I hope you can see that your first sentence is not logical.

Believing in someone’s innate goodness is not a prerequisite to demand that person cease hurting others. Someone need not possess inherent goodness to quit harmful actions; they need only an appropiate level of restriction or fear of consequences.

I find Mickle’s sentence quite logical. While it’s true that we can demand a cessation of behavior with the threat of punishment, that doesn’t amount to men actually changing and owning up to their privilege. We have punishment for a few forms of sexism, such as imprisonment for (a limited number of) rape cases – but those hardly result in widespread change regarding male privilege.

For myself, I have to believe that men can change in order to believe that change is possible at all, and I don’t buy into any biological deterministic arguments about men’s vs. women’s capacity for learning. I’ve seen people of any gender grow and learn about sexism, just as I’ve seen people of any race grow and learn about racism. Not every man or white person can, to be sure. But some do.

As for the rest of your comment, it is not my place to tell you whether you can or cannot dismiss men, or the women who continue to believe in men’s capacity for change. But that position is untenable for many woman who have to deal with other forms of oppression in their life. For example, for many feminists of color, men of color are their allies against racism (and often sexism as well). You can dismiss the women who negotiate these systems of oppression simply for respecting the men who can help them, but you’d be losing ties to a lot of powerful feminist women in the process.

Also, check your condescension. Talking down to women about their “positivity garbage” is unnecessarily belittling. You’re welcome to comment here, but you must abide by the discussion rules.

I hope you can see that your first sentence is not logical.

Believing in someone’s innate goodness is not a prerequisite to demand that person cease hurting others. Someone need not possess inherent goodness to quit harmful actions; they need only an appropiate level of restriction or fear of consequences.

“Feminism requires a certain amount of hope that’s missing from outright misandry.”

I would agree with you. Men have made too many excuses for too long; and yet the vast majority continue to do so regardless of how many research studies and feminist deconstructions are shoved under their noses. They’ve been doing this for 6000 years, kids. Think about that, and then think about it again.

I too used to make excuses for them. After all, only two hundred years ago or so people were so ignorant that they would assume a cow was cursed if the milk spoiled. The eye opener for me came when I realized that it takes absolutely no education or brain-cells whatsoever to recognize pain in a woman’s eye.

Of course it made sense to divide up duties according to who could perform them best. Breastfeeding pregger woman stays in the hut, he-man cowboy traps dinner. Sure. But nothing in that scenario precluded her from having legal autonomy – nothing! Every single damn day every single man would justify to himself his continued suppression of her rights as a human being. For how many years again?

How much control-freakiness does that take?

But thank you Mickle and Sigel, you brought me a little understanding. Been wondering why so many feminists keep professing such respect and other positivity garbage for men. They do not believe they have any other choice if men are to stop being morons. Also, I can appreciate from my marketing-manipulation perspective that the easiest way to get a moron to do something is to pretend that they are a worthwhile human being.

Mind you, not all men are worthless, just the vast majority. Thanks again, and good night. I think I can be done with certain aspects now.

Good point. Feminism requires a certain amount of hope that’s missing from outright misandry. Even if abuse from men is a catalyst for a woman’s eventual feminist awakening, a woman who is in this stage probably isn’t ready for feminism yet.

A lot.

Yup. Funny, I can’t seem to remember any feminists I know engaging in the opposite tactic, of constantly recycling the same old story of one man being mean to them – and this includes women who have endured incredible violence and abuse at the hands of men.

Great point. I have, of course, seen women do this, I’m sure most of us have. But I can’t think of any that were feminists. A few “I’m not a feminist, but…” perhaps, but no feminists. I could be wrong, but it seems fairly rare. At the very least, I would think that such self-described feminists would not play well with other feminists, for obvious reasons.

I also think this speaks to why the common accusation that feminists hate men is so false. In order to believe that the world can change, we have to believe that men are capable of goodness. If we use a single event or person to condemn the entire gender, how does that not contradict the fundamentals of feminism?

Andy: The empress example, while helpful, is also an isolated case. I would prefer to bring up something like the history of feminist activism in China, to show how, despite the fact that some dominant social practices in China are sexist, there are people within the culture attempting to change that. This kind of example would have the added benefit of showing the similarities between the situations in China and the U.S.

Sara: This is one of the things that I enjoy more about my Women Studies major than my English major.

Luke: Seriously? *rolls eyes* There ought to be some sort of rule against pointing fingers at other cultures’ sexism until you’ve made a decent effort at addressing your own.

(Dare I ask the professor’s name? I can’t think of who would be that incompetent; hopefully that person no longer teaches here.)