feminism and social progressivism thread

[Stingray Sam]

Why are people all well and good with social justice movements until it comes to feminism? It seems like everyone is willing to ignore the crazies in the LGBTQ movement or racial equality movement, but once someone brings up feminism it's always look at this one thing someone said 20 years ago that wasn't even popular then. i don't understand the difficulties of accepting what feminism is saying, to me it seems that all you have to do is look at the news for 5 minutes or just pay attention to the world around you to realize the need for feminism.

[can-]

the gainsay in this thread is approaching critical mass. I invite and to step back and iterate on how they communicate with others, and would actively dissuade users who are more interested in winning an internet argument than engaging in an actual conversation from participating.

moving forward. this thread is for any and all social issues which covers lgbt, men's rights, education and health in first and third world countries. I'm sure we can even be reasonable and tempered as a community to discuss fatphobia and ableism.

my working definition of feminism is one which cares for all genders and peoples. the diction might be imperfect-- or maybe it's not-- but it's a useful way to signify that you believe there are large social issues at the systemic level.

[charybdis]

Really, all I can think is: It's 2014, why the fuck do I still need to defend why I am a feminist.

On a more relevant topic, does anyone have any suggestion for YA/kids books with not lame/orientalized asian girl protagonists? I'm compiling a list for my little sister (who is ten) and the list is currently one book long. Nothing wrong with non-asian girl protagonists, but my sister reads a lot like I do I think it would be good for her general self image to have a few books here and there where the protagonist looks like her.

[UnwashedMolasses]

come on ben still referring to them as third/first world countries? it's developing and developed smh

Might as well jump right into another topic though:

At what point is another person's health your business? What signs or evidence can you use to determine if someone is being actively self-destructive vs passive, and whether you should intervene? This type of thing is common with drug/alcohol abuse - should obesity fall under the same scope?

[IsaiahSchafer]

re: obesity

a quick google search tells me a fifth of all healthcare costs stems from obesity: http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/na ... 242749.htm Whatever that means to you, I'd rather we spent money on preventative medicine than caring for the effects of something as preventable as obesity.

I believe everyone should be treated with respect, regardless of weight, but I don't believe a social progress agenda should include people complaining about paying more for 4XL shirts and the fact that airlines require them to buy two seats. You're not paying just for them to get there, you're paying for a seat. and if you can't fit in the seat... buy another.

I don't see the studies and science that show people are just magically 400 pounds just because of PCOS or a slow metabolism. Calories in, calories out. Science is science.

So yeah, obesity should be treated in most cases as the result of a person who struggles from overeating/disordered eating/addiction to food. Fat acceptance is dangerous in its current form. They should be treated like people, but not as if they are healthy being severely overweight.

[UnwashedMolasses]

I understand where you're coming from with this, but I'm not a fan of the calories in / calories out argument, as it seems unnecessarily reductionistic. As a counterpoint, here's a few articles (all from a quick google search) on the influence of variable gut microbiota :





There's a decent amount of research suggesting that gut microbiota can have some influence on the amount of energy absorbed from food. Certain bacteria have been linked to increased rates of obesity and diabetes.

[nick]

a very common thread I see in these type of discussions (and to a degree on this thread) is the more 'progressive' side describing large scale trends and backing them up with statistics, then the opposite side using typifying examples combined with slippery slope type arguments about how people with the most extreme views will spread through society like a hippie liberal plague.

coming to obesity - it's certainly a public health problem, and we should definitely find ways to make eating healthier foods cheaper and easier. instead of focusing on the individual case-by-case basis and 'making them lose weight', it would be much better to examine the structural issues which made this 'epidemic' happen in the first place. but isn't that the answer to every sociological question? (smiling)

going back to my first point: I don't think it's fair at all to confound a world trend (see: China) with a few people the news media/the internet likes to typify all obese people as (the examples krumping gave). most obese people don't *want* to be obese and sure aren't proud of it. but now we have entire internet forums/boards/threads/etc dedicated to fat shaming and telling stories about how the overweight are these illogical monsters. that's really fucked up. when that mindset spreads (and unlike the "extreme" ones I mentioned up top, it has), it paints all obese people as these gluttonous monsters, and we start to blame this health issue on individual behaviors more so than looking at what fattened up the entire nation in the course of 50 years.

EDIT:

, this is a good point. so the question is: which is the more prevailing 'bad' attitude? "Obese but healthy" (A myth that may 'encourage' unhealthy behaviors) "Obesity is primarily the result of irresponsible behaviors" (An insight that fails to examine how obesity has become so widespread)
I actually don't know the answer to this. No one here probably does! that's what makes these discussions interesting (smiling) Anyone have any insight?

