can men be feminists

[Notvacka]

Yes, a bigger penis would be lovely.

But there are limits to everything. If it's too big, it becomes useless and gets in the way.

I also think that attacking another's penis compensates for an absence of an argument.

I figured that was the reason behind your attacks, yes.

Here's the thing, ignoring differences is not going to make them go away. In fact, consciousness is the awareness of differences.

I agree completely. However, gender equalty is not about making those differences go away. It's about how we treat each other.

A numb, conformist pig, will eat shit and call it no different than filet mignon.

Pigs, like humans, are omnivores, though shit should not be on the menu. But again you miss the point. Equality is not about conformity. It's about how we treat each other. It's about not dishing out shit and not having to take shit. Besides, I'd prefer a vegetarian alternative to that filet mignon.

Now I know this is hard to take, but evolution world on accumulated minute little mutations, passed on because they offer an advantage. You keep ignoring those differences, and numb yourself to the world.

Why should I care about evolution? Evolution doesn't care about me.

[Thundril]

A man can be a feminist in the same way a man can be a defender of animal rights.

He likes to consider his social positions as a sign of his enlightenment, when it is in fact a symptom of his association...the one he denies to himself.

Women's right to equality with men, in terms of access to political/economic/cultural power, is not the same as the 'animal rights' which we may or may not accord to some animals. If we are capable of recognising that women are as human as men are, then the idea that 'we' can grant or deny 'them' equal rights is clearly absurd. Women are struggling against thousands of years of oppression. We can either offer solidarity or continue to stand in the way.
If we choose to offer solidarity, we should resist the temptation to flip from telling them not to fight to telling them how to fight.
This is why I don't consider that a man can be a feminist.

[Notvacka]

Women are struggling against thousands of years of oppression. We can either offer solidarity or continue to stand in the way. If we choose to offer solidarity, we should resist the temptation to flip from telling them not to fight to telling them how to fight. This is why I don't consider that a man can be a feminist.

If we join the fight, are we not feminists then? Many women also shy away from the word feminist, even though they are pro gender equality. I think it has something to do with not wanting to appear threatening, not wanting to rock the boat too much.

[Thundril]

Women are struggling against thousands of years of oppression. We can either offer solidarity or continue to stand in the way. If we choose to offer solidarity, we should resist the temptation to flip from telling them not to fight to telling them how to fight. This is why I don't consider that a man can be a feminist.

If we join the fight, are we not feminists then? Many women also shy away from the word feminist, even though they are pro gender equality. I think it has something to do with not wanting to appear threatening, not wanting to rock the boat too much.

For me, refusing the word 'feminist' has nothing to do with wishing not to appear threatening. And I'm actually quite keen on rocking boats, too. My refusal to describe myself as feminist is based on the recognition that there is a tendency in men, culturally developed over millenia, to try to take charge of any enterprise in which we engage. For this reason, amongst others, the women's movement is, and should continue to be, a little wary of our input into the debate.
There is no shortage of brilliant, articulate, strong and determined women. The women's movement needs male 'champions' like a fish needs a bicycle, as the saying goes. You as an individual man are of course free to identify yourself as 'feminist', if that is consistent with your political position.. Fair play to you. .My own position is that I offer active support where such is wanted, and I listen. I mostly express my opinions on the matter to other men.

[Notvacka]

I mostly express my opinions on the matter to other men.

Yes. And this is a male dominated forum. Though I agree that feminism doesn't need male "champions", I think that male feminists are important to show that feminism is not a matter of women struggling against men, but rather women and men struggling together against a system of opression. Naturally, women should lead the charge.

[Thundril]

I mostly express my opinions on the matter to other men.

Yes. And this is a male dominated forum. Though I agree that feminism doesn't need male "champions", I think that male feminists are important to show that feminism is not a matter of women struggling against men, but rather women and men struggling together against a system of opression. Naturally, women should lead the charge.

Yep. We're on the same side, then, and whether we should or shouldn't call ourselves feminists is maybe a bit of a quibble. Although your choice of the term 'male-dominated' could be (mis)used to illustrate why I think we should stay a little 'off to the side'.

[Satyr]

A man can be a feminist in the same way a man can be a defender of animal rights.

He likes to consider his social positions as a sign of his enlightenment, when it is in fact a symptom of his association...the one he denies to himself.

