Bala Senthil Kumar's answer to Indians On Quora: Has India bashing become a fashion on Quora? - Quora
"You should see the bashing the USA gets.
But it is India and Indians that are sensitive about all the wrong things.
India deserves the bashing it gets no less than any other subject, but it also gets a ridiculous number of kudos for things that are not accomplishments of any kind.
If a culture gets bashed, it is also the reason why it needs to be examined and corrected, not unduly protected. If people have confidence in their culture and way of life why would they be sensitive to criticism?
India lacks confidence because its hypocrisy is easily exposed, and the bottom line - rank 119 on the Human Development Index cannot be missed.
Proud of "thousands of years of civilization", but not ready to accept a royal screw up in merely sixty odd years of being a nation?
No, it doesn't mean we only bash - Bala Senthil Kumar's answer to India: What makes Indian people so awesome?
But the difference is that i wouldn't have to post it here to assuage anybody's feelings if the subject weren't "India"."
Friday, October 04, 2013
Thursday, October 03, 2013
Feminist Privilege and Capitalism
Feminisnt » Freedom of association: Unpacking the most invisible privilege knapsack
"One of the things I've been dealing with as I've been moving out of the sex industry is a longing for the shocking degree of freedom one has as a sex worker. Even if you're not fully running your own business the way I have been, sex workers generally have the ability to reject clients, to move to another strip club, find a new escort service, work for a different studio, and overall, set a much greater number of boundaries than your average worker. While that statement seems bizarre - how can you have "boundaries" if a stranger can see your naked body or is even having sex with you? - boundaries come in more forms than ones based on chastity.
With the vast, vast majority of jobs, a worker has very little control over their working environment, boss, coworkers, and upward mobility potential. A typical waitress doesn't show up to shifts only on days she feels like working, bouncing between various restaurants depending on which she prefers at the moment, the way a stripper might. A nurse knows he'll never be able to start his own hospital and declare himself its chief of surgery, unlike a porn star who works hard and invests his money in starting his own production company. For all the endless criticism lobbed at the sex industry for being a measure of last resort and misery, there's a huge and unrecognized amount of freedom in it, both freedom of association and the ability for your hard work to propel you upwards. The sex industry is the true "American dream," in that tenacity, hard work, and creativity can take a person (usually with no formal training and little startup capital) from poverty to the middle class more easily than any other industry.
One of the things I've been thinking about more lately is the issue of "association privilege," both how I've been lucky to have it as a sex worker, and how it remains perhaps the most invisible privilege. When framed in that way, it makes obvious a particularly strong correlation between the shrill lefty feminists who rail endlessly about how everyone is too "privileged," yet themselves possessing the privilege to choose their work environment, bosses/editors, and business/activist contacts. (I've long maintained that nothing is more indicative of privilege than spending all day on the internet picking fights with strangers about how privileged they are.) If someone wants to refuse to associate with anyone who isn't also a socialist feminist wannabe-academic that adorns their virtual spaces with Audre Lorde quotes and Foucault references, they can easily live in such a bubble. There are plenty of such bores in neighboring regions of the blogosphere. (Where all of these people make money remains a mystery. While I know that two big names in the sexy feminist scene have secret rich male partners/husbands who bankroll their lifestyles of being internet pesonas, I don't know how the others do it. NGO jobs? Sporadic paid writing gigs? Trust funds? Secret sex work?)
It all reminds me of a favorite section from a piece in The Atlantic a while back, which perfectly sums up the completely un-checked privilege that runs rampant among those who have declared themselves the enforcers of privilege-checking."
***
I Choose My Choice! - Sandra Tsing Loh - The Atlantic
"As you may have heard, some 50 years after Betty Friedan sprang us from domestic jail, we women … seem to have made a mess of it. What do we want? Not to be men (wrong again, Freud!), at least not businessmen—although slacker men, sans futon and bong, might appeal. In these post-Lisa-Belkin-New-York-Times-Magazine-“Opt-Out” years, we’ve now learned the worst: even female Harvard graduates are fleeing high-powered careers for a kinder, gentler Martha Stewart Living. Not only does the Problem Have a Name, it has its own line of Fiestaware!...
Is the mass media to blame (again!) for pushing women out of the workplace? Not so much. On our zeitgeist-setting TV shows, it’s only the housewives who are desperate. Work is fun! The Manhattan working gals of Sex and the City, whose days revolve chiefly around dishing over cocktails, are essentially ’50s suburban housewives, trophy wives of (in this case) glamorous if emotionally distant New York jobs—skyscraper-housed entities with good addresses and doormen that handsomely fund their lifestyles while requiring that they show up to service them only infrequently, in bustiers and heels. I want a vague job like the one Charlotte has, in the art gallery she never goes to; or the lawyer job Miranda has (charcoal suits and plenty o’ time for lunch with the gals); or Samantha’s PR gig, throwing SoHo loft parties and giving blow jobs to freakishly endowed men (actually, that’s the one job I don’t want); I want to spend my days like “writer” Carrie, lolling in bed in her underwear, smoking and occasionally updating her quasi-bohemian equivalent of a MySpace page...
Hirshman fires with both barrels (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) at today’s mommies, who are so busy sniffing the Martha Stewart paint chips that they have forgotten Friedan’s exhortation to get out and change the world...
Hirshman considers all stay-at-home mothers fish in her barrel (think fish pedaling tiny aquatic bicycles). No target is too small: Hirshman even tears mercilessly into the sleep-deprived new mothers who’ve made the unfortunate decision to share their rambling thoughts on something called Bloggingbaby.com... But in fact, Hirshman insists, the problem starts well before motherhood. It begins when young women enter college and violate Hirshman’s No. 1 rule of female emancipation: “Don’t study art.”
Why aren’t the women who are outnumbering men in undergraduate institutions leading the information economy? “Because they’re dabbling,” she snaps. Here’s yet another Problem That Has a Name: Frida Kahlo.
