The PRoblem of Feminism & A Problematic Feminist

Pearl Jam and toast

zensideofyin wrote:

d. There is a common misconception of feminism, that it is a mass of raging females with short hair wearing flannel trying to strike a mass takeover. Feminism and the feminist movement has always been about equality. Even today men with the same qualifications as women make more, women have to work twice as hard and twice as long to make as much of an impact. It's all about equal rights, and with every movement there are always going to be individuals that will set you back a few steps along the road.

^^

I consider myself a feminist and i'm a male.

FinsburyParkCarrots

ryan198 wrote:

well I'll actually have to do some reading on this, but does this pre-xxx form of semiotics get into the modes of pre-xxx production?

You mean, in critical practice, as a way of showing students its relevance, in studying feminism in literature? Kristeva is really a philosopher and psychoanalytical, cultural theorist, rather than a literary critic. But any good reader in feminist literary theory, and critical practice, should show you how her ideas, as well as those of Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray, have informed what's come to be known as French psychoanalytical feminism. (Although Kristeva is Bulgarian, she came to prominence in France, as an academic.)

ryan198

Fair enough, what I need to do then is actually get my hands on these authors. In some feminist sport studies stuff I've seen the latter two names being cited, but haven't taken the time to get into it...I kinda had to teach myself feminist sport studies this summer so getting to the originating texts in the next step. Thanks for the direction.

danika_bookworm

NMyTree wrote:

What, not even a chuckle or giggle at my parody?

Tough crowd:D

oops, sorry... hee hee! anyway, i like parodies because it illuminates some things that we take for granted. imagine a female-dominated planet!

danika_bookworm

suffragette wrote:

That would be nice. If we could all be sisters. But then all we're doing anyway is fighting over men, so how can we be sisters?

Kidding aside, women are their own worst enemy.

I think of my grandmother, made to marry at 16. She never had any say over anything and saw life as babies and drudgery. I have all these choices. Lucky me.

have you read "The Red Tent" (forgot the author, a Jewish woman)? It's about Jacob's (the Biblical figure who had 2 wives plus 2 concubines) women. Hoiw they're all sisters and how they managed to love Jacob without fighting over him.

danika_bookworm

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

You mean, in critical practice, as a way of showing students its relevance, in studying feminism in literature? Kristeva is really a philosopher and psychoanalytical, cultural theorist, rather than a literary critic. But any good reader in feminist literary theory, and critical practice, should show you how her ideas, as well as those of Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray, have informed what's come to be known as French psychoanalytical feminism. (Although Kristeva is Bulgarian, she came to prominence in France, as an academic.)

hard to be a feminist literary critic when the text she deals with uses symbols made by men... but it's also hard to be feminist cultural theorist when history is writtten by men.

FinsburyParkCarrots

danika_bookworm wrote:

hard to be a feminist literary critic when the text she deals with uses symbols made by men...

but it's also hard to be feminist cultural theorist when history is writtten by men.

On the first point, according to Kristeva: she argues that you successfully subvert language from within the lexical and syntactical conventions of symbolic order, and not outside of it, for to try to signify outside of language would lead to madness.

On the second: Kristeva uses linguistic play to defer the phallologocentric logic of conventional discourses of history. Such interruption would deliberately sabotage its point being made, ironically to prove its point, of an alternative experience.

danika_bookworm

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

On the first point, according to Kristeva: she argues that you successfully subvert language from within the lexical and syntactical conventions of symbolic order, and not outside of it, for to try to signify outside of language would lead to madness.

oh, internal sabotage? infiltrate the system, right?

FinsburyParkCarrots

danika_bookworm wrote:

oh, internal sabotage? infiltrate the system, right?

That's the idea, but many would argue that Kristeva didn't practice what she preached.

suffragette

VictoryGin wrote:

No offense, but plenty of women do act as sisters. Maybe you should join them instead of buying into the whole 'play women off each other' thing.

And you have 'all these choices' because women fought for them for you. So maybe don't villify them.

I'm not vilifying anyone. I know those choices were hard fought. I was being ironic and attempting to interject some humor.

VictoryGin

suffragette wrote:

I'm not vilifying anyone. I know those choices were hard fought. I was being ironic and attempting to interject some humor.

So when you said "kidding aside women are their own worst enemy," you were actually kidding? Ah, okay.

danika_bookworm

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

That's the idea, but many would argue that Kristeva didn't practice what she preached.

why? she is a cultural theorist and a philosopher, how could she not have practiced what she preached? she most probably have used info researched, tested and written by men? haven't she "infiltrated" the male-dominated system of philosophy?

OutOfBreath

Feminism and feminist are very fuzzy terms. Just because you have someone on record stating something and calling him/herself a feminist, doesn't mean that all people that call themselves feminists think that way.

At the heart of feminism is equality between the sexes. Equal opportunities and equal pay for equal work. This is the bedrock. From there, there are probably as many variations as there are feminists. You do have the man-haters on one side, although their numbers are teeny tiny compared to more "regular" feminists. Now that we're talking about it, what constitutes a feminist is in no way standardized. If you can agree to the first line of this paragraph, that means that you can call yourself a feminist if you so choose. And maybe you sortof are one, without knowing it.

