Shirtgate

[s_stabeler]

So you are going to judge the rest of the feminist community by the actions of extremists? Just like in EVERY OTHER CASE, the ones being unreasonable (and I do qualify villifying Matt Taylor as unreasonable) are the loudest. But the vast majority of the articles I've seen on the subject take a more moderate view, such as the one I've been explaining.

that doesn't make the harassment acceptable- which is the point people are trying to make. they AREN'T villifying feminists- just villifying people that seem to be trying to ruin someone's life over what was, in fact, a minor mistake. That, and to be honest, this is getting more attention than it should- was the shirt misogynistic? I don't know, but if it was merely a (semi-) naked woman, then probably not- it's explicit, but not misogynistic. inappropiate to wear on tv? Yes, definitely. However, he was apparently heading to change.

Again, extremists. And I would hardly say the man's life is ruined. True, he has been threatened and harassed, but he has not been fired, he has not been forced to relocate, his life is not over.

isn't ruined yet.the harassment hasn't finished- note that he has already apologised, IN TEARS over offending people. YET PEOPLE APPARENTLY THINK IT IS NOT ENOUGH. WHAT WOULD IT TAKE? not to mention, people seem to think that it makes his ENTIRE contribution to something that has NEVER been done before- landing a probe on a comet- which requires things to go near-perfectly, AFAIK- completely moot.

I'm trying to get everyone to understand - minor mistakes add up to a LOT of sexism. Most of the sexism I have encountered in my life has not been outright "YOU ARE A WOMAN AND YOU ARE DUMB" stuff. It's been little things. A project handed to a male co-worker because my manager never considered that I would be physically strong enough to do it. Management teams not even considering suggesting me for promotion because I'm obviously going to go and have babies, and not focus on my work. Being asked during interviews about when I plan on starting a family, not about my qualifications.

and again- nobody is contesting that sexism exists- however, people's point is that a) it's not clear it was even sexist- the shirt is explicit, nothing else. Inappropaite for work? certainly. sexist? i'm not sure. Worthy of making a massive song and dance about? nope.

Matt Taylor's shirt represents one of those tiny acts that are made unconsciously that makes a woman's life more difficult and less equal. Why is not okay to point those out, make them known, to make a big deal out of them? Again, the reactions of the extremists do not represent the actions of feminists as a whole.

it's out of all proportion to the offence. feminists- not just the extremists- are acting as if the ENTIRE problem of feminism is due to this one guy wearing an explicit shirt on tv. Plus, quite frankly, you would be better served by making a big deal about the actually big issues- like the continuing pay inequality. this? makes it look like you are LOOKING for things to get offended over. As you yourself have said, even if the shirt was picked out specially for that day- which if it was, was probably more because a friend of hid designed it- it wasn't to be sexist- yet he is being treated as if he personally believes women have no place in the workplace.

In short, there is a valid argument that there is still systematic sexism against women, including in the workplace. However, making a massive deal (including a -gate name) over someone wearing an inappropiate shirt is ridiculous.

[lordlundar]

I'm just going to address one accusation here because s_stabler worded the general response better than I could:

So you are going to judge the rest of the feminist community by the actions of extremists?

Nope and I would like you to point out where I said that. I said a number of people identifying themselves as feminists have been harassing and threatening him in an effort to ruin his life. These people see themselves as prominent members of feminist activity and are getting a LOT of exposure. In the process they are doing much more harm for their cause than good.

[siead_lietrathua]

So you are going to judge the rest of the feminist community by the actions of extremists?

i wanted to address this because it makes me laugh. feminists constantly lump men into groups. all gamers hate women. all men that like sexual images can never see a woman as anything other than an object. all men that like sex secretly want to rape because rapists like sex. any men that say #notallmen are the worst misogynists of all.

feminists can stop bitching about how they are lumped into "actions of extremists" when they an stop lumping all men, say one that wears funny shirts, into groups with the male extremists.

[Andara Bledin]

the_std, the problem is that the "smaller event has done nothing to diminish that". You're wrong. There have even been articles put up that blatantly say "I don't care what you have done, you shirt is offensive."

That quote doesn't say what you think it says. Saying that achieving great things doesn't excuse one from having poor taste and/or judgement is not the same as saying that you don't care about the great things themselves.

Matt Taylor's shirt represents one of those tiny acts that are made unconsciously that makes a woman's life more difficult and less equal.

Don't forget about how teachers still subconsciously push girls away from STEM-focused education and towards the softer subjects and electives.

feminists can stop bitching about how they are lumped into "actions of extremists" when they an stop lumping all men, say one that wears funny shirts, into groups with the male extremists.