... She leaves aside the matter of whether women driven to make piles of money are the same ones likely to incite meaningful social change. If the Harvard stay-at-home mom walked away from an attack-dog corporate-lawyer job with Exxon, I, for one, would rather see her playing tag and climbing trees. And although Hirshman did work as a lawyer (lawyer, along with doctor and judge, is the kind of high-degree, socially relevant job she approves of), she then became a professor of philosophy and women’s studies. (Call the White House! We have a professor of philosophy on the line!)
Not that being an academic isn’t a hell of a lot of fun; in fact, its very pleasantness contributes to a bias peculiar to members of the thinktankerati. So argues Neil Gilbert, a renowned Berkeley sociologist, in A Mother’s Work: How Feminism, the Market and Policy Shape Family Life. According to Gilbert, the debate over the value of women’s work has been framed by those with a too-rosy view of employment,
Many of them can set their own hours, choose their own workspace, get paid for thinking about issues that interest them, and, as a bonus, get to feel, by virtue of their career, important in the world...
To be sure, attacking feminist criticism as being the extended whine of a privileged, educated upper class is as old as … well, as bell hooks’s 1984 critique of Friedan’s Feminine Mystique: “[Friedan] did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute than to be a leisure-class housewife.” It’s a point that keeps having to be made, though...
Further, in a development that would shock only today’s most radical feminists (where are those last two hiding? Buffalo?):
... Even providing a chilled martini at six o’clock and roast beef at seven to the legendary suburban alpha male of yore allowed most of one’s day to be fairly flexible. As for today’s poorer husbands, many of them are likely too tired from their job’s repetitious, socially invisible physical tasks—such as makin’ kahpies!—to continually oppress their wives...
Financial need is not the force behind women’s shift in the past 50 years from work in the home to work in the marketplace; rather, it is the desires of those who have made out like bandits in this new order, the tiny minority (3.5 percent in 2003) of women who earn $75,000 or more. Members of this occupational elite have created a host of cultural norms by which their far less privileged sisters—who, again, make up the vast majority of working women—feel they must abide. For Hirshman’s doctors, lawyers, judges, and professors, work has been terrific, so it’s no wonder they’ve advocated social change, imposing on society between the 1960s and the mid-1990s “new expectations about modern life, self-fulfillment, and the joys of work outside the home”...
Since the late 1990s, so-called family-friendly policies in Europe have been, as the Oxford sociologist Jane Lewis observes, “explicitly linked to the promotion of women’s employment in order to further the economic growth and competition agenda.” Women have achieved the freedom to join men on a more or less equal footing in the marketplace, which strengthens the notion that the only thing ultimately of value is one’s ability to turn a buck. The triumph of feminism, Gilbert reminds us (echoing those socially conservative men of the left, George Orwell and Christopher Lasch), has served the culture of capitalism...
From 1970 to 1990, a whopping 75 percent of Swedish jobs created were in the public sector … providing social welfare services … almost all of which were filled by women. Uh-oh. In short, as Gilbert points out, because of the 40 percent tax rate on her husband’s job, a new mother may be forced to take that second, highly taxed job to supplement the family’s finances; in other words, she leaves her toddlers behind from eight to five (in that convenient universal day care) so she can go take care of other people’s toddlers or empty the bedpans of elderly strangers. (As Alan Wolfe has pointed out, “the Scandinavian welfare states which express so well a sense of obligation to distant strangers, are beginning to make it more difficult to express a sense of obligation to those with whom one shares family ties.”)"
Funny, I thought housewives' lives were terrible and their work should be valued equally as that of working adults.
"One of the things I've been dealing with as I've been moving out of the sex industry is a longing for the shocking degree of freedom one has as a sex worker. Even if you're not fully running your own business the way I have been, sex workers generally have the ability to reject clients, to move to another strip club, find a new escort service, work for a different studio, and overall, set a much greater number of boundaries than your average worker. While that statement seems bizarre - how can you have "boundaries" if a stranger can see your naked body or is even having sex with you? - boundaries come in more forms than ones based on chastity.
With the vast, vast majority of jobs, a worker has very little control over their working environment, boss, coworkers, and upward mobility potential. A typical waitress doesn't show up to shifts only on days she feels like working, bouncing between various restaurants depending on which she prefers at the moment, the way a stripper might. A nurse knows he'll never be able to start his own hospital and declare himself its chief of surgery, unlike a porn star who works hard and invests his money in starting his own production company. For all the endless criticism lobbed at the sex industry for being a measure of last resort and misery, there's a huge and unrecognized amount of freedom in it, both freedom of association and the ability for your hard work to propel you upwards. The sex industry is the true "American dream," in that tenacity, hard work, and creativity can take a person (usually with no formal training and little startup capital) from poverty to the middle class more easily than any other industry.
One of the things I've been thinking about more lately is the issue of "association privilege," both how I've been lucky to have it as a sex worker, and how it remains perhaps the most invisible privilege. When framed in that way, it makes obvious a particularly strong correlation between the shrill lefty feminists who rail endlessly about how everyone is too "privileged," yet themselves possessing the privilege to choose their work environment, bosses/editors, and business/activist contacts. (I've long maintained that nothing is more indicative of privilege than spending all day on the internet picking fights with strangers about how privileged they are.) If someone wants to refuse to associate with anyone who isn't also a socialist feminist wannabe-academic that adorns their virtual spaces with Audre Lorde quotes and Foucault references, they can easily live in such a bubble. There are plenty of such bores in neighboring regions of the blogosphere. (Where all of these people make money remains a mystery. While I know that two big names in the sexy feminist scene have secret rich male partners/husbands who bankroll their lifestyles of being internet pesonas, I don't know how the others do it. NGO jobs? Sporadic paid writing gigs? Trust funds? Secret sex work?)
It all reminds me of a favorite section from a piece in The Atlantic a while back, which perfectly sums up the completely un-checked privilege that runs rampant among those who have declared themselves the enforcers of privilege-checking."
