Feminism and Proof

[alixtii]

If you haven't figured it out from the frustrated rant I made yesterday, there's been some gender discussions going on this weekend, mostly in response to the FanLib thing. I made a comment here that I'm pleased enough with that I'm going to copy it here:

Doesn't it trouble you at all, in regard to the selection of the board and whether this is gender motivated or incidental, that the definition of sexism you're employing is a non-disprovable hypothesis?

I can't prove that "patriarchy" exists any more than I can prove that "liberal democracy" exists, and yes, you can't disprove it anymore than you can disprove liberal democracy. So we have two choices: we can either become positivists and be skeptical about anything we can't touch or feel, and never talk about freedom or love or justice, or we can accept that non-disprovable hypotheses are the bedrock of interpreting our world. What we can do is look at individual situations and connect the dots so as to see a larger pattern.

We're talking about interpretative lenses, and no, a lens cannot be proven or disproven. That does not mean that one lens is just as good as another, though. A conspiracy of evil robots that look just like humans is no more or less disprovable than "patriarchy" or "liberal democracy," but it doesn't help us to communicate or to live justly in this world; indeed, such a lens works against those ends. The concepts of "liberal democracy" and "patriarchy," on the other hand, along with all of feminism, allow us to better work for justice and equity along gender lines, which is useful.

(A worldview including invisible pink unicorns is, I think, neutral as to the way it allows us to live justly in our world.)

Comments

[paradox-dragon.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to thank you for articulating that, because I was having trouble doing so in that discussion. (Partially because my brain is numb after answering twenty bazillion comments there, but also because I find it such a difficult argument to respond to in general; it makes me feel like I'm living in a different reality than the person asking the question).

And regarding what you said in your rant yesterday about the British vs. American feminism thing, a great big word to that. I had to just back off and let commenters from the UK take over.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Than you, both for your kind words and for your icredible involvemen in those discusions, both the post itself (which is awesome) and the many comments that went both before and after. I'm really happy about how the discussion has been going; obviously we'll never convince our most fervent interlocutors but we have demonstrated to more neutral readers that, yes, we do have answers to these objections.

That's the main reason I re-posted my comment here, because I think the idea that feminism is "not even wrong" can be a real concern to reasonable, open-minded people, and I think it's a good thing

I find it such a difficult argument to respond to in general; it makes me feel like I'm living in a different reality than the person asking the question

I know what you mean. I was brought up a feminist from the beginning, that systemic injustice exists is as deeply engrained an article of faith as there is for me, and so to have someone say "Prove it!" is always a little flail-indcing, because my first response is always "How can you not see it?"