[missrowan]

There's a difference between severely overweight and the "grey area" where BMIs aren't in dangerous obesity categories yet, but these people still aren't the slim "ideal". You could probably count "plus size" people in this category. For these kinds of body types, there seems to be a lot of unnecessary hatred directed towards them and shame within themselves for not looking like the slim ideal. They are perfectly within the realm of healthy, but they do not look like what we "want" them to look like, and for this fact they are punished.

Additionally it's important to acknowledge the separation between fat and health. Granted, gratuitous fat (ie obesity) is not healthy, but human bodies are designed to retain fat and energy, and thus some fat on the body does not automatically mean unhealthy, just as no fat on the body does not automatically mean healthy. You can take a look at the bodies of certain kinds of athletes (see: baseball players or weightlifters or even some pro triathletes) to see that athleticism and body health come in many shapes.

On the topic of health: if we are having this obesity/fat debate on the grounds of being concerned about someone's health, then it's also worth thinking about how much your concern/comments help them compared to how much the pressure to be thin and conform to the slim ideal will wreak havoc on their emotions, self-esteem, and eating habits. If it's truly a conversation about health, then the pros must be weighed with the cons.


("Fat acceptance is dangerous in its current form" presumably refers to people telling unhealthily obese people that they are beautiful and should "love themselves". I have two responses to this concern:
1. in a society where the prevailing sentiment is that physical appearances are extremely important, especially for girls as young as elementary school age, and that your worth is based on your slimness, I would hazard that these extreme "love yourself" movements are a form of overcorrection to current society attitudes. Not saying necessarily that they are good, but I can understand where they come from and why they exist.

2. I doubt most obese people are actively "eating themselves to death" as the popular mental image suggests. More often, I'd guess they are forced into making poor nutrition choices based on factors such as poverty, misinformation about food, bad eating habits developed as a child, or dabbling in even unhealthier crash diets as a result of the pressure to be thin. In any case, even supposing that they were, it does not mean they should be treated any less like a person. As a parallel, smoking is not only bad for the smoker's health, but also the people around this smoker. That does not mean they do not deserve the same kind of basic respect and support someone else should get. Obviously we should encourage them and support them in their quest to be healthier, but that does not mean badgering them every time they are around whether or not they've quit smoking. But I see this kind of snide/underhanded comments all the time around people who are not conventionally slim. There is a difference between policing someone's actions/habits/lifestyle and genuinely supporting them as a concerned friend, and I think some people may fall short of this mark.

edit: 3. just want to point out YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE HEALTHY TO LOVE YOURSELF EITHER.)

[IsaiahSchafer]

My takeaway: Everyone is entitled to love themselves, but that is far away from meaning we shouldn't strive to improve ourselves. Let's tackle education and affordability/availability of easy, healthy, filling foods.

[SteevMike]

i think the idea of what is ~healthy~ or not is pretty well indoctrinated in most people e.g., pretty much everyone knows that fast food (i.e., readily available, low [opportunity] cost, calorie dense, low satiety) is worse for you than, like, a salad.

i can say for a fact that in my city it is very difficult for people living in the poorest neighborhoods to access fresh, healthy foods due to:
-Food deserts (half of the population is not within walking distance to a general purpose grocery store; the poorest people likely can't afford a vehicle)
-bad public transportation infrastructure
-in the poorest neighborhoods there are MANY fast food chains

Also,

Someone in IRC posted a link to a website that compared the price of fast food to other healthier options that cost the same amount (e.g., $12 for a shitty fast food meal or $12 for a baller fresh salad? the choice is obvious!) which i don't like because it doesn't account for opportunity cost. if you have want to spend $12 on fast food, you go to the fast food place, buy your food, and return EXIT_SUCCESS;. if you're poor and stuck living in the bad neighborhood want to spend $12 for a fresh meal you have to:
1) get to the grocery store somehow, hope you don't miss your bus! oh wait it's super cold most of the year lmao enjoy frostbite while you wait for the next one
2) buy your shit
3) get home, hope you don't miss your bus again
4) prepare your food
5) eat

Of course, when you go to a grocery store you're buying more than one meal at a time, but fresh healthy food (generally) starts going bad within a few days, so depending on what you buy and how many people you're feeding you may have to go shopping for groceries multiple times a week. This can take WAY MORE TIME THAN YOU MAY HAVE.

Anyway, i think as long as poor people don't have access to healthy food + time to prepare meals then you probably can't expect them to stop buying fast food.