***
I Choose My Choice! - Sandra Tsing Loh - The Atlantic
"As you may have heard, some 50 years after Betty Friedan sprang us from domestic jail, we women … seem to have made a mess of it. What do we want? Not to be men (wrong again, Freud!), at least not businessmen—although slacker men, sans futon and bong, might appeal. In these post-Lisa-Belkin-New-York-Times-Magazine-“Opt-Out” years, we’ve now learned the worst: even female Harvard graduates are fleeing high-powered careers for a kinder, gentler Martha Stewart Living. Not only does the Problem Have a Name, it has its own line of Fiestaware!...
Is the mass media to blame (again!) for pushing women out of the workplace? Not so much. On our zeitgeist-setting TV shows, it’s only the housewives who are desperate. Work is fun! The Manhattan working gals of Sex and the City, whose days revolve chiefly around dishing over cocktails, are essentially ’50s suburban housewives, trophy wives of (in this case) glamorous if emotionally distant New York jobs—skyscraper-housed entities with good addresses and doormen that handsomely fund their lifestyles while requiring that they show up to service them only infrequently, in bustiers and heels. I want a vague job like the one Charlotte has, in the art gallery she never goes to; or the lawyer job Miranda has (charcoal suits and plenty o’ time for lunch with the gals); or Samantha’s PR gig, throwing SoHo loft parties and giving blow jobs to freakishly endowed men (actually, that’s the one job I don’t want); I want to spend my days like “writer” Carrie, lolling in bed in her underwear, smoking and occasionally updating her quasi-bohemian equivalent of a MySpace page...
Hirshman fires with both barrels (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) at today’s mommies, who are so busy sniffing the Martha Stewart paint chips that they have forgotten Friedan’s exhortation to get out and change the world...
Hirshman considers all stay-at-home mothers fish in her barrel (think fish pedaling tiny aquatic bicycles). No target is too small: Hirshman even tears mercilessly into the sleep-deprived new mothers who’ve made the unfortunate decision to share their rambling thoughts on something called Bloggingbaby.com... But in fact, Hirshman insists, the problem starts well before motherhood. It begins when young women enter college and violate Hirshman’s No. 1 rule of female emancipation: “Don’t study art.”
Why aren’t the women who are outnumbering men in undergraduate institutions leading the information economy? “Because they’re dabbling,” she snaps. Here’s yet another Problem That Has a Name: Frida Kahlo.
Everybody loves Frida Kahlo. Half Jewish, half Mexican, tragically injured when young, sexually linked to men and women, abused by a famous genius husband. Oh, and a brilliantly talented painter. If I was a feminazi, the first thing I’d ban would be books about Frida Kahlo. Because Frida Kahlo’s life is not a model for women’s lives. And if you’re not Frida Kahlo and you major in art, you’re going to wind up answering the phones at some gallery in Chelsea, hoping a rich male collector comes to rescue you.
... She leaves aside the matter of whether women driven to make piles of money are the same ones likely to incite meaningful social change. If the Harvard stay-at-home mom walked away from an attack-dog corporate-lawyer job with Exxon, I, for one, would rather see her playing tag and climbing trees. And although Hirshman did work as a lawyer (lawyer, along with doctor and judge, is the kind of high-degree, socially relevant job she approves of), she then became a professor of philosophy and women’s studies. (Call the White House! We have a professor of philosophy on the line!)
Not that being an academic isn’t a hell of a lot of fun; in fact, its very pleasantness contributes to a bias peculiar to members of the thinktankerati. So argues Neil Gilbert, a renowned Berkeley sociologist, in A Mother’s Work: How Feminism, the Market and Policy Shape Family Life. According to Gilbert, the debate over the value of women’s work has been framed by those with a too-rosy view of employment,
mainly because the vast majority of those who publicly talk, think, and write about questions of gender equality, motherhood, and work in modern society are people who talk, think, and write for a living. And they tend to associate with other people who, like themselves, do not have “real” jobs—professors, journalists, authors, artists, politicos, pundits, foundation program officers, think-tank scholars, and media personalities.
Many of them can set their own hours, choose their own workspace, get paid for thinking about issues that interest them, and, as a bonus, get to feel, by virtue of their career, important in the world...
To be sure, attacking feminist criticism as being the extended whine of a privileged, educated upper class is as old as … well, as bell hooks’s 1984 critique of Friedan’s Feminine Mystique: “[Friedan] did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute than to be a leisure-class housewife.” It’s a point that keeps having to be made, though...
Employed women expressed a higher degree of enjoyment for shopping, preparing food, taking care of their children, and doing housework than for working at their jobs—an activity that was ranked at the next-to-lowest level of enjoyment, just above commuting to work.
Further, in a development that would shock only today’s most radical feminists (where are those last two hiding? Buffalo?):
When it came to interactions with different partners, the women ranked interactions with their children as more enjoyable than those with clients/customers, coworkers, and bosses.
... Even providing a chilled martini at six o’clock and roast beef at seven to the legendary suburban alpha male of yore allowed most of one’s day to be fairly flexible. As for today’s poorer husbands, many of them are likely too tired from their job’s repetitious, socially invisible physical tasks—such as makin’ kahpies!—to continually oppress their wives...
Financial need is not the force behind women’s shift in the past 50 years from work in the home to work in the marketplace; rather, it is the desires of those who have made out like bandits in this new order, the tiny minority (3.5 percent in 2003) of women who earn $75,000 or more. Members of this occupational elite have created a host of cultural norms by which their far less privileged sisters—who, again, make up the vast majority of working women—feel they must abide. For Hirshman’s doctors, lawyers, judges, and professors, work has been terrific, so it’s no wonder they’ve advocated social change, imposing on society between the 1960s and the mid-1990s “new expectations about modern life, self-fulfillment, and the joys of work outside the home”...
Since the late 1990s, so-called family-friendly policies in Europe have been, as the Oxford sociologist Jane Lewis observes, “explicitly linked to the promotion of women’s employment in order to further the economic growth and competition agenda.” Women have achieved the freedom to join men on a more or less equal footing in the marketplace, which strengthens the notion that the only thing ultimately of value is one’s ability to turn a buck. The triumph of feminism, Gilbert reminds us (echoing those socially conservative men of the left, George Orwell and Christopher Lasch), has served the culture of capitalism...