This is true and it is a problem. However, people who are unthinkingly bigoted are the majority while feminists who don't understand what feminism even means are the minority. Not to mention that the "not all X" have a tendency to try to excuse the behavior as often as condemn it while the majority of feminists who actually want equality and not some twisted matriarchy condemn the actions of the extremists as being unacceptable and just as wrong as or worse than the thing they're speaking out against.

[s_stabeler]

first- IS the shirt even bigoted? I thought the thing was simply explicit- which is not, in fact, misogynist- not acceptable at work, sure.

second, to be frank? making such a massive fuss over this actually does more harm to feminism than helps it. Why? because it makes feminism- extremists or not- look like nitpickers. The guy has just helped land a probe on a comet- and all feminists care about, it seems, is that he was wearing a shirt they find offensive. There s a REASON for the term "pick your battles"- any misogyny is mild at best, and was certainly unintentional. Should he have worn the shirt? no. Does it deserve this much attention? No. at BEST, it should have caused a minor comment.

Is there a need to do something about systematic misogyny? Yes. Is this an example of unthinking misogyny? I don't know, but frankly, I doubt it. The shirt is explicit, rather than carrying a misogynistic message, so while it is in poor taste, frankly, I doubt many people even noticed the shirt until it was pointed out- not out of systematic bias, but because they were concentrating on what the guy was saying.

[siead_lietrathua]

...while the majority of feminists who actually want equality and not some twisted matriarchy condemn the actions of the extremists as being unacceptable and just as wrong as or worse than the thing they're speaking out against.

serious, non sarcastic question (just so noone takes my tone wrong):
why don't the majority of these feminists that don't agree with their extremist counterparts hop onto the more gender-inclusive, "secular humanist" movement? one that doesn't place the rights of one gender over another, and works equally for the rights of all humans? why not let a corrupted label die, and move onto something not only new, but that has the potential to be even better?

part of me wonders if it's the concept of 'sisterhood'. but another part of me wonders if it's fear. i've heard it said before that if you believe in equality, you HAVE to be a feminist. and if you refuse to be a feminist than you must really be a bigot. perhaps they just don't want to leave that camp and deal with the fallout.


(and no, the majority of people that are not feminists do not want a lack of equality. a few just don't think woman should get special treatment. which is, ya know, the opposite of equality anyway.)

[Anthony K. S.]

And what exactly is feminism?

I think that modern-day feminism has come to encompass a range of views. Over time, I've noticed that people who identify as feminists tend to fall into one of three camps :

(1) Those who actively seek to eliminate all gender biases, the ones against men as well as those against women.

(2) Those who believe that men and women should have equal rights, but only actively seek to eliminate biases against women.

The people in this group believe that "feminism isn't about hurting men, but it isn't about helping them, either." They do not condone or encourage anti-male discrimination, but they also don't work to prevent or eliminate it.

These people will stress that, contrary to popular belief, this does NOT mean that they oppose efforts to help men. On the contrary, they encourage efforts to address anti-male biases. It's just that, in their view, feminism doesn't make any such efforts because feminism is about fighting discrimination against women, not men.

(3) This group includes a lot of the "extremists" that have been frequently spoken of. Just like the other two camps, these people will often say that they want equality. But, whether consciously or not, they actually seek to create inequalities that favor women.

It should be noted that people seldom fall neatly into categories. There is some overlap here. Sometimes, people in the first two camps will display anti-male biases or encourage anti-male discrimination, often without even realizing that that's what they're doing.

Another example would be women's activist groups who fall into the second camp but occasionally do work that addresses men's issues. They do this for various reasons ... one of which, sometimes, is that they don't really care about the issue at all, but just want to combat the impression that they're hostile to men.

I would also note that sometimes, people in the first camp actually refuse to acknowledge that the second camp even exists, and vice versa. (They seldom deny the existence of the third camp.)

feminists who don't understand what feminism even means

Ironically, I have heard of this phrase being used in reference to feminists who actually do believe in equality between the genders.

A while back, I was talking to a young woman who sometimes comments on the Retail comic strip message boards under the username "KatieinSerenity," about a comic strip that sparked a brief debate on feminism and domestic violence.

Katie told me that she used to identify as a feminist, and was often involved in women's activism projects, especially in college.

Over time, however, she became disillusioned by her experiences with many of the people she dealt with in such groups. Not the ones who thought women should be dominant over men, but the ones who, as she put it, showed their biases in more subtle ways.

With Katie's permission, a portion of one of her messages to me :

KatieinSerenity :

As I've mentioned before, Anthony, female-on-male domestic violence is a really personal issue to me, because it affected somebody very close to me.