Women's right to equality with men, in terms of access to political/economic/cultural power, is not the same as the 'animal rights' which we may or may not accord to some animals. If we are capable of recognising that women are as human as men are, then the idea that 'we' can grant or deny 'them' equal rights is clearly absurd. Women are struggling against thousands of years of oppression. We can either offer solidarity or continue to stand in the way.
If we choose to offer solidarity, we should resist the temptation to flip from telling them not to fight to telling them how to fight.
This is why I don't consider that a man can be a feminist.

Animals have also struggled against human oppression and exploitation. they too have been judged superficially, having their full potentials stifled by nasty domineering white men.

Who "grants these rights"?
Are they divine, natural or man-made?
Who grants someone the "right to vote" or the "right of ownership" or the "right to live free"?
Does man grant it to himself, by idealizing himself, as being of divine origins deserving more than a beast?

And if women have been oppressed, then so have all peoples at one time or another.....a challenge leads to growth or to death. In this case it leads nowhere but to bitching and asking from another to grant them their "rights".

Nobody has equal access, dear man.
Not even a man is not the equal to another.
The idea of equality is a human artifice.

Nature is about constant divergence - activity.
Similarities are generalizations and are based on a degree of self-consciousness.
Consciousness is discriminating because that's the function it evolved to serve.

To perceive is to differentiate a unity, by simplifying generalizing, from the background or in relation to another unity.

[Notvacka]

Who "grants these rights"?
Are they divine, natural or man-made?
Who grants someone the "right to vote" or the "right of ownership" or the "right to live free"?

Rights can only be granted by others. Nothing is ever right unless it's agreed upon.

The idea of equality is a human artifice.

How true. And a what a beautiful artifice it is.

Nature is...

Claiming that something is "natural" is a particularly useless argument in any discussion. If something occurs in nature, then it must be natural. Human beings and human behaviour are products of nature like everything else. We can't rise above our nature, but that doesn't mean that we can't change it. Human artifices like skyscrapers, clothes and rights are all part of what nature is.

[duszek]

If a feminist means "a champion of equal rights for men and women" then anyone can be a feminist.

Some women do not want equal rights, they prefer to submit and they want to be humiliated because of religious beliefs or mental problems or whatever.

A man can still refuse to treat such a woman like a slave, even if she asks for it.

Similarly one can be opposed to slavery (of black persons or other groups) and refuse to treat someone like a slave even if a particular person wants to be treated like a slave (because of their religion or indoctrination or whatever).

Similarly if a masochist wants to be tortured one can refuse to do it because one does not want to be a sadist and because one refuses sado-maso as sick.

[Satyr]

Rights can only be granted by others. Nothing is ever right unless it's agreed upon.

Right, therefore one's "rights" in this case is dependent on the other.

If we agree, you and I, to pretend that you can fly, this is a right granted to you, by a mutual agreement that may have nothing to do with reality.

This is what religions do.
They establish mutual agreements, based on fear and hope, to pretend that no matter how absurd the idea might be that everyone will pretend that it is true.
You pretend long enough you begin buying into your own bullshit.

Now, you jump in between this agreement and expose it as a fraud....what will happen?

How true. And a what a beautiful artifice it is.

Ah, so your interest in reality is fake.
You cloud your delusions and you attempt to justify your artifices with pseudo-intellectualism and this feigned interest in reality, when in act you simply wish to validate a shares delusion and pretend that you are honest about it.

Dear boy...I thank you for your participation.

By the way, retard, morphine is also a wonderful artificial happiness.
Can't say that it leads to any epiphanies or any connection with reality, which is indifferent to human preferences, but when you are sheltered, as you are, and proud of it, then it works.

Claiming that something is "natural" is a particularly useless argument in any discussion.

Yes, unless unlike a moron like you, you actually have a clear understanding of what this means.

If something occurs in nature, then it must be natural.

Excellent, my little brain...now let us proceed further.

What is artificial?
It is a designation meant to differentiate human interventions, which begin to affect human destiny, from natural interventions, with no will and so no intent.

For example, my idiotic friend, a river flowing down a mountainside is natural....and so is a beaver building a dam intervening upon this flow.
So, far so good, imbecile?

Good.

