When I hear a woman say "I'm not a feminist" my first thought is "WHY THE HELL NOT??"
For the same reason they oppose public health, public school, trans rights, diversity, equity, and inclusion. They literally don't know what they are.
I know at least 2 Republicans that when you actually talk about individual policy preferences it comes across as moderate democrat. One of them was a virulent PRO masker because of their job.
I think people just don't pay attention to actual policies, it's all just the soundbites and controversy.
because the word feminism has different meanings for different people. for some it means equality and a way to get there. for others it means men are bad and women should get priority treatment. communication is hard when there is no objective meaning for any of the words we are using.
But that second meaning is a bogeyman. No one says "I am a feminist" and means that.
No one? There are 8 billion people screaming out whatever random ideas occurs to them for hours a day across the planet. You can't make that statement about anything anymore.
Also there is also just plain misinformation campaigns. People creating strawman arguments pretending to be on the other side.
But the right has been convinced they do. Just like how they think CRT means "teaching white kindergartners that they should feel bad for being white and are inferior to Black kindergartners."
Take a look at the difference between 2nd, 3rd and 4th wave feminism... The consider post feminism arguments.
What most people consider feminism is typically called 2nd wave feminism.
But people do say “I’m NOT a feminist”, meaning not that
Because a lot of modern (so-called 3rd wave) "feminists" are just greedy people demanding things that will advantage them but doing so behind the cover of the group so that it doesn't look like all the other greedy bastards - it's rightwing thinking disguised as "for the group", which is why they worry way more about "the glass ceiling" (which disadvantages high middle class people who aren't in an "old boys network", which includes almost all women from thst social strata) rathar than, say, the very low salaries for women who are blue collar workers.
The previous waves of Feminism were of the "we want to be treated like everybody else" (or as I like to think of it: "get out of my way and let me be all that I can be").
People react very differently to the "gimme shit" crowd than they do the "stop hindering me" one, and sadly the former are a lot louder (as usual for people driven by greed) and have come to dominate the image of Feminism in Anglo-Saxon countries.
With "a lot" you mean the handful of loud obnoxious people who only do that to get attention?
Because that isn't even close to the majority.
There still are differences in treatment between the sexes, even if you yourself don't notice them.
For example, just look up what the Bechdel test is and the difference between the reverse Bechdel test. There is still a huge difference how women get treated compared to men in media.
But the other way around also happens. Mothers still get more custody over kids than the Father. Which is ALSO something Feminists fight to fix.
For starters, I'm keenly aware of the disgustingly discrimination against women, especially in the old days - for example, in my home country of Portugal back in the 60s women weren't allowed to leave the country without authorization from their husbands, very much a "we own you" disgusting level of discrimination - but also in modern days the cultural, legal and economic factors that transform childbirth into a massive torpedo to women's careers and the main reason in modern days for the clear chasm in income that appears at around the mid-30s between highly educated men and women.
Further, I'm involved in a leftwing party in my country and the "gimme shit" discourse imported from Anglo-Saxon countries is sadly quite common amongst self-identified "Feminists" (mind you, that's far from the only self-defined group demanding to be given things not given to others - "greed is good" seems to have been interiorised by a whole generation that grew up in the last 4 decades and who think personal upside maximization disguised as "compensation for a group of people identified by things they were born with were otherwise completelly different people than me were discriminated against" is being "Leftwing" because they're not directly demanding it for themselves), though it's not the dominant one.
Having lived in that country for over a decade and having also been involved in Politics there, I've also seen a lot of that amongst the upper middle classes in Britain around the ages of 30 and below, were it comes from the various flavour of liberals (who are invariably neoliberals, as Britain currently has no real leftwing beyond the Green Party) who again think they're Leftwing so long as their "gimme" is voice as "give us".
Meanwhile I've met older Feminists and they're a whole different breed, not to mention women that fought for a better life for all, their whole lives, without ever holding the "Feminist" flag (my country has quite the Leftwing tradition and that was as much women as men).
Sadly it's got to a point were somebody loudly claiming to be Feminist is almost invariably a "gimme shit" person that's probably doing more to damage the broader cause of Equality that the much larger mass of Women out there fighting for equal treatment: as I said, what I believe is genuine Feminism is the "get out of the way and let me be all that I can be" kind - capable people who are discriminated against for being women rather than social players who are not against the system being gamed, they just want it to be gamed in their favour.
Mind you, the subversion of the Fight for Equality into competing groups defined by characteristics people were born with (the very same kind of way of reducing people to categories and then generalizing that anchors far right thinking) dominated by people driven by personal upside maximization is not at all specific of the fight for Equality for Women but a far broader phenomenon of subversion of the Modern Left through Divide et Impera techniques.
Perhaps their understanding of feminism has come from the violently extreme "kill all men" types of feminists or the opposing "get back in the kitchen" type of conservative shitbags making up all sorts of scary and mean things about them.