But it is a very fuzzy term, about on par with "liberal", which changes content from country to country politically. If you as a right-wing american "hate liberals", then you hate your counterparts in Australia for instance. Both liberalism and feminism have their basis in a small core. For liberalism it is about freedom for the individual (but how that is best achieved is debatable and spread across the political spectrum), and for feminism it is about equality and an end to oppression of women physically, economically and otherwise. To restore females as individuals in their own right.

So, the alternatives listed are nonsense, except d which is vague enough to fit anything. a is very marginal, although I guess they exist. b and c is science fiction.

I call myself a feminist. To me that means to be sensitive towards discrimination and indifferences regarding women, and promote equality between the sexes. Equal pay for equal work. Equal opportunities and equal choice. Feminism does not equate man-hating.

Peace
Dan

FinsburyParkCarrots

danika_bookworm wrote:

why? she is a cultural theorist and a philosopher, how could she not have practiced what she preached? she most probably have used info researched, tested and written by men? haven't she "infiltrated" the male-dominated system of philosophy?

Remember that her roots as a thinker were Marxist. Then, she loudly embraced Reagan era, mass popular culture, in the US (calling it a wonderful example of a "semiotic"). In continuing the post-structuralist theoretical path she had chosen (something very fashionable in US universities), she was thought to be playing this Derridean game of destabilising terms such as "woman", "feminism" and "history", when it was the aim of politically committed, often Marxist-influenced, materialist feminists, not to deny these concepts but rewrite history, to include past representations of feminist women's lives. (However, it should be said that, although there have been Marxist-feminist critical collectives in literary study, materialist feminists have often been wary of the androcentric bias of Marxism.)

Kristeva's kind of feminist thinking is often called Gynocriticism, whereas her detractors often adhere to what's called Gynesis (a concerted effort to re-read representations of women in literature, to the extent of researching women's writings over the centuries that have been ignored by those people - usually men, until recently - who construct a literary canon of classic literature, for schools, colleges and the marketplace).

suffragette

VictoryGin wrote:

So when you said "kidding aside women are their own worst enemy," you were actually kidding? Ah, okay.

No, there I was actually being serious. We are.

VictoryGin

suffragette wrote:

No, there I was actually being serious. We are.

Well then I guess I completely don't understand what you're saying.

surferdude

VictoryGin wrote:

Well then I guess I completely don't understand what you're saying.

I think that women are their own worst enemy in that their is no common definition of feminism, there's no common goal to work towards. Women devalued the value of being a stay at home mom.

In the workplace how a woman will treat another woman can be comical at times. The attacks get very personal, very quick. All in the name of getting a leg up on the competition. Woman, generally, try to get the leg up on men in other ways.

FinsburyParkCarrots

I had a PM from someone who didn't understand what I was saying, either. Blame Kristeva.

VictoryGin

surferdude wrote:

I think that women are their own worst enemy in that their is no common definition of feminism, there's no common goal to work towards. Women devalued the value of being a stay at home mom.

In the workplace how a woman will treat another woman can be comical at times. The attacks get very personal, very quick. All in the name of getting a leg up on the competition. Woman, generally, try to get the leg up on men in other ways.

I don't think there can be one single comprehensive unified vision for feminism across the country or world. There are way too many people, and not everyone is the same. There is the common basis of social, political, and economic equality, but it is only natural to have many splinter groups from that. Everyone will never want/need the same exact thing. Find what group you agree with and work towards that common goal, if you're interested in a common goal. There are so many goals to choose from.

I'm sorry you have that experience in your workplace, because I've never had that. All women I've worked with at various places have been extremely supportive and they range in age. But I hate to see that in a gendered way, because how can someone say men aren't competitive? The fact that they're not called out on that here is indicitave. Aren't many people in business competitive regardless of gender?

And not that I want to make an argument out of it, but most men I've worked with are extremely gossipy and initiate personal attacks, unlike women I've worked with. I just think those are tired stereotypes.

surferdude

VictoryGin wrote:

I don't think there can be one single comprehensive unified vision for feminism across the country or world. There are way too many people, and not everyone is the same. There is the common basis of social, political, and economic equality, but it is only natural to have many splinter groups from that. Everyone will never want/need the same exact thing. Find what group you agree with and work towards that common goal, if you're interested in a common goal. There are so many goals to choose from.

I'm sorry you have that experience in your workplace, because I've never had that. All women I've worked with at various places have been extremely supportive and they range in age. But I hate to see that in a gendered way, because how can someone say men aren't competitive? The fact that they're not called out on that here is indicitave. Aren't many people in business competitive regardless of gender?

And not that I want to make an argument out of it, but most men I've worked with are extremely gossipy and initiate personal attacks, unlike women I've worked with. I just think those are tired stereotypes.

Of course men are competitive in business. They just in general compete in different ways than women. No one has called out women for their behavior, it has only been noted from personal experience.

Why would you think that men's behavior should be part of a discussion of feminism as it pertains to how women compete in the workforce?

In the workplace I'm happier to have a woman boss in general, and happier to work with mostly men. Luckily in my field this is quite common.