From 1970 to 1990, a whopping 75 percent of Swedish jobs created were in the public sector … providing social welfare services … almost all of which were filled by women. Uh-oh. In short, as Gilbert points out, because of the 40 percent tax rate on her husband’s job, a new mother may be forced to take that second, highly taxed job to supplement the family’s finances; in other words, she leaves her toddlers behind from eight to five (in that convenient universal day care) so she can go take care of other people’s toddlers or empty the bedpans of elderly strangers. (As Alan Wolfe has pointed out, “the Scandinavian welfare states which express so well a sense of obligation to distant strangers, are beginning to make it more difficult to express a sense of obligation to those with whom one shares family ties.”)"
Funny, I thought housewives' lives were terrible and their work should be valued equally as that of working adults.
Wednesday, October 02, 2013
Why They Call It Work
"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it." - G. K. Chesterton
***
Why They Call It Work
The halls are alive with the sound of carping. Last year, only 50% of U.S. workers were satisfied with their jobs, the lowest point yet in a steady decline that began in 1995, reports the Conference Board. And with the exception of a few anomalous years, job satisfaction in the United Kingdom has been dropping since 1991, according to research done at the University of Kent. Participants in these studies complained, among other things, about lack of personal fulfillment; “robotic,” meaningless work; work/life imbalance; insufficient acknowledgment of efforts; and lack of influence with supervisors.
Conventional wisdom blames such pervasive disgruntlement on poor leadership and lousy work environments. But have working conditions in the past decade really degenerated so much for so many? The decline in satisfaction has persisted in periods when employees have had tremendous leverage and when they’ve been lucky to have jobs at all. Moreover, the average worker spends more than two hours of each eight-hour workday surfing the Internet, conducting personal business, or just “spacing out.” That suggests many employees have autonomy and a manageable workload.
Maybe employees are dissatisfied because they have been taught to expect too much from their jobs. In the mid-1900s, organizational behaviorists concluded that great work environments would produce happy, productive workers. At the same time, humanists began arguing that work should be a vehicle for growth and self-expression. Those ideas became part of the conversation for companies and observers of companies, including management consultants and the business press. Employees, as a result, came to expect that their jobs would be satisfying and meaningful and that their employers would help them grow professionally and develop their “true potential.”
Such expectations represent a corporate ideal akin to the romantic ideal that guides some people in their quest for a mate. Those animated by the romantic ideal believe that they will someday find “the one” and embark upon a life of bliss untroubled by personal faults, limitations, and weaknesses. Fortunately, most mature adults eventually abandon that myth. Those who don’t not only are doomed to disappointment but make life miserable for their mates.
Similarly, employees animated by the corporate ideal believe in the existence of a “right” job that meets all the needs on their own, personalized versions of Maslow’s hierarchy. But even a good job in a good company is bound to produce disappointment. In time, these deluded souls will realize that the business is more interested in what they do than in who they are. They will be required to perform tasks they consider tedious or misconceived. They will find that their input is not always welcome. As a result, they will feel frustrated, disappointed, and demeaned.
Much misery could be avoided if employees held less-exalted ideals about work. Why does a job have to be meaningful and fulfilling? Isn’t it enough that work is simply worthwhile–which is to say worth the employee’s time, considering his or her circumstances? A former student of mine sells a remedy for irritable bowel syndrome, a job she doesn’t find particularly meaningful. But she does believe that for someone with her skills, experience, priorities, and goals, selling this product for this company is certainly worthwhile. Consequently, she believes that she has a good job. And she does. The pharmaceutical company she works for pays her a decent wage, provides good working conditions, and does not waste her time. That should be enough.
Employees should not demand that companies imbue their lives with meaning. Employers and employees have something the other needs. One of the keys to a mutually beneficial relationship is a realistic understanding of what that something is.
(The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2006 - 20. Why They Call It Work, E.L. Kersten)
***
Why They Call It Work
The halls are alive with the sound of carping. Last year, only 50% of U.S. workers were satisfied with their jobs, the lowest point yet in a steady decline that began in 1995, reports the Conference Board. And with the exception of a few anomalous years, job satisfaction in the United Kingdom has been dropping since 1991, according to research done at the University of Kent. Participants in these studies complained, among other things, about lack of personal fulfillment; “robotic,” meaningless work; work/life imbalance; insufficient acknowledgment of efforts; and lack of influence with supervisors.
Conventional wisdom blames such pervasive disgruntlement on poor leadership and lousy work environments. But have working conditions in the past decade really degenerated so much for so many? The decline in satisfaction has persisted in periods when employees have had tremendous leverage and when they’ve been lucky to have jobs at all. Moreover, the average worker spends more than two hours of each eight-hour workday surfing the Internet, conducting personal business, or just “spacing out.” That suggests many employees have autonomy and a manageable workload.
Maybe employees are dissatisfied because they have been taught to expect too much from their jobs. In the mid-1900s, organizational behaviorists concluded that great work environments would produce happy, productive workers. At the same time, humanists began arguing that work should be a vehicle for growth and self-expression. Those ideas became part of the conversation for companies and observers of companies, including management consultants and the business press. Employees, as a result, came to expect that their jobs would be satisfying and meaningful and that their employers would help them grow professionally and develop their “true potential.”
Such expectations represent a corporate ideal akin to the romantic ideal that guides some people in their quest for a mate. Those animated by the romantic ideal believe that they will someday find “the one” and embark upon a life of bliss untroubled by personal faults, limitations, and weaknesses. Fortunately, most mature adults eventually abandon that myth. Those who don’t not only are doomed to disappointment but make life miserable for their mates.
Similarly, employees animated by the corporate ideal believe in the existence of a “right” job that meets all the needs on their own, personalized versions of Maslow’s hierarchy. But even a good job in a good company is bound to produce disappointment. In time, these deluded souls will realize that the business is more interested in what they do than in who they are. They will be required to perform tasks they consider tedious or misconceived. They will find that their input is not always welcome. As a result, they will feel frustrated, disappointed, and demeaned.