After a while, I was just so over it with feminists who paid all kinds of lip service to how terribly society treats male victims of DV, about the stigmas they face, and how we need to do more to help them.

But when push came to shove, these feminists were always determined to find reasons to say it was the man's fault that he was abused, that he must have done something to deserve it, or that he must have done something to provoke her.

Failing any of that, they would just say that we need to be careful about passing judgment because we don't know all the facts of the situation. Funny, they never said anything like that when it was a man abusing a woman. They were only too eager to condemn the abuse then.

And these weren't radical extremists, either. They were what you'd call mainstream feminists, the ones who condemned the extremists, you know? Attitudes like these are a lot more common among mainstream feminists than you'd like to think.

...

My sister was involved in a fundraising effort to create a shelter for battered men. I asked the head of a feminist group I was working with at the time if our group could donate some time and effort to help.

I will never forget the pitying look she gave me as she told me, "We're a WOMEN'S rights group, remember?"

Katie was basically a "Camp 1" feminist, and she told me that she got into a number of arguments with "Camp 2" feminists, both in real life and on the Internet, who often took the attitude that Katie simply didn't understand what feminism was all about, because she believed that in order for it to truly be about equality, it has to actively fight discrimination against both genders.

After a while, Katie stopped identifying herself as a feminist, because in her words, "If feminism really is just about fighting discrimination against women and not men, then it doesn't quite reach what I would call being about equality."

So I guess it really depends on who you ask, nowadays. Even feminists who do believe in equality can't quite agree on what equality means.

[Andara Bledin]

why don't the majority of these feminists that don't agree with their extremist counterparts hop onto the more gender-inclusive, "secular humanist" movement? one that doesn't place the rights of one gender over another, and works equally for the rights of all humans? why not let a corrupted label die, and move onto something not only new, but that has the potential to be even better?

This is actually a really good question, and the answer is simple: Because some people prefer a tighter focus on their activism. Feminism is, at it's heart, about removing the barriers that women face when compared to men in society. It's worth noting that feminism should never place the rights of one gender over the other, and those who do so are, to be blunt, doing it wrong. Feminism is humanism with a focus on how just over half of the entire human race is being shafted.

Most feminists are also humanists, but feel that there are some areas where women are given a shitty deal that are more egregious than other areas of humanist focus.

part of me wonders if it's the concept of 'sisterhood'. but another part of me wonders if it's fear. i've heard it said before that if you believe in equality, you HAVE to be a feminist. and if you refuse to be a feminist than you must really be a bigot. perhaps they just don't want to leave that camp and deal with the fallout.

Well, technically speaking, if you believe in gender equality, you are a feminist, even if you eschew the label. For some time, I avoided the label because too often the news would focus on Dworkin-style misandrist feminism, but I finally realized that the truth is that misandrists aren't actually feminists. They're bigots hiding behind the shield of feminism as an excuse to be fucking assholes or to raise themselves up as special snowflakes as some sort of retribution or revenge.

And, no, this isn't a No True Scotsman: Feminism is about equality, and if you're pushing any other agenda, it's not feminism no matter what you choose to call it.

Katie was basically a "Camp 1" feminist, and she told me that she got into a number of arguments with "Camp 2" feminists, both in real life and on the Internet, who often took the attitude that Katie simply didn't understand what feminism was all about, because she believed that in order for it to truly be about equality, it has to actively fight discrimination against both genders.

Well, what she was disillusioned with were Type 3s masquerading as Type 2s. Because they gave lipservice to the idea of equality, but when push came to shove, they were treating women better than they were treating men in identical circumstances.

Type 1s are more Humanist than Feminist, but it's perfectly reasonable to be both. Generally, Feminism is supposed to focus on areas where women are treated less than men and there is a lot of overlap with humanism there, and issues of men being treated less (such as in DV situations and divorce and custody battles) is more in the Humanist or Mens Rights camp, the latter of which has probably been irrevocably poisoned by those who would use Mens Rights as a shield for continued bigotry as opposed to actually working for parity.

[NecCat]

People are treating this shirt .... faux pas as a sign that woman are unwelcome in the industry/company. I think it's the opposite, the result of few women being in the industry/company.

I work construction, and over the last 15 years I have seen an increase in the number of other women working in the trades (from not seeing a single women on site the first three years I worked to seeing another woman on average once a month). At the same time I have seen a decrease in the amount of porn on the site offices/in the port-a-johns/on the walls in the houses, from pretty much every house to almost never. I have seen an increase in the availability of tools sized to fit in a woman's hand (from none to a few). I have recently purchased the first pair of work boots that fit me in 15 years, the smallest size I could get until recently was a men's 7. I have yet to hear a women on site complain about any of these things, at least not loudly and seriously. It just happened, as women started to be around, the other workers (ie men) started to change what they thought of as normal workplace behaviour, and the suppliers started supplying things that women could use.