Their understanding of feminism comes from right wing media.
That's what they said.
Or possibly from extreme left wing media
I think it's more likely to be from things that actually exist
Those first type of feminists do not exist, it's a strawman
They absolutely do. They are by no means the majority, but extremes exist in any movement. There are "feminists" who think it's all about sticking it to the man (literally) or proving feminine superiority. It's like Christians who don't read the Bible and think it's all about damning the gross icky people to hell. That doesn't mean they're common (they aren't), but I've seen a few crazies on Tumblr and Twitter.
Edit: J.K.Rowling is one of them (kinda).
Thank you. I hate that some people just cannot accept that extremists exist on "their team". I had another post downvoted to hell when I made a similar claim and provided plenty of tweets (or whatever the fuck they're called nowadays) and other evidence. It was met with the same "that's not real" or worse "it's just satire".
who don’t read the Bible and think it’s all about damning the gross icky people to hell
Not all but that is a pretty decent description of most of the NT. The OT god(s) would kill you because you annoyed them but they wouldn't send you to hell.
And you’re someone who has read the New Testament?
I’ve read maybe 10% and have yet to encounter a single line about damning the gross icky people to hell.
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I don't consider myself a Christian anymore, but based on what I was taught as a kid, I'd personally take anything that wasn't explicitly stated to be spoken by God or Jesus with a grain of salt, especially when it comes to books that weren't written by Jesus' disciples (excluding Saul/Paul, who never actually met Jesus).
As a kid, I was taught to read the Bible and use my brain (god gave you one, use it) to figure out what it was trying to say, not blindly follow it without question. The reason for that is because I was taught that the Bible is inspired by God, not written by him (unless explicitly stated that the passage came directly from God or Jesus' mouth). As such, you have humans attempting to understand God's (and later Jesus') commands, which means they aren't always going to be 100% correct and/or there may be historical context that is missing when you take it literally and at face value.
You're supposed to not just read, but also think about the Bible and decide what parts make sense when taken in context with what is said to be explicitly said by God (it's part of the reason why some Bibles mark anything said by God/Jesus in red).
For an example, the passage you've quoted could be interpreted as a warning about pagans larping as Christians to take advantage of christian kindness and distort the word of God into something else (similar to the merchants in the temple, or like what is happening in Christianity now). You could also read it as an almost complete reversal to what Jesus taught in the early NT.
Which one of these makes more sense?
A) Jesus comes to earth, teaches people about kindness and goodness, hang out with prostitutes and untouchables, dies on the cross for everyone's sins, becomes a zombie, and declares that the laws of the Old testament had been fulfilled through him so all could be saved. Then a few years later, he changes his mind and inspires Jude to write a letter about how the gays should be cast out and are going to hell.
B) Jude was writing the letter as a warning to keep your guard up around non-christians in case they might persuade you to distort the teachings of Jesus and/or hijack Christianity to turn it into a money-making scheme. It wouldn't be the first time it happened (the merchants in the temple immediately springs to mind again).
Or C) Jude didn't really know what he was talking about and the book/letter is included because it's referenced in other places of the Bible and theologians would rather err on the side of caution and allow a non-canon book to be included in the Bible than delete something that might be important (iirc the Bible states that you're not supposed to remove, change or add to anything said in scripture, so from a Christian perspective, I'd imagine if you're not sure about something then it's probably better to include something than exclude it).
Imo, B) seems the most likely. If you believe the Christian God is real, then A) is absurd, and C) seems unlikely due to Jude's proximity to James. It seems like if C) were true, then there would be records of Jude being refuted or rebuked.
deleted by creator
...right, I think you might have misunderstood what I meant by, "gross, icky people". I usually see the phrase used to mock """Christians""" who yell and scream about people who are LGBT; effectively saying the """Christians""" are just upset because they view the LGBT community as being gross and icky and use the Bible to justify their bigotry.
You're correct that there's a lot in the Bible about hellfire and damnation, but I think God doesn't really care if you're straight or gay (I know there's a passage in the old testament that people, especially evangelicals, like to use as a smoking gun, but afaik the English translation is controversial among theologians and it may have intended to refer to pederasty, since that was common at the time), I think he's more concerned with pedophilia, bestiality, greed, manipulation, etc.
To put it another way, I kinda doubt he gives a fuck about Freddy Mercury being bi or Elton John being gay, and more about how people like Joel Osteen use the Bible to enrich themselves or how people like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk use their wealth and power to strip people's rights and encourage bigotry. You know, truly evil people.
If (a big "if") the Bible is true, I think there are a lot of gay, trans, bi and enby people who'll be pleasantly surprised to find themselves at the pearly gates, while a lot of supposed """Christians""" will get a rude awakening in hell.
