sarkeesian go on huge tirades about how violence in women in video games is some kind of big structural problem for society, while for some reason, ignoring that those games are just as, and usually more, violent against men.

In fact, I see the opposite happening, I see men who are attacked by women shamed as „pussies“, in other words, have their masculinity questioned, but women who are attacked by men are „strong survivors“ but also, paradoxically „silenced victims of oppression“, ha, like anyone’s silencing them, they seem to be all you ever read about in the blogosphere and see on news networks. I just watched an hour-long special last night on CNN about the women who are accusing Bill Cosby of rape. Nobody is silencing or marginalizing them, people are, for the most part, congratulating them on having the courage to finally come forward with details that are somewhat embarrassing or even traumatizing to discuss and doing so anyway. But the feminist narrative is that women must always, in all cases, be VICTIMS.

Auch hier wird das Opfer-Narrativ im Feminismus überbedient. Es wird gar nicht wahrgenommen, wie sehr die Gesellschaft für Gewalt gegen Frauen sensibilisiert ist und wie egal ihr Gewalt gegen Männer ist. Frauen dürfen Opfer sein, Männer nicht.

Die Folgen beschreibt sie wie folgt:

So, this leads to them:

• Ignoring and marginalizing instances of male victimization, even mocking male victims mercilessly (see the below video).
• Ignoring and marginalizing instances of female perpetration, even to the point of supporting the female perpetrators (also in the below video). And:
• Supporting sexist attitudes, paradoxically, about women as helpless victims and men as big, strong bullies.

Basically, feminist theory relies on the pattern being men = perpetrators, and women = victims. In cases where this reality is reversed, feminists still need to find a way to blame men or „patriarchy“ for the male victimization, or, more frequently, they tend to ignore that because it’s an exception to the general rule. But it should be obvious that, probably due to biological differences, people in general have more empathy for females than for males, and this empathy-inspiring ability women have is not something, sorry all you feminist sign-holders, that you need feminism for.

In der Tat ist die Fähigkeit, immer innerhalb dieses Musters zu bleiben, im Feminismus sehr ausgeprägt: Wenn eine Frau Vorteile hätte, dann bietet sich die Figur des wohlwollenden Sexismus („benevolent Sexism“) an, mit dem Frauen einen Vorteil nur haben, um sie in die eigentlich nachteilige Rolle (die insgesamt bestehende Nachteiligkeit muss nicht begründet werden) zu drängen.

Zu den feministischen Theorien, dass es keine zwei Geschlechter gibt, sondern unzählige:

The gender theory given by mainstream feminists today is that there is no biological basis for gender; that all of it is culture, and that physical sex does not determine cultural gender. Well, except the problem is, for the vast majority of people, their biological sex also determines a lot of their innate psychological characteristics. I know that there are people with various disorders who do not have a sex, or have an intermediate sex between the two usual sexes. But saying this disproves the concept that sex exists is sort of like saying that because neurological disorders exist, you can’t create an intelligence test, because the person taking it might have a neurological disorder. Not that disordered people are less than human in any way, but talking about them is not a useful way to talk about gender or sex.

There are two genders, because in nature there are two sexes. I know this position will be extremely controversial, and I can hear the screeching. But, basically, all other types of genders and sexes are not truly outside this binary, they are instead some combination of male and female characteristics, like someone being transgendered is simply a biological man or woman choosing to identify as culturally the opposite. I have no real problem with that.

Auch hier würde ich zustimmen, dass es zwei Geschlechter gibt, und einige Durchmischungen dieser. Das entwertet das Konzept von Mann und Frau aber nicht, es ist eine sehr sinnvolle Bezeichnung für die allermeisten Fälle, die eine einfache Abgrenzung erlaubt und üblicherweise auch mit biologischen Konzeptionen des Geschlechts übereinstimmt.

What I am more worried about is that people are insisting that gender has no relationship whatsoever with biology, as if there was just some kind of bearded man on a mountaintop handing us down these rules for patriarchal definitions of gender. The truth is, from a very early age, boys and girls exhibit psychological differences, as anyone who has been a parent or teacher of young children will know, and as we grow through puberty these sex differences in our brains become even more distinct. You can’t neatly and cleanly separate mind from body here. Females and males have different levels of certain hormones, different stimuli affect their brain differently, they communicate differently, and they get pleasure from different types of activities. There’s no conspiracy or evil in this, it’s simply the way things are. Quit trying so hard to be special and an exception, and just accept that there are general trends, but you should do whatever feels more natural to you without having to worry that this should change the way you label yourself.

„Hör auf verzweifelt zu versuchen speziell und eine Ausnahme zu sein und akzeptiere, dass es generelle Trends gibt, du aber tun solltest, was sich auch immer für dich natürlich anfühlt, ohne das du dich deswegen sorgen solltest, dass es die Weise verändert, in der du dich einordnest“. Das scheint mir ein vernünftiger Ansatz zu sein: Es gibt aus biologischen Gründen Häufungen, aber eben auch Ausnahmen und jeder ist, wie er ist.

One thing I especially hate is the term „genderfluid“, for Pete’s sake, you aren’t a special „genderfluid“ person if you’re a guy who enjoys embroidery or a woman who enjoys karate. You’re just a guy who likes baking or a girl who enjoys karate. It’s that simple. The term seems to reinforce gender stereotypes, by saying that if a man or woman acts in any kind of non-stereotypical way, they must be acting „as a man“ or „like a woman“ because of some kind of secret super special rare mega ultra gender identity, don’t fucking make me laugh.

 Es gibt sicherlich einige Menschen, die sich in verschiedenen Bereichen biologisch gesehen gerade auf der Kippe zwischen Mann und Frau bewegen und die insoweit schwer in das System fallen. Allerdings wird auch dies eben denke ich durchaus gern übertrieben, was der Ausdruck „genderfluid“ sicherlich erleichtert. In der Tat baut ein solcher Gedanke eher Stereotype aus, indem er nicht einfach auf das Individuum abstellt, sondern alles als zuordenbar ansieht.

Und auch die Ausführungen zu „Geschlecht und Spielzeugen“ sind gut:

Are toys capable of sexism? Does playing with Barbie brainwash girls from infancy to become Stepford Wives? If anyone else said toys were a tool for brainwashing children, they’d be called crazy, but it somehow supposedly makes sense when feminists say toys are amale tool for brainwashing girls? What the hell?

Actually, the reason that companies make toys at all is because research and development teams spent all kinds of time and money testing their products and seeing which types of toys are more likely to be successful. Girls seem to naturally prefer pink and bright/light colors, and nurturing and social play. Girls also seem to prefer magic and fantasy play. Boys seem to enjoy violent, destructive play aimed at completing objectives and strategic planning. Boys like action, and boys like science/technology more than girls.

Almost everyone will be an exception in some way to these general trends, of course. When I was a kid, for example, I found Barbie boring, and loved computer games. However, the general trends are still valid ways for toy companies to predict what will be liked by boys and girls and to plan accordingly. It is exceedingly difficult, given these innate differences, to create a toy that both boys and girls will like equally. And as boys and girls get older, these preferences become increasingly divergent.

Also auch hier eine Verkehrung der Kausalität im Feminismus: Nicht die Spielzeuge verursachen die Unterschiede, sondern die Unterschiede führen zu unterschiedlichen Interessen im Spielzeug. Diese zeigen sich auch in biologischen Sonderfällen, bei Affen und sind zudem evolutionsbiologisch bei den Unterschieden von Männern und Frauen verständlich, denn Spielen ist Vorbereitung auf das Erwachsenenleben.