If it becomes common for these guys to see women at work, and to have women colleagues I would bet good money that the men would start to change, all on their own, their behaviour that they think might make women uncomfortable. That includes deciding not to wear shirts that might make the other gender uncomfortable. Face it, men behave with each other differently without women around, as women behave differently with no men around, then both do in mixed company.

There is a part of the whole feminist movement that actually amuses me greatly: if the people fighting for mens rights and the people fighting for womens rights were to stop thinking there are sides and start working with each other they could almost solve the whole problem at once. The biggest current arguments for the feminists is about wage parity/glass ceiling/hiring practices. The biggest current arguments for the mens rights (what are those people called anyways?) is unequal treatments in divorce and family courts. The reason for both problems is the assumption, by most of society, that if the children need a parent the mother will drop everything and run, while the man wouldn't risk the families reliance on his income by blowing off work. If that were always true it would make sense that mothers and people who could become mothers wouldn't be the best employee to hire/promote or most worthy of a raise, that the father wouldn't make the best choice for the 'full time parent', and that the woman would deserve some part of the man's income after a divorce because their opportunity to do well for themselves financially is less than the mans. If women really want to have the same opportunity to do well at work they need to fight for mens equal rights in families, and if men really want to be taken seriously in family court they need to start fighting for women to be taken seriously in the workplace.

I'm pretty convinced that neither gender will ever do that because each is aware of the perks they currently have, and is afraid that true equality will tilt that one side of the scale that they've grown accustomed to commanding away from them.

[siead_lietrathua]

... Feminism is, at it's heart, about removing the barriers that women face when compared to men in society. It's worth noting that feminism should never place the rights of one gender over the other, and those who do so are, to be blunt, doing it wrong. ...

these are two sentences literally beside each other that contradict each other. you say in one sentence that feminism focuses primarily on women's issues. and in the next that feminists would not focus on one gender over another. do you not see that, because it focus on feminine issues, it automatically back-burners all other gender battles as secondary. and, if any gender issues from another side, like say a man's right to custody, conflicts with a woman's right, then what happens? well, FEMinism stands up with it's ingrained bias, regardless of what outcome would actually be equal.

Well, technically speaking, if you believe in gender equality, you are a feminist, even if you eschew the label. ...Feminism is about equality, and if you're pushing any other agenda, it's not feminism no matter what you choose to call it.

i'm sorry but i call bullshit.
the men that have to deal with aggressive protestors for even wanting to talk about their rights in a public forum would call that bullshit. trans women actively excluded from feminist events simply because of their genitals, would call bullshit. women called brainwashed idiots of the patriarchy, for daring to have a dissenting opinion, would call bullshit.

go ahead and tell them that they have call themselves members of the very group they have to fight against. i'm sure they'll appreciate the sentiment next time the U of T fire-alarms get pulled during an MRM talk

though, frankly, no matter what claims others might make, I Personally believe in gender equality because i am NOT a feminist.

[Andara Bledin]

these are two sentences literally beside each other that contradict each other. you say in one sentence that feminism focuses primarily on women's issues. and in the next that feminists would not focus on one gender over another.

No, I'm not contradicting myself because I didn't say what you're trying to say I said. I never said that feminism didn't focus on one gender rather than both: I said that, and I quote you quoting myself: "should never place the rights of one gender over the other."

Feminism is about placing the rights of women beside those of men. Not above, beside. Equal to. It's about redressing issues of institutionalized and endemic gender discrimination that is levied against women.

There is nothing there about putting anyone above anyone else, merely a focus on the repression of the group that suffers the vast majority of gender discrimination.

go ahead and tell them that they have call themselves members of the very group they have to fight against. i'm sure they'll appreciate the sentiment next time the U of T fire-alarms get pulled during an MRM talk

I didn't say anyone had to call themselves anything they didn't want to call themselves. If people who focus on gender equality issues relating to women want to avoid the term feminism because of the stigma caused by radical dipshits, that's fine.

What I don't like, is people saying, "Oh, you're a feminist, so you must be some man-hating, transgender excluding, matriarchal bitch who wants to suppress men from even speaking out about the issues at hand." Because that's not much better than the people it's supposed to be calling out.