When I hear a woman say "I'm not a feminist" my first thought is "WHY THE HELL NOT??"
For the same reason they oppose public health, public school, trans rights, diversity, equity, and inclusion. They literally don't know what they are.
I know at least 2 Republicans that when you actually talk about individual policy preferences it comes across as moderate democrat. One of them was a virulent PRO masker because of their job.
I think people just don't pay attention to actual policies, it's all just the soundbites and controversy.
because the word feminism has different meanings for different people. for some it means equality and a way to get there. for others it means men are bad and women should get priority treatment. communication is hard when there is no objective meaning for any of the words we are using.
But that second meaning is a bogeyman. No one says "I am a feminist" and means that.
No one? There are 8 billion people screaming out whatever random ideas occurs to them for hours a day across the planet. You can't make that statement about anything anymore.
Also there is also just plain misinformation campaigns. People creating strawman arguments pretending to be on the other side.
They absolutely do. I've met a few of them.
But the right has been convinced they do. Just like how they think CRT means "teaching white kindergartners that they should feel bad for being white and are inferior to Black kindergartners."
Take a look at the difference between 2nd, 3rd and 4th wave feminism... The consider post feminism arguments.
What most people consider feminism is typically called 2nd wave feminism.
But people do say “I’m NOT a feminist”, meaning not that
Because a lot of modern (so-called 3rd wave) "feminists" are just greedy people demanding things that will advantage them but doing so behind the cover of the group so that it doesn't look like all the other greedy bastards - it's rightwing thinking disguised as "for the group", which is why they worry way more about "the glass ceiling" (which disadvantages high middle class people who aren't in an "old boys network", which includes almost all women from thst social strata) rathar than, say, the very low salaries for women who are blue collar workers.
The previous waves of Feminism were of the "we want to be treated like everybody else" (or as I like to think of it: "get out of my way and let me be all that I can be").
People react very differently to the "gimme shit" crowd than they do the "stop hindering me" one, and sadly the former are a lot louder (as usual for people driven by greed) and have come to dominate the image of Feminism in Anglo-Saxon countries.
With "a lot" you mean the handful of loud obnoxious people who only do that to get attention?
Because that isn't even close to the majority.
There still are differences in treatment between the sexes, even if you yourself don't notice them.
For example, just look up what the Bechdel test is and the difference between the reverse Bechdel test. There is still a huge difference how women get treated compared to men in media.
But the other way around also happens. Mothers still get more custody over kids than the Father. Which is ALSO something Feminists fight to fix.
For starters, I'm keenly aware of the disgustingly discrimination against women, especially in the old days - for example, in my home country of Portugal back in the 60s women weren't allowed to leave the country without authorization from their husbands, very much a "we own you" disgusting level of discrimination - but also in modern days the cultural, legal and economic factors that transform childbirth into a massive torpedo to women's careers and the main reason in modern days for the clear chasm in income that appears at around the mid-30s between highly educated men and women.
Further, I'm involved in a leftwing party in my country and the "gimme shit" discourse imported from Anglo-Saxon countries is sadly quite common amongst self-identified "Feminists" (mind you, that's far from the only self-defined group demanding to be given things not given to others - "greed is good" seems to have been interiorised by a whole generation that grew up in the last 4 decades and who think personal upside maximization disguised as "compensation for a group of people identified by things they were born with were otherwise completelly different people than me were discriminated against" is being "Leftwing" because they're not directly demanding it for themselves), though it's not the dominant one.
Having lived in that country for over a decade and having also been involved in Politics there, I've also seen a lot of that amongst the upper middle classes in Britain around the ages of 30 and below, were it comes from the various flavour of liberals (who are invariably neoliberals, as Britain currently has no real leftwing beyond the Green Party) who again think they're Leftwing so long as their "gimme" is voice as "give us".
Meanwhile I've met older Feminists and they're a whole different breed, not to mention women that fought for a better life for all, their whole lives, without ever holding the "Feminist" flag (my country has quite the Leftwing tradition and that was as much women as men).
Sadly it's got to a point were somebody loudly claiming to be Feminist is almost invariably a "gimme shit" person that's probably doing more to damage the broader cause of Equality that the much larger mass of Women out there fighting for equal treatment: as I said, what I believe is genuine Feminism is the "get out of the way and let me be all that I can be" kind - capable people who are discriminated against for being women rather than social players who are not against the system being gamed, they just want it to be gamed in their favour.
Mind you, the subversion of the Fight for Equality into competing groups defined by characteristics people were born with (the very same kind of way of reducing people to categories and then generalizing that anchors far right thinking) dominated by people driven by personal upside maximization is not at all specific of the fight for Equality for Women but a far broader phenomenon of subversion of the Modern Left through Divide et Impera techniques.
Perhaps their understanding of feminism has come from the violently extreme "kill all men" types of feminists or the opposing "get back in the kitchen" type of conservative shitbags making up all sorts of scary and mean things about them.
