A thought occurred to me this morning arising out of some of the posts resulting from the current breast-fondling kerfuffle.
One of my many beefs with feminists (in the 'those bloody feminists' sense of the word) is that all to often I see people making claims for all women in the name of feminism. Since with monotonous regularity I either disagree with those claims or find myself actively excluded from them, this is a continuous minor irritant and a slow trickle of coal onto the fire of my smouldering resentment and 'reasons why I do not call myself a feminist'. What struck me this morning was that out of your entire flist - presumably a flist with a considerable bias towards interest in feminism and philosophy - we are the only ones taking part in this conversation. (The couple of comments up top about the axe not really being part of it.) That interests me because it helps give a possible explanation for why so many of the feminists on LJ make these 'speaking for all women' statements so often. It implies that there is actually very little interest in working out the underlying meta-ethics of feminism. There certainly isn't a reluctance to discuss feminist issues generally on LJ, yet no other takers at all for this conversation? I can't help feeling those two facts are probably related. People who have never really thought about the origins of their beliefs and ethics are far more likely to slip into the error of claiming they speak for 'everyone'.
That probably sounds like a snide criticism, but actually it makes me more tolerant of them. If I thought they had sat down, really analysed why they believe what they believe, and they still thought that all women should or did believe the same thing as them, well then I would feel even more excluded by feminists than I currently do. Realising that they are probably just being thoughtless because they've never considered the issue, because it doesn't interest them, makes it far easier for me to forgive them.
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Date: 2008-04-26 10:06 am (UTC)One of my many beefs with feminists (in the 'those bloody feminists' sense of the word) is that all to often I see people making claims for all women in the name of feminism. Since with monotonous regularity I either disagree with those claims or find myself actively excluded from them, this is a continuous minor irritant and a slow trickle of coal onto the fire of my smouldering resentment and 'reasons why I do not call myself a feminist'. What struck me this morning was that out of your entire flist - presumably a flist with a considerable bias towards interest in feminism and philosophy - we are the only ones taking part in this conversation. (The couple of comments up top about the axe not really being part of it.) That interests me because it helps give a possible explanation for why so many of the feminists on LJ make these 'speaking for all women' statements so often. It implies that there is actually very little interest in working out the underlying meta-ethics of feminism. There certainly isn't a reluctance to discuss feminist issues generally on LJ, yet no other takers at all for this conversation? I can't help feeling those two facts are probably related. People who have never really thought about the origins of their beliefs and ethics are far more likely to slip into the error of claiming they speak for 'everyone'.
That probably sounds like a snide criticism, but actually it makes me more tolerant of them. If I thought they had sat down, really analysed why they believe what they believe, and they still thought that all women should or did believe the same thing as them, well then I would feel even more excluded by feminists than I currently do. Realising that they are probably just being thoughtless because they've never considered the issue, because it doesn't interest them, makes it far easier for me to forgive them.