Yes, there are people that wave the banner of feminism who then go and do things that are downright vile. The exclusion and othering of the transgender community is one of the more egregious issues. As is the vilification of men for simply having dangly genitalia (talk about pots vs kettles) and the refusal to let them even enter discussions (I have a friend who is regularly attacked over this particular issue). Those people are fucking assholes and I really wish people would stop accepting them as being feminists, because they're not. They don't want equality, they want supremacy, and that's just fucking wrong. And it's not feminism, except possibly in the most twisted sense.

[the_std]

go ahead and tell them that they have call themselves members of the very group they have to fight against. i'm sure they'll appreciate the sentiment next time the U of T fire-alarms get pulled during an MRM talk.

I am so confused right now.

It's regularly agreed on this forum that dipshits like the WBC do not represent Christianity, that they are outliers and extremists. It's regularly agreed that fucked-up assholes like ISIS and other terrorist organizations do not represent Muslims, because they are extremists. It's regularly agreed that monsters like PETA do not represent animal activists, because they are extremists.

So why are you so insistent that the vocal minority of dickcheese misandrists and bigots represent feminism? Every goddamned group has their people who take things too far and end up going against the principles of the group they belong to. Transgender-excluding, fire alarm-pulling, name-calling people who cannot accept an apology and don't know when to let things go do not represent the goals and aspirations of the majority of feminists.

How is that so hard to understand?

[siead_lietrathua]

...And it's not feminism, except possibly in the most twisted sense.

well then i go back to my original point. if the label has been so corrupted, why not just leave it? hop on humanism. or start a new movement with a new term.
if (generic) you use a term associated with radicals, and do not want to associate with radicals, it's easier to change your term than to change the radicals' minds.


and i did not intend to twist your quote in my first part. perhaps you misunderstood me. i was not talking about female superiority as a, for lack of a better word, political construct. i was talking about how putting women's issues over all else is inherently gender biased.

there are issues of actual, government enforced, inequality going on involving jail time for men, voting rights for minorities, hell reproductive rights for women etc. those are equality issues. yet i constantly see feminism, as a movement, going after things that cause offense instead of hammering at these real issues until they die.
imagine what good could happen if people took the "social justice warrior" power, and instead of focusing it on shit that just offended them, turned that power against the government to fight for people's rights of any gender. it could be revolutionary.
but instead, here we are, talking about tacky shirts.


to the_std:

i said that purely in response to Andara Bledin saying

Well, technically speaking, if you believe in gender equality, you are a feminist, even if you eschew the label.

i do not believe that people should be forced into a label that they do not identify with, for any reason. and people who actually have to fight against feminists for their rights should not be told crap like "if you believe in gender equality, you are a feminist". it disregards their struggle.

i'm not saying the dickcheese (ok i love that word ) represent feminism. i'm saying they corrupt it. they are the ones drowning out the others. and the issue with comparing it with groups like ISIS or WBC is that those groups have their own, distinct names to separate them.
when talking about ISIS, you can call them ISIS, so you can tell them apart from muslims as a whole. but when talking about feminists, they just call themselves feminists, so you can't tell them apart from the feminists. hence why i asked why the less radical people don't re-label themselves since the radicals refuse to.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

I believe people can call me whatever they want as long as it's not factually incorrect.

An atheist can call me an atheist because I'm agnostic. A Christian can call me a Christian for the same reason. I don't define other people's world views and their world views do not offend me. Perhaps both see aspects in me that I don't necessarily pay attention to.

Secular humanism, whether it likes it or not, is compatible with academic feminisms view of what feminism is. It IS feminism.

But that's sort of the problem isn't it? People don't stop arguing about the minutiae on these topics to ever make a controlled response. Shirtgate, if we want to call it that, could have been a teachable moment with the Scientific community taking note that it needs to be smarter than that AND it is NOT ok to take shots and otherwise erase the achievements of someone who did something slightly stupid because it's politically expedient. The lesson didn't need to be harsh because nothing about it actually rose to that level. It was a gaffe.

Per the usual result in topics like this, I doubt anyone learned anything from this whole thing besides anger.

[Kara_CS]

though, frankly, no matter what claims others might make, I Personally believe in gender equality because i am NOT a feminist.

Think about that sentence.

You are confusing feminists with radical feminists. Radfems want the balance of power shifted so that women can freely oppress men and be the superior gender. Feminists just want equality. Feminists don't even have to be women, despite what you'll hear from radfems.

As to the point of this thread, the shirt was tasteless and cheesy. There's a time and place for tasteless and cheesy, and it's not when you're making history and going to be seen all over the world. Was it offensive? Not to me, but I can see how others would have found it offensive for reasons that have nothing to do with feminism or male chauvinism. He wanted to show everyone what a quirky and wacky guy he was for a scientist, and it didn't work out that way.