EDIT: as usual, The Onion says it best:

[ab167]

[Vaeltaja]

[Rosenrot]

[ramseames]

I don't think its news to anyone that you'll look better if you're not overweight in like 99% of circumstances but that doesn't mean telling someone that is useful advice really

[Stingray Sam]

So we've been discussing how to deal with other people's health, but what about their mental health? I mean there are a couple of people I know who have probably already committed a sex crime and if they haven't then it's very likely that they will. What do you do when you know that someone has mental health issues that could end up harming others? With depression and that sort of thing it seems a bit easier to approach the person because depression doesn't really have negative associations with it unlike psychopathy or other personality disorders. I mean you can't go up to someone and say i think you may be a sociopath let me give you resources to help. How do we as a society combat mental illnesses that can lead to self harm and harm to others?

[Vaeltaja]

[Vaeltaja]

Oops double.

I'll answer Stringray's post then.

There's probably not really a way to do it unless you're a very close friend or family member. The only possible exception would be where someone was rapidly gaining or losing weight (i.e. suspected bulimia). It's a lot easier to say "hey, you OK? You seem to be losing a lot of weight recently" than for most other (mental) illnesses. That being said, perhaps for a more serious issue, if you're not a close friend, try contact one of their close friends. Invasion of privacy? Maybe a little, but at that point it's all conjecture anyways.

[JewTurk]

I'm genuinely interested in the whole gender identity thing, would love some articles on it.

I feel bad about how uneducated I am on this stuff and how it rarely comes up in any of my high school discussion-based classes.

[Rosenrot]

[Vaeltaja]

[IsaiahSchafer]

http://www.reddit.com/r/confession/comm ... ompletely/

worth reading this whole thread's discussion along with the links within. For consideration and discussion. I definitely can see where she's coming from in regards to the radical "tumblr" feminists infiltrating other 'regions' of the movement.

[ab167]

"Radical tumblr feminists" did not invent genderqueer, as she suggests.

Gender as a social construct is a legitimate academic and socially relevant field, even if some people have taken it past logical extremes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_theory

Nostalgia equals conservatism, and wishing for the ~good ol' days~ of feminism is not really something that appeals to me.

[Vaeltaja]

[IsaiahSchafer]

So neg = I disagree. +rep = I agree. That's going to make sure this thread doesn't turn into just another sounding board...

In regards to what ab167 said, you took a single aspect of a single one of her arguments- which does little for the discussion. The greater part of the point she was making there is the growing need for people to define themselves with more and more labels.

[ab167]

[maj]

trying to argue this stuff is painful at best, both sides are going to have to spell it out with 5 examples both academic and practised, have it peer assessed by 4 different independents and then submit it to a industry leader for approval just before posting. it's just going around in circles as one side doesn't want to side with the other, i have obvious clear leaning in what i believe so i won't say one side is right or wrong. it's not worth arguing about as we could fiddle over the finer points for decades and get nowhere. the drug thread was not created for me to go in there and go "i don't think it's right for you guys to do this and here's abcdefghijkzlmnopqrs... why".

instead what i think ben wanted this place to be was a thread to point out issues we fell we're facing or what face those around us not if you or anyone else feels like they're valid, are worth feeling anything about or if you believe they're being oppressed.

[maj]

i really fucking hate the cat calling, sexual comments and degrading objectifying tones made by some of my colleagues in the workplace, usually around customers the find attractive or unattractive. utterly horrid. worst is that it goes all the way from the bottom to the top.

[can-]

I negged you because the linked article drags down the level of discourse here by full degrees at a time.

I said it before, it'd be a shame to waste our time and energy discussing the vocal minorities that make up tumblr and MRA arenas. it's an insult to people who are actually disenfranchised in this world to spend our time trying to decide if one extremist minority is better than the others.

there is no need to spend a minute of your time on people who want to identify as unicorns or the people who hate them. if that is literally the extent of your exposure with social issues, lurk moar. the discussion you linked is garbage or fluff- totally worthless.

if you would like help understanding why the author is addressing a strawman feminism, I am sure someone here can do a good job of patiently explaining this without any kind of attitudinizing. there is a lot of bite and emoting on both sides of this conversation, and you should all know better than that. if you can't keep snark or strong feelings out of your input, you should not be posting here. if you can't post without a condescending tone, you are effectively communicating to everyone that you aren't ready to handle this topic

[IsaiahSchafer]

I was more interested in the evolution of feminism over the OP's lifetime and her comparisons to the republican party and the tea party in regards to radicalization. But if that's not what's wanted here I can appreciate that enough to let it be. I should have highlighted talking points, but hindsight is 20/20. Anyway, I'll just take it down.

Edit: can't take it down.

[charybdis]

A couple months ago, I watched this documentary called The Invisible War about rape in the military and how not only would these things happen but the women would receive professional retaliation and basically no aid from the military. (One of the women even gets court martialed for adultery, even though her rapist was the one who was married.) Really informative doc, and the filmmakers interview people on all sides of the issue.



Here are some articles about it:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog ... itary-rape

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/movie ... .html?_r=0

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/c ... oscar.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizadonnell ... -military/