Much misery could be avoided if employees held less-exalted ideals about work. Why does a job have to be meaningful and fulfilling? Isn’t it enough that work is simply worthwhile–which is to say worth the employee’s time, considering his or her circumstances? A former student of mine sells a remedy for irritable bowel syndrome, a job she doesn’t find particularly meaningful. But she does believe that for someone with her skills, experience, priorities, and goals, selling this product for this company is certainly worthwhile. Consequently, she believes that she has a good job. And she does. The pharmaceutical company she works for pays her a decent wage, provides good working conditions, and does not waste her time. That should be enough.
Employees should not demand that companies imbue their lives with meaning. Employers and employees have something the other needs. One of the keys to a mutually beneficial relationship is a realistic understanding of what that something is.
(The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2006 - 20. Why They Call It Work, E.L. Kersten)
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
Why are some feminists rude and defensive?
"To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition." - Woody Allen
***
Gabriel Seah's answer to Feminism: Why are some feminists rude and defensive? - Quora
Question Details: "Why do many feminists post curt and rude responses when their statements or arguments are questioned? One would normally assume a civilized and thought out responses for an argument, well, it doesn't seem to be so. In past 1.5 years, I have been blocked by 3 people, all feminists, who didn't have an answer to my statements (my statements were against stereotyping my ethnicity or pointing out their ignorance, not against their ideology).
Why are opposing arguments ignored or attacked?"
Me: "I too find that feminists in general are rude and defensive, but perhaps it is not feminists per se but people who openly (and loudly) identify as feminists, especially online, who are the problem. Since you mention 3 feminists blocked you, I'm assuming you encountered them online.
It is significant that even the centre-left British magazine New Statesman had an article on this (There’s no point in online feminism if it’s an exclusive, Mean Girls club) where the writer, who even praises Andrea Dworkin (despite her being deeply problematic; The Dworkin Whitewash) got burnt by online feminists, and there are good examples there of the harsh words that were directed her way.
Part of the reason is due to a phenomenon that rears its ugly head in other areas: the online disinhibition effect (basically people are nastier online; Online disinhibition effect)
However, it goes beyond that, since I've found feminists I know (or knew) in real life to be this way as well.
The three major reasons, I think, are strong identification with feminism, the assumption of infallibility and a Manichean worldview.
We all have multiple identities. Research on tolerance shows that "A simple social identity is likely to be accompanied by the perception that any individual who is an outgroup member on one dimension is also an outgroup member on all others" (Page on The5f). In this context, if one strongly identifies as feminist (and this identification is very important to one's identity), one will be less tolerant of non-feminists. People who openly (and loudly) identify as feminists are thus less tolerant of non-feminists (we see this elsewhere too, among militant atheists, religious fundamentalists and ideologues in general).
Next, feminists seem to be incapable of imagining that they are wrong. Thus, people who disagree with them are wrong, and it just remains to be determined whether they are wrong because they are ignorant (in which case "education" is the answer), trolling (in which case the correct response is to ignore the "trolls"; related: Gabriel Seah's answer to Trolling: Why are some people obsessed with trolls of both the real and imagined variety?) or evil (where the 'misogynist' gets verbal abuse hurled at him).
As for the last, a Manichean worldview is a strongly polarised one: you are either good or evil and there is no middle ground. If you disagree with feminists, you are not just wrong but evil (because the opposite of feminist is, obviously, misogynist) and thus worthy of being insulted. This is especially so if you are male (and thus part of the Patriarchy, and guilty by association). Women are generally let off more easily but not spared (e.g. Camille Pagilla, Christina Hoff Sommers, Sarah Palin).
I also suspect that the reflexive (automatic) attitude of going against stereotypes (feminists love to champion the breaking of stereotypes) is responsible: since stereotypically women are supposed to be nice and polite, female feminists (since most feminists are female) are nasty.
Postscript: Feminists being rude is part of a larger phenomenon: Liberals tend to be ruder than their counterparts on the other side of the spectrum (Compassionate Liberals and Polite Conservatives: Associations of Agreeableness With Political Ideology and Moral Values) and more likely to block those they disagree with (Study: Liberals more likely to block social-media friends over political differences). For a prime example of this, you can look at PZ Myers's blog (Pharyngula - Just another site) which is full of he and his fans insulting people they disagree with (for example every time libertarianism comes up, the comments section is full of people slamming them as "assholes")"
***
Gabriel Seah's answer to Feminism: Why are some feminists rude and defensive? - Quora
Question Details: "Why do many feminists post curt and rude responses when their statements or arguments are questioned? One would normally assume a civilized and thought out responses for an argument, well, it doesn't seem to be so. In past 1.5 years, I have been blocked by 3 people, all feminists, who didn't have an answer to my statements (my statements were against stereotyping my ethnicity or pointing out their ignorance, not against their ideology).
Why are opposing arguments ignored or attacked?"
Me: "I too find that feminists in general are rude and defensive, but perhaps it is not feminists per se but people who openly (and loudly) identify as feminists, especially online, who are the problem. Since you mention 3 feminists blocked you, I'm assuming you encountered them online.
It is significant that even the centre-left British magazine New Statesman had an article on this (There’s no point in online feminism if it’s an exclusive, Mean Girls club) where the writer, who even praises Andrea Dworkin (despite her being deeply problematic; The Dworkin Whitewash) got burnt by online feminists, and there are good examples there of the harsh words that were directed her way.
Part of the reason is due to a phenomenon that rears its ugly head in other areas: the online disinhibition effect (basically people are nastier online; Online disinhibition effect)
However, it goes beyond that, since I've found feminists I know (or knew) in real life to be this way as well.
The three major reasons, I think, are strong identification with feminism, the assumption of infallibility and a Manichean worldview.
