Feminism! Hooray!

Thanks for a thought provoking reply. Nevertheless, I think that there are some major problems in your analysis and argument. First, you present the issue of feminism as being about the accrual of more rights. This, I think, is a misunderstanding of present day feminism, and overlaying historical notions of feminism (particularly the objectives of first and second wave feminism) with that which exists today. As we have both noted, historical feminism was geared towards legislative changes designed to ensure equality. Today, feminism is more to do with ensuring that this legislation actually translates into reality " i.e. that equal pay and anti-gender based violence legislation is properly enforced. Moreover, modern day feminism is also about deconstructing modes of patriarchy and encouraging both men and women to think about society and popular narrative of gender. To quote Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler: "anyone who protests that a focus on pop culture distracts from "real" feminist issues and lacks a commitment to social change needs to turn on the TV"it"s a public gauge of attitudes about everything from abortion " to poverty " to political power. " The world of pop culture is " the marketplace of ideas".[1] This is, I suggest, absolutely true. The representations of femininity are often dismissive, sexualised and present women as objects. It does not take long, flicking through TV channels, playing video games, or going to the movies to note mass-media archetypes of femininity. Take for example, the film Spring Breakers, which on the one hand purported to be about female empowerment but was, in fact, incredibly leery and shot in a way designed to titillate male viewers. Of course, recently Hollywood and so on have started to sexualise and objectify males (see Twilight for example) for the titillation of female audiences, but this, I would argue is not a good thing either. And even if it were, we have yet to come even close to reaching equality in pernicious negativity. Similarly, the Steubenville rape case, in which significant elements of the media spent more time worrying about the future of a talented group of high school football players, who raped a comatose teenage girl and humiliated her by proceeding to brag about their actions online and by post humiliating images and recordings, than they did about the victim. CNN correspondent Poppy Harlow said: "[That she fund it] Incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart"[2] Meanwhile, there is a rather pernicious element of modern society that reinforces a culture of victim blaming. For instance, when the personal nude photographs of various female celebrities were stolen and splashed across the internet, a common refrain was to blame the victims of the crime.[3]So, I would suggest that there is still manifestly a need for feminism to highlight and challenge these forms of narrative. I also remain unconvinced that existing legislation designed to grant equal rights under the law translates to equality in reality, and I"d like to take some time responding to your points. ---- "I only see us moving forward or standing still, I haven't seen any sort of recession in the two decades I've been alive, and from research I've done, I haven't seen any since some time before that." This, I feel misses the central point I was attempting to make. It is not necessarily that we, as a society, are moving backwards (though I cited concrete examples of forces of reactions attempting to do precisely that) as a whole " but rather that a feminist movement is necessary to challenge attempts to do so. Without feminist groups highlighting reactionary legislation and efforts, most notably around the subject of abortion at the moment (see my previous example in Round 1), the rights of women, even to control their own bodies, will be challenged. --- I note that you have challenged the existence of the pay gap, and cited several sources which suggest, wrongly, that the pay gap can be explained by, among other things, personal choice. Sadly, this is not the case. The author of the Huffington Post article, quite frankly, has clearly never studied the issue. Those of us who conduct professional research in what is called "gender studies" (full disclosure, I"m a professional gender specialist and lecture in a UK university), refer to a phenomenon known as "gender occupational segregation"[4] and the historical "separate spheres"[5] ideology that continues to have a baleful influence on the modern workplace. Arguments which relegate the issue of pay down to "personal choice" miss the wider social-super structures which dictate behaviour patterns. The also ignore the fact that women, even doing precisely the same work as men, are typically paid less.[4] This is actually illegal under US law, but the law is simply not enforced, thus: "women supervisors of retail sales workers earn 79 percent of what their male counterparts make; women nurses earn 88 percent of what male nurses make; and male elementary and middle school teachers earn 9 percent more than their female colleagues."[4] Also problematic is the fashion in which work is gendered. Work typically associated with women is undervalued, thus they tend to pay less.[6] As such women face a duel disadvantage in that they are regularly discriminated against regarding pay illegally, and that their labour is undervalued. --- On the topic of domestic violence, I suspect that the figures you cite are misleading. 85% of the victims of intimate partner violence are women.[7] That is not to diminish the destructive and malevolent phenomenon of violence perpetrated against male partners, but rather to show that domestic violence disproportionately effects women. To quote the US Department of Justice, "raped, physically assaulted, and/or stalked since age 18 were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, boyfriend, or date. In comparison, only 16.2 percent of the men who reported being raped and/or physically assaulted since age 18 were victimized by such a perpetrator." Also, qualitatively, women tend to suffer more being significantly more likely to be injured. Again, to quote the US Department of Justice: "Women are significantly more likely than men to be injured during an assault: 31.5 percent of female rape victims, compared with 16.1 percent of male rape victims, reported being injured during their most recent rape; 39.0 percent of female physical assault victims, compared with 24.8 percent of male physical assault victims, reported being injured during their most recent physical assault."[8] It also seems rather crass to suggest that feminists are being sexist by highlighting that domestic violence is a major "hidden" problem that disproportionately affects women. That is simply a fact. It is also worth noting that feminist groups have also been at the forefront in highlighting that domestic violence also, to a far lesser degree, affects men too. They highlight what I talked a little bit about in Round 1, about pernicious gender stereotyping. One of the resulting problems is that men are less likely to report that they have been victims of domestic violence to the police, because they do not want to broadcast what they deem to be a form of emasculation. This I think addresses your question regarding what is wrong with gender roles. In addition, they are illogical and serve no purpose. As noted above, they are the reason why women are undervalued and under paid, why the myth of the 1950s domestic goddess continues to hold sway, why women are less likely to receive promotion, and why women are disproportionately subject to objectification. [1] Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler, bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of "Bitch" Magazine (New York, 2006), pp. xxi"xxii. [2] http://gawker.com... [3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com... [4] https://www.psychologytoday.com... [5] https://renazito.files.wordpress.com... [6] https://www.psychologytoday.com... [7] http://www.huffingtonpost.com... [8] https://www.ncjrs.gov...