Now, at what point do we understand Beaudillard's simulacrum?
Hmmm...an interesting question given that all is natural, including interventions, right?

See humans create categories to facilitate understanding...something you are not used to. this is why consciousness is discriminating. It creates types, categories, from the patterns of activities it perceives around it.
Now, forget all that and let us go on to the subject...
At what point do we say something is artificial, rather than natural.
What is artificial intelligence or what is an artificial reality, since we invent it and we are agents of nature ergo all is natural, right?
So, the simpleton thinks.

Here is a quick and easy explanation:
We call something artificial when willful intervention, namely our own, constructs an environmental effect which begins to affect us more than what preexisted it.

Get it yet?
So, when a beaver builds a damn on a river it does not affects its own fate more than the river or the forest that surrounds it. It is still naturally inclined.
Humans, on the other hand, build a dam and then homes and then wires and then they producer electricity, intervening on natural processes to an extent that the intervention itself exceeds the effects of the river and the forests around it. Man, in effect, creates an artificial environment within which he cocoons himself.

this is what Bauddrillard talked about when he talked about simulations and simulacrum: a state of cocooning, or intervention, which begins looping upon itself.
You know, like how art no longer reflects nature but nature reflects art.
This might appear, at first, to be pleasurable...preferable, unless one is more courageous, honest and less simple and self-involved.
You see, my simple friend, all this intervening has collateral effects. Nothing comes without a price.

The odd thing, simple man, is that in time this intervening crates so much collateral effects, that intervening itself becomes a practice of correcting not nature but the consequences of earlier interventions.
This is where the slide down decadence begins...you see...because nature is self-correcting.
You can think of pollution as all that collateral damage caused by human involvement and let us not speak of genetic filth or all your egalitarianism....garbage of the mind, which permeates modern landscapes.
All this builds up, you see, until it becomes too much for the system to cope with. Now the system, the unity, is in decline...you know it as old age or decadence.
It's corrective measures are insufficient to deal with its earlier corrective measures...and the system's energies are stretched to their limit.
So, yes, your egalitarianism is nice, as is electric energy, but the cost is not immediately perceived. Evolution works or greater scales than a few human generations or a few hundred centuries oif human history.

But all that is not worth the effort, given your simple mind...so let us say that we all rpetend that we are all the same....does nature care?
If we pretend that we are immortal, that eternal life awaits us, after death, does this change anything?

Human beings and human behaviour are products of nature like everything else. We can't rise above our nature, but that doesn't mean that we can't change it. Human artifices like skyscrapers, clothes and rights are all part of what nature is.

Oh poor boy...but in fact man does try to rise above his nature. This is the masculine spirit...a spirit o0r rejection.
Science, dear boy, is man rejecting natural processes intervening to "correct" or to bring about a more preferable situation.

When man wishes to heal a disease he is intervening on nature, dear boy.
He becomes anti-natural.
When man dreams of equality or God he imagines something which would replace this reality...he makes of himself anti-reality.
The masculine spirit, left on its own, is destructive, in the sense that it is nihilistic, in the positive aspect of the concept.
A female can be nihilistic but only towards the negative...as in she dreams of a speedy conclusion to the "illusion" of exiting...a giving in to entropy.

A free-man, if we can imagine one, is a balance of the two drives...with the masculine taking cotnrol, as only it can. It is the submission of the feminine in all of us to the masculine attitude...but with this feminine softening it in the process.

[Arising_uk]

Rights can only be granted by others. Nothing is ever right unless it's agreed upon. ...

Depends what you mean by "grant"? As my opinion is that rights can only be demanded and fought for, that those who they are demanded from 'give' them is because they know they are going to lose.

[duszek]

This is Thomas Hobbes´s point of view. Everyone is a wolf.

But there are also nice people who do not want to fight and who make arrangements in order to avoid fighting and stress.
For example students in a dormitory can agree about each member´s rights in order to avoid stress in the future.

[Satyr]

Conflict is not only physical.
It happens, many times, unconsciously.

For instance, when meeting a new person, there is an immediate conflict which occurs on a subliminal and covert level, if it is not made overt.
In a feminine society the preference is that towards covert methods such as through witticism, humor masking viciousness, backbiting and gossiping (slandering), seducing, alliance building to establish dominance.