We all have multiple identities. Research on tolerance shows that "A simple social identity is likely to be accompanied by the perception that any individual who is an outgroup member on one dimension is also an outgroup member on all others" (Page on The5f). In this context, if one strongly identifies as feminist (and this identification is very important to one's identity), one will be less tolerant of non-feminists. People who openly (and loudly) identify as feminists are thus less tolerant of non-feminists (we see this elsewhere too, among militant atheists, religious fundamentalists and ideologues in general).
Next, feminists seem to be incapable of imagining that they are wrong. Thus, people who disagree with them are wrong, and it just remains to be determined whether they are wrong because they are ignorant (in which case "education" is the answer), trolling (in which case the correct response is to ignore the "trolls"; related: Gabriel Seah's answer to Trolling: Why are some people obsessed with trolls of both the real and imagined variety?) or evil (where the 'misogynist' gets verbal abuse hurled at him).
As for the last, a Manichean worldview is a strongly polarised one: you are either good or evil and there is no middle ground. If you disagree with feminists, you are not just wrong but evil (because the opposite of feminist is, obviously, misogynist) and thus worthy of being insulted. This is especially so if you are male (and thus part of the Patriarchy, and guilty by association). Women are generally let off more easily but not spared (e.g. Camille Pagilla, Christina Hoff Sommers, Sarah Palin).
I also suspect that the reflexive (automatic) attitude of going against stereotypes (feminists love to champion the breaking of stereotypes) is responsible: since stereotypically women are supposed to be nice and polite, female feminists (since most feminists are female) are nasty.
Postscript: Feminists being rude is part of a larger phenomenon: Liberals tend to be ruder than their counterparts on the other side of the spectrum (Compassionate Liberals and Polite Conservatives: Associations of Agreeableness With Political Ideology and Moral Values) and more likely to block those they disagree with (Study: Liberals more likely to block social-media friends over political differences). For a prime example of this, you can look at PZ Myers's blog (Pharyngula - Just another site) which is full of he and his fans insulting people they disagree with (for example every time libertarianism comes up, the comments section is full of people slamming them as "assholes")"
Monday, September 30, 2013
Links - 30th September 2013
"In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying." - Bertrand Russell
***
'Feminists are man-hating and unhygienic': How negative activists stereotypes remain barriers - "people were more motivated to adopt pro-environmental behaviors after reading the articles written by the ‘atypical’ or 'undefined' environmentalist, than the 'typical' activist. Psychologist Nadia Bashir and her team conclude: 'Unfortunately, the very nature of activism leads to negative stereotyping. 'By aggressively promoting change and advocating unconventional practices, activists become associated with hostile militancy and unconventionality or eccentricity. '[People] may be more receptive to advocates who defy stereotypes by coming across as pleasant and approachable.’"
Funny, I thought shouting at people was the best way to persuade them to your point of view
How Google Play DRM promotes piracy - "Jim O’Donnell was away in Singapore attending a library conference when he saw that his iPad’s Google Play app needed to be updated. In Google Play’s case, the app erases the books and re-downloads them once the app is updated. With almost 40 books in his library, he was suddenly unable to download them since Singapore isn’t an approved Google Play Books region."
How Selfies Are Ruining Your Relationships - "people who constantly share photos of themselves generally tend to have more shallow personal relationships. Admittedly, this won’t come as a huge surprise to regular Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram users, but now there’s data to support our nagging suspicions."
iOS 7 users destroy iPhones after fake waterproof advert - "In an emergency, a smart-switch will shut off the phone’s power supply and corresponding components to prevent any damage to your iPhone’s delicate circuitry"
What your email sign-off really means - "You can sign off with “regards”, which means, quite literally, “I have no regard for you at all”. Or you can use the more extreme “warmest regards”, which means, “never contact me again you insufferable bastard”. Then there’s “yours”, which means, “I don’t even know who you are or what you wrote to me about”, and its cousin, “yours sincerely”, which means, “you owe me money and I will make your life a living hell until I get it”."
Camille Paglia - 'I don't get along with lesbians at all. They don't like me, and I don't like them' - ""But the feminist culture-wars were at their height at that time," she says. "A lot of that's completely gone now. Some of the principal antagonists are dead, like Andrea Dworkin. Basically, what happened is that my side won that war. The younger women of the Nineties rose up and embraced this. I," she says, with a sudden spurt of generosity, "credit Madonna. For decades, feminism had rejected Hollywood, sex symbols and fashion magazines and so on. Younger women have no problem in reconciling beauty with ambitions as a professional woman"... "The plastic surgery issue is really looming," says Paglia when I raise it, "because girls in the US are getting it in their teens". She won't say they shouldn't, but then I didn't think she would. Paglia has been described as a "radical libertarian". She thinks people should be free, in the private realm, to do what they like. They should be free to take drugs if they want to, and enjoy porn if they want to. And they should certainly be free to change the way they look. "I believe," she says, "that everybody has the right to view his or her own body as a palette. However, I think intellectuals should at least try to be role models. I'm going to really try to avoid it unless I get to the point where I'm actually scaring the horses"... "I had no sex life," she says, "but I was writing a dissertation on sex"... The thing that shocked me most was how many of her views seemed to me like common sense. I agree with Camille Paglia that many feminists have underestimated the power of hormones in human behaviour and the creative power of sexual desire. I agree with her that many feminists have a Rousseau-ian view of human nature where they expect to be able to dress as they like, and go where they like, and drink as they like, and never come to harm. I agree that women who stay in abusive relationships are complicit in the violence. I even agree with her about the link between male obsession and achievement. I think it's quite possible that there is "no woman Mozart because there is no woman Jack the Ripper". And I absolutely agree about the damage postmodernism and its boring theories have done to culture and art... "The reason I was angry all the time was that Gloria Steinem and all those people, without reading my work, were saying all these horrible things against me. Woah!" she says. "I'm Italian, OK. So I went on the warpath.""
