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

[beliael.livejournal.com]

(Here from Paradox_dragon's post and metafandom community)

I'm just wondering how you would respond to evil_mr_tim's reply to your original comment. I'll quote it below:

I agree with your assertion that all presuppositions don't necessarily have equal utility.
What I would disagree with is the claim that you can neither prove [nor disprove that] we live in a patriarchy and a liberal democracy.
There's ample empirical evidence that we, in fact, do live in both.
I would suggest, though, that the identification of social privilege in favour of a particular group, is insufficient grounds to take sexism (or indeed, any big 'ism) as an explanatory presumption in any given situation. It is not only pejorative against the group in question (which is a pretty big concern), but it dilutes the significance of genuine, motivated, sexist behaviours when we encounter them. We don't need to assume sexism in order to recognise it.

(Emphasis his, additional note in square brackets mine)

[evil-mr-tim.livejournal.com]

I wonder that myself. :|