Their understanding of feminism comes from right wing media.
That's what they said.
Or possibly from extreme left wing media
I think it's more likely to be from things that actually exist
Those first type of feminists do not exist, it's a strawman
They absolutely do. They are by no means the majority, but extremes exist in any movement. There are "feminists" who think it's all about sticking it to the man (literally) or proving feminine superiority. It's like Christians who don't read the Bible and think it's all about damning the gross icky people to hell. That doesn't mean they're common (they aren't), but I've seen a few crazies on Tumblr and Twitter.
Edit: J.K.Rowling is one of them (kinda).
Thank you. I hate that some people just cannot accept that extremists exist on "their team". I had another post downvoted to hell when I made a similar claim and provided plenty of tweets (or whatever the fuck they're called nowadays) and other evidence. It was met with the same "that's not real" or worse "it's just satire".
Not all but that is a pretty decent description of most of the NT. The OT god(s) would kill you because you annoyed them but they wouldn't send you to hell.
And you’re someone who has read the New Testament?
I’ve read maybe 10% and have yet to encounter a single line about damning the gross icky people to hell.
deleted by creator
I don't consider myself a Christian anymore, but based on what I was taught as a kid, I'd personally take anything that wasn't explicitly stated to be spoken by God or Jesus with a grain of salt, especially when it comes to books that weren't written by Jesus' disciples (excluding Saul/Paul, who never actually met Jesus).
As a kid, I was taught to read the Bible and use my brain (god gave you one, use it) to figure out what it was trying to say, not blindly follow it without question. The reason for that is because I was taught that the Bible is inspired by God, not written by him (unless explicitly stated that the passage came directly from God or Jesus' mouth). As such, you have humans attempting to understand God's (and later Jesus') commands, which means they aren't always going to be 100% correct and/or there may be historical context that is missing when you take it literally and at face value.
You're supposed to not just read, but also think about the Bible and decide what parts make sense when taken in context with what is said to be explicitly said by God (it's part of the reason why some Bibles mark anything said by God/Jesus in red).
For an example, the passage you've quoted could be interpreted as a warning about pagans larping as Christians to take advantage of christian kindness and distort the word of God into something else (similar to the merchants in the temple, or like what is happening in Christianity now). You could also read it as an almost complete reversal to what Jesus taught in the early NT.
Which one of these makes more sense?
A) Jesus comes to earth, teaches people about kindness and goodness, hang out with prostitutes and untouchables, dies on the cross for everyone's sins, becomes a zombie, and declares that the laws of the Old testament had been fulfilled through him so all could be saved. Then a few years later, he changes his mind and inspires Jude to write a letter about how the gays should be cast out and are going to hell.
B) Jude was writing the letter as a warning to keep your guard up around non-christians in case they might persuade you to distort the teachings of Jesus and/or hijack Christianity to turn it into a money-making scheme. It wouldn't be the first time it happened (the merchants in the temple immediately springs to mind again).
Or C) Jude didn't really know what he was talking about and the book/letter is included because it's referenced in other places of the Bible and theologians would rather err on the side of caution and allow a non-canon book to be included in the Bible than delete something that might be important (iirc the Bible states that you're not supposed to remove, change or add to anything said in scripture, so from a Christian perspective, I'd imagine if you're not sure about something then it's probably better to include something than exclude it).
Imo, B) seems the most likely. If you believe the Christian God is real, then A) is absurd, and C) seems unlikely due to Jude's proximity to James. It seems like if C) were true, then there would be records of Jude being refuted or rebuked.
deleted by creator
...right, I think you might have misunderstood what I meant by, "gross, icky people". I usually see the phrase used to mock """Christians""" who yell and scream about people who are LGBT; effectively saying the """Christians""" are just upset because they view the LGBT community as being gross and icky and use the Bible to justify their bigotry.
You're correct that there's a lot in the Bible about hellfire and damnation, but I think God doesn't really care if you're straight or gay (I know there's a passage in the old testament that people, especially evangelicals, like to use as a smoking gun, but afaik the English translation is controversial among theologians and it may have intended to refer to pederasty, since that was common at the time), I think he's more concerned with pedophilia, bestiality, greed, manipulation, etc.
To put it another way, I kinda doubt he gives a fuck about Freddy Mercury being bi or Elton John being gay, and more about how people like Joel Osteen use the Bible to enrich themselves or how people like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk use their wealth and power to strip people's rights and encourage bigotry. You know, truly evil people.
If (a big "if") the Bible is true, I think there are a lot of gay, trans, bi and enby people who'll be pleasantly surprised to find themselves at the pearly gates, while a lot of supposed """Christians""" will get a rude awakening in hell.
That was the point I was trying to make.
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No, they do. I have met a couple of them.