Honk if you like minorities: Vuvuzela attitudes predict outgroup liking - "the less participants liked vuvuzelas, the less positively they also tended to feel toward minority groups. Furthermore, respondents who liked vuvuzelas the least were also less generally open to change. These findings suggest that the vuvuzela controversy was about more than just a plastic trumpet – it was also an episode of differential ingroup/outgroup perceptions and a lack of openness to new things"
Every Sci-Fi Starship Ever*, In One Mindblowing Comparison Chart
A rare insight into Kowloon Walled City
Height and Male Attractiveness - "men without children are on average three cm. (1.2 inches) shorter than those with at least one child... The only age group with men that were not "significantly" taller than the childless group was men in their fifties. The authors credit that to the fact that these men entered the marriage market after World War II, when men were in short supply... These studies point to a "strong universal tendency" and need to be done in many different places. "A lot of people with good hearts really don't want to believe that something you're simply born with ... somehow has that much impact on your course in life. It's unfair, and yeah it is unfair, but it also tends to be true, and the more people that actually document this carefully, the better""
There’s no point in online feminism if it’s an exclusive, Mean Girls club - "Ever tried to engage with feminism on the internet? I’ve had to start differentiating between feminism – good honest feminism in all its manifestations from Luce Irigaray, to Greenham Common, to Andrea Dworkin and even (although the Lord knows, she’s not to my taste) Camille Paglia – and what I’ve started calling the Online Wimmin Mob. The latter is meant to sound insulting. Borderline misogynist if you like, and there’s a reason for that: the Online Wimmin Mob don’t seem to like feminism. There’s not much evidence that they like women very much. Perhaps this is the reason that they don’t want you to be a feminist either. If you try to join the club that they seem to believe they have seized control of, you too will be told that there are no vacancies. No room for you, with your “privilege”... The Online Wimmin Mob takes offence everywhere, but particularly at other women who are not in their little Mean Girls club, which has their own over-stylised and impenetrable language, rules and disciplinary proceedings. “Check your privilege!” This has become the rallying cry of the Mob when faced with a woman with whom they disagree... about 35 per cent of the world’s population has access to the internet. Everyone on Twitter is privileged. Everyone. Claiming “unprivileged” underdog status when you are in the top 35 per cent of the entire world makes you sound like the sort of annoying princess who screams that it’s just not fair and she hates you because she only got an iPhone and a pony for Christmas... “Checking your privilege” is about playing an inverted game of Top Trumps where the real message is that it’s not who you are but how you were born that determines whether what you have to say is worth listening to. It’s not a dissimilar message to that of your average bar room sexist – or transphobe for that matter - but so much more depressing coming from our own side... If you are a member of the Mob, you spend your evenings in noble pursuits. Namely, picking up on ill-considered comments on the internet (which are often, although admittedly not always, well-meant but made in ignorance) and encouraging all your mates to weigh in to beat up on the woman. Is this beginning to sound like an evening out with the patriarchy to anyone else?... anyone who thinks that anything can be achieved on Twitter at 2am has no business feeling superior to anybody."
But then, they do that to men too...
Why people who boast about their IQ are (generally) losers - "If Stephen Hawking wanted to brag about how clever he is, his IQ (however high it may be) would come a long way down the list of braggables like “I held the Lucasian chair in mathematics at Cambridge” or “I discovered Hawking radiation”... In contrast, it might still be worth bragging about your IQ if you haven’t achieved much"
Are Singaporean workers... expensive & entitled? - "Mr V. S. Kumar, managing director of local courier company Network Express Courier Services, says Singaporean workers only seem motivated just to do enough and have no qualms about dropping everything and leaving on the dot at 5.30pm every day. However, his staff from India, the Philippines and Vietnam are keen to stay back after office hours to learn new skills... "If you're talking about the ability to present their ideas, to communicate, then, in general, local PMETs are behind their Western counterparts. The differences might be down to culture and the respective education systems." When they do speak up, however, it is to demand things such as more work-life balance and faster promotions... he says a bit of perspective is needed: "Comparing the entire Singaporean workforce with this small select group of employees who left their home country to make it into another country to work here, naturally they would be more driven"... A recent survey of 6,000 university students here by consultancy Universum found that the main thing they want from their careers is work-life balance, beating job security, intellectual challenge and an international career."
I thought Singaporeans love to do OT for the sake of doing OT
***
'Feminists are man-hating and unhygienic': How negative activists stereotypes remain barriers - "people were more motivated to adopt pro-environmental behaviors after reading the articles written by the ‘atypical’ or 'undefined' environmentalist, than the 'typical' activist. Psychologist Nadia Bashir and her team conclude: 'Unfortunately, the very nature of activism leads to negative stereotyping. 'By aggressively promoting change and advocating unconventional practices, activists become associated with hostile militancy and unconventionality or eccentricity. '[People] may be more receptive to advocates who defy stereotypes by coming across as pleasant and approachable.’"
Funny, I thought shouting at people was the best way to persuade them to your point of view
How Google Play DRM promotes piracy - "Jim O’Donnell was away in Singapore attending a library conference when he saw that his iPad’s Google Play app needed to be updated. In Google Play’s case, the app erases the books and re-downloads them once the app is updated. With almost 40 books in his library, he was suddenly unable to download them since Singapore isn’t an approved Google Play Books region."
How Selfies Are Ruining Your Relationships - "people who constantly share photos of themselves generally tend to have more shallow personal relationships. Admittedly, this won’t come as a huge surprise to regular Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram users, but now there’s data to support our nagging suspicions."
iOS 7 users destroy iPhones after fake waterproof advert - "In an emergency, a smart-switch will shut off the phone’s power supply and corresponding components to prevent any damage to your iPhone’s delicate circuitry"
What your email sign-off really means - "You can sign off with “regards”, which means, quite literally, “I have no regard for you at all”. Or you can use the more extreme “warmest regards”, which means, “never contact me again you insufferable bastard”. Then there’s “yours”, which means, “I don’t even know who you are or what you wrote to me about”, and its cousin, “yours sincerely”, which means, “you owe me money and I will make your life a living hell until I get it”."