A hierarchy is always established, even if it is not verbalized or consciously admitted or made aware.
Both sides know it, but may not state it outright, as its insinuation suffices to reduce the anxiety associated with being dominated or to reduce the testosterone levels accompanying domination. associated with dominating.
Of course one can be dominated by making him think he is dominating.
All these are feminine social tactics and the only ones accepted.

Masculine forms of domination are kept to the rink or the arena or vented through films and songs.
They are always symbolic...as the only true masculine entity in any modern system is the institution.
It is an abstraction of an essence, just like money is an abstraction of resources.

this makes it accessible to all, given that access to it is always merely symbolic..and after vetting.
One must prove himself/herself worthy of the position of godhead after (s)he has sufficiently shown humility towards the institution itself.
It is, in effect, a process of feminization, groveling, using intermediary symbolic institutional figures.

For example, to climb the corporate ladder you must prove yourself to inter-mediating bureaucratic figureheads who test your resolve, your principles and your loyalties.
If you satisfy them, reflecting their own submissions, you are allowed to proceed higher and higher, gaining the privileges and rights this submission offers as a recompense.

This is also how censorship in the media occurs. No overt act to shatter the illusion of free-speech and an open society.
The one presenting the news is a tested member of the club. He has been thoroughly put through the grinder and has been accented as adequately indoctrinated.
Now he enjoys the freedom of writing his own editorials, given that he is not going to say anything outside the norm.

The news is filtered in this way.
Each intervening member in the chain adds or subtracts his own common judgments, resulting in a canned product to be presented to the masses, from which these people come from.

No conspiracy necessary.
Nothing overt or obvious.

[Thundril]

Animals have also struggled against human oppression and exploitation.

Only in Animal Farm. Which is a fiction, you know?
But women are not 'struggling against human oppression': they are as human as we are. We only have to recognise that. What's the problem?

they too have been judged superficially, having their full potentials stifled by nasty domineering white men.

What has 'white' got do with it?

Who "grants these rights"?
Are they divine, natural or man-made?
Who grants someone the "right to vote" or the "right of ownership" or the "right to live free"?
Does man grant it to himself, by idealizing himself, as being of divine origins deserving more than a beast?

The argument for human rights in general is different from the argument for equal political rights for men and women. Women, being as human as men, are capable of demanding these rights, discussing them, or indeed inventing them, just as much as men are able to discuss, consider, invent.
The idea of 'animal rights' is completely different. Animals could have rights only insofar as some humans might 'grant' them rights. Animals may be owned, hunted, cooked and eaten by humans, and at the same time some humans may campaign for some perhaps limited 'rights' for animals without claiming that they are in any way as 'human' as us. (Cf the 'five freedoms' idea.) Unless you actually want to come straight out and say that women's rights are in the gift of men in the same way that 'animal rights' are in the gift of humans, you have to explain why whatever political or legal rights apply to men should not apply automatically to women also.

And if women have been oppressed, then so have all peoples at one time or another.....a challenge leads to growth or to death. In this case it leads nowhere but to bitching and asking from another to grant them their "rights".

My dear boy. You need to realise that women are not asking you for anything.

Nobody has equal access, dear man.
Not even a man is not the equal to another. (Grammar!)
The idea of equality is a human artifice.

Nature is about constant divergence - activity.
Similarities are generalizations and are based on a degree of self-consciousness.
Consciousness is discriminating because that's the function it evolved to serve.

To perceive is to differentiate a unity, by simplifying generalizing, from the background or in relation to another unity.

This is just an unfocussed rant, AFAICS

[Thundril]

This is also how censorship in the media occurs. No overt act to shatter the illusion of free-speech and an open society.
The one presenting the news is a tested member of the club. He has been thoroughly put through the grinder and has been accented as adequately indoctrinated.
Now he enjoys the freedom of writing his own editorials, given that he is not going to say anything outside the norm.

The news is filtered in this way.
Each intervening member in the chain adds or subtracts his own common judgments, resulting in a canned product to be presented to the masses, from which these people come from. (Grammar!)

No conspiracy necessary.
Nothing overt or obvious.

Now there's something we can agree on!
One of my favourite bits of doggerel, which I quote ad nauseam:
You cannot hope to bribe or twist
(thank god) the British journalist
But seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to!
(Humbert Wolfe)