Camille Paglia - 'I don't get along with lesbians at all. They don't like me, and I don't like them' - ""But the feminist culture-wars were at their height at that time," she says. "A lot of that's completely gone now. Some of the principal antagonists are dead, like Andrea Dworkin. Basically, what happened is that my side won that war. The younger women of the Nineties rose up and embraced this. I," she says, with a sudden spurt of generosity, "credit Madonna. For decades, feminism had rejected Hollywood, sex symbols and fashion magazines and so on. Younger women have no problem in reconciling beauty with ambitions as a professional woman"... "The plastic surgery issue is really looming," says Paglia when I raise it, "because girls in the US are getting it in their teens". She won't say they shouldn't, but then I didn't think she would. Paglia has been described as a "radical libertarian". She thinks people should be free, in the private realm, to do what they like. They should be free to take drugs if they want to, and enjoy porn if they want to. And they should certainly be free to change the way they look. "I believe," she says, "that everybody has the right to view his or her own body as a palette. However, I think intellectuals should at least try to be role models. I'm going to really try to avoid it unless I get to the point where I'm actually scaring the horses"... "I had no sex life," she says, "but I was writing a dissertation on sex"... The thing that shocked me most was how many of her views seemed to me like common sense. I agree with Camille Paglia that many feminists have underestimated the power of hormones in human behaviour and the creative power of sexual desire. I agree with her that many feminists have a Rousseau-ian view of human nature where they expect to be able to dress as they like, and go where they like, and drink as they like, and never come to harm. I agree that women who stay in abusive relationships are complicit in the violence. I even agree with her about the link between male obsession and achievement. I think it's quite possible that there is "no woman Mozart because there is no woman Jack the Ripper". And I absolutely agree about the damage postmodernism and its boring theories have done to culture and art... "The reason I was angry all the time was that Gloria Steinem and all those people, without reading my work, were saying all these horrible things against me. Woah!" she says. "I'm Italian, OK. So I went on the warpath.""
Honk if you like minorities: Vuvuzela attitudes predict outgroup liking - "the less participants liked vuvuzelas, the less positively they also tended to feel toward minority groups. Furthermore, respondents who liked vuvuzelas the least were also less generally open to change. These findings suggest that the vuvuzela controversy was about more than just a plastic trumpet – it was also an episode of differential ingroup/outgroup perceptions and a lack of openness to new things"
Every Sci-Fi Starship Ever*, In One Mindblowing Comparison Chart
A rare insight into Kowloon Walled City
Height and Male Attractiveness - "men without children are on average three cm. (1.2 inches) shorter than those with at least one child... The only age group with men that were not "significantly" taller than the childless group was men in their fifties. The authors credit that to the fact that these men entered the marriage market after World War II, when men were in short supply... These studies point to a "strong universal tendency" and need to be done in many different places. "A lot of people with good hearts really don't want to believe that something you're simply born with ... somehow has that much impact on your course in life. It's unfair, and yeah it is unfair, but it also tends to be true, and the more people that actually document this carefully, the better""
There’s no point in online feminism if it’s an exclusive, Mean Girls club - "Ever tried to engage with feminism on the internet? I’ve had to start differentiating between feminism – good honest feminism in all its manifestations from Luce Irigaray, to Greenham Common, to Andrea Dworkin and even (although the Lord knows, she’s not to my taste) Camille Paglia – and what I’ve started calling the Online Wimmin Mob. The latter is meant to sound insulting. Borderline misogynist if you like, and there’s a reason for that: the Online Wimmin Mob don’t seem to like feminism. There’s not much evidence that they like women very much. Perhaps this is the reason that they don’t want you to be a feminist either. If you try to join the club that they seem to believe they have seized control of, you too will be told that there are no vacancies. No room for you, with your “privilege”... The Online Wimmin Mob takes offence everywhere, but particularly at other women who are not in their little Mean Girls club, which has their own over-stylised and impenetrable language, rules and disciplinary proceedings. “Check your privilege!” This has become the rallying cry of the Mob when faced with a woman with whom they disagree... about 35 per cent of the world’s population has access to the internet. Everyone on Twitter is privileged. Everyone. Claiming “unprivileged” underdog status when you are in the top 35 per cent of the entire world makes you sound like the sort of annoying princess who screams that it’s just not fair and she hates you because she only got an iPhone and a pony for Christmas... “Checking your privilege” is about playing an inverted game of Top Trumps where the real message is that it’s not who you are but how you were born that determines whether what you have to say is worth listening to. It’s not a dissimilar message to that of your average bar room sexist – or transphobe for that matter - but so much more depressing coming from our own side... If you are a member of the Mob, you spend your evenings in noble pursuits. Namely, picking up on ill-considered comments on the internet (which are often, although admittedly not always, well-meant but made in ignorance) and encouraging all your mates to weigh in to beat up on the woman. Is this beginning to sound like an evening out with the patriarchy to anyone else?... anyone who thinks that anything can be achieved on Twitter at 2am has no business feeling superior to anybody."
But then, they do that to men too...
Why people who boast about their IQ are (generally) losers - "If Stephen Hawking wanted to brag about how clever he is, his IQ (however high it may be) would come a long way down the list of braggables like “I held the Lucasian chair in mathematics at Cambridge” or “I discovered Hawking radiation”... In contrast, it might still be worth bragging about your IQ if you haven’t achieved much"
Are Singaporean workers... expensive & entitled? - "Mr V. S. Kumar, managing director of local courier company Network Express Courier Services, says Singaporean workers only seem motivated just to do enough and have no qualms about dropping everything and leaving on the dot at 5.30pm every day. However, his staff from India, the Philippines and Vietnam are keen to stay back after office hours to learn new skills... "If you're talking about the ability to present their ideas, to communicate, then, in general, local PMETs are behind their Western counterparts. The differences might be down to culture and the respective education systems." When they do speak up, however, it is to demand things such as more work-life balance and faster promotions... he says a bit of perspective is needed: "Comparing the entire Singaporean workforce with this small select group of employees who left their home country to make it into another country to work here, naturally they would be more driven"... A recent survey of 6,000 university students here by consultancy Universum found that the main thing they want from their careers is work-life balance, beating job security, intellectual challenge and an international career."
I thought Singaporeans love to do OT for the sake of doing OT