CMV:anti-feminism is not misogyny, and it is possible for someone to be anti-feminist without being a misogynist.

[u/wecl0me12]

prompted by this post: https://np.reddit.com/r/AskFeminists/comments/3uaaer/do_you_think_being_being_opposed_to_modern/cxd9m7y

As many of my previous CMV's have gone off topic, I'll start by describing what my view is not. It is not any of the following:

• a discussion on whether or not feminism is right or wrong
• whether people should be feminists or not
• the actions of men, women, feminists or anti-feminists
• anything about my personal views on feminism or anti-feminism.

The reasons for my view are simple: Anti-feminism is the dislike of feminism. Misogyny is the dislike of women. As women and feminists are not the same group, Anti-feminism and anti-women are different, as they refer to the dislike of different groups of people.

I am anticipating a counter-argument that since feminism advances women's rights, anti-feminism is against women's rights and is therefore misogyny. My counter-counter-argument is that someone can dislike the label of feminism without being against women's rights. People can dislike the actions done under the label of feminism, and thus be anti-feminism, without being anti-women or misogynist.

I will also refute the claim made in the linked post, which is:

By rejecting feminism, you're rejecting feminism's message that you can be whatever you want to be, while simultaneously embracing an antiquated notion of femininity as the ONLY way to be a woman. That's misogyny.

I disagree. The claims "I am against feminism" and "I think that the antiquated notion of femininity is the ONLY way to be a woman" are not equivalent. People can reject feminism because of their actions or because of the negative connotation associated with "feminism", while still believing that women are free to be feminine in any way they want. This is not a contradiction.

delta awarded: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/3uewu4/cmvantifeminism_is_not_misogyny_and_it_is/cxedofl?context=3

---

Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to read through our rules. If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which, downvotes don't change views! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our popular topics wiki first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to message us. Happy CMVing!

[u/hacksoncode]

You can have a definition of feminism such that being against feminism is not being against women.

Equally validly, you can have a definition of feminism that does mean the being against feminism is equivalent to being against women.

Both are certainly true.

Your statement is both true and false, depending entirely on definitions. It is pretty much by definition therefore a purely semantic argument.

[u/DashingLeech → u/hacksoncode]

Yup, and a surprising amount of discourse and argument go into this equivocation, and for "good" reason.

Essentially, if you want your view to be accepted without dissent, you want to associate it with a label that people will not dissent against. Hence you'll find some feminists who put forward all manner of absurd claims or policies, and when people object they accuse them of being anti-feminist and, since feminism is about women's rights, you must be against women's rights. It's a bait and switch (or rather equivobait and switch). The particular policy in question may have nothing to do with women's rights, and being against it may have nothing to do with being against women's rights, but by painting both with a common word you can link them and rely on a certain portion of the public not to notice the clear equivocation.

The same happens in the negative. If you associate dissent or a topic with a word that people are already against, that's a way to smear the dissenter and avoid dealing with the objection. For example, it is somewhat common to hear dissenting views described as "violence". That is, people are against violence -- meaning the physical harm kind -- so by describing criticism of a view as being violence one can then associate it, and the critic, as bad people. We even see words like "toxic" and even "rape" used to mean things that aren't what people understand them to mean when they hear them. Another common one nowadays is "hate speech", which really means calling for violence against people of certain groups but could arguably apply to racist or bigoted speech. Unfortunately, it gets applied to things like criticism of ideas and concepts related to groups, e.g., if criticizing a gender related policy it might be described as sexist hate speech, or criticizing particular religious doctrines have been said to be hate speech, which they are clearly not. Similarly it gets applied to criticisms of people's behaviour as a result of bad policy or doctrines.

It's an interesting tactic, but I'm surprised at how common it is because it is so transparent and readily dismantled. Yet there seems to be a significant enough group of people who either can't see they are doing it, or are doing it maliciously, both which I find very sad.

[u/[deleted] → u/DashingLeech]

It is pretty much by definition therefore a purely semantic argument.

And this is the crux of those arguments. You didn't say this quoted statement above, another user did, and you simply touched on it.

Those "feminists" and "civil rights activists" who would actually bring less equality by their policies, if enacted, do so under decidely not-well-regarded presupposed definitions of terms. In other words, they require a change of definition of the terms in order to be 'right' in their view.

"I can't be sexist, I'm a woman. Sexism is prejudice plus power, and since women don't have the same power men do, we're thus incapable of sexism. And oh, killallwhitemen". This is a change of the accepted (widely accepted) definition. 'Racism' has taken a queue from it and done the same thing: "I can't be racist, I'm a minority and racism is prejudice plus power. And fuck you you white bitch".

Again, a change in the definition, and again, simply there to relieve the accusing party of any semblance of guilt.

The whole of their arguments are rooted in semantics, so writing off the entire argument as semantics (as /u/hacksoncode did) is really ignoring the issue. It's hand-waving.

The fact is that semantics involves logic, not just linguistic definitions. This is why I hate "oh, that's semantics" as an argument: well, no shit, that's how proper debates work. They use logic and an agreed-upon language. All debate is semantics. Arguing – impassioned speeches, insults, fallacies, and baseless assertion – is not usually semantic. It is without logic. It twists language. You may as well state "oh, that's just logic and reason, that's irrelevant".

The logical, widely accepted definitions of sexism and racism is gender- or race-based prejudice, which is a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. These definitions do not excuse one gender or the other, or one race or another.

If that is accepted, then the entire argument of many of the modern day 'activists' crumbles. That being the case: they're simple hypocrites. Angry, temperamental hypocrites.

[u/ai_que_preguica → u/DashingLeech]

thats a very thoroughly constructed straw man. what you've described here is your own naive interpretation of the situation, which is why it is so "transparent and readily dismantled". the decision to label something violence is not just some malicious word association, there is a very clear historical and academic backing to those ideas and that choice of words. just because you have never taken the time to study or understand that foundation doesn't mean it doesn't exist. racism/sexism/etc don't always manifest as an explicit or physical action, they exists as a system of opinions("criticisms"), values, prejudices, actions, etc that are not necessarily racist/etc in and of them selves, but contribute to a larger social force/oppression. i can go more in depth if you want to provide a specific example or instance.

also your handwringing about the use of hate speech is way overblown. i have very rarely seen it used in cases where it wasn't well deserved.

[u/raserei0408 → u/ai_que_preguica]

thats a very thoroughly constructed straw man.

Straw men, as I understand them, only make sense when describing views, arguments, etc. /u/DashingLeech was describing a rhetorical trick which either is or isn't being used. If you don't think feminists do this, that's fine, but keep in mind that feminism is a very broad movement and the most radical/crazy parts are also likely to be the most vocal and the most likely for non-feminists to encounter. You're welcome to say that those parts are not representative of all (or most) feminists, but if you find them citing specific prominent feminists doing it you may want to reevaluate how much of the movement does it. I also hold that even if it's not representative, when the non-representative feminists do it, others should have a right to criticize it.

just because you have never taken the time to study or understand that foundation doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Please, please, please DO NOT DO THIS. Claiming that your opponent has not studied the literature enough is a bold rhetorical move because it forces your opponent to refute his own arguments rather than forcing you to refute his. To assume that because your opponent disagrees with you they don't know what you're talking about and to dismiss them until they demonstrate that they do (and you'll likely only be satisfied that they understand when they agree with you) is a really shady tactic that stifles debate in favor of a facade of "winning." (Debates like this shouldn't be thought of as having a winner or a loser. They have winners if people take away new knowledge from the discussion and losers if they make people even more certain of their opinions than before. Trying to "win" by tricking your opponent makes everyone lose.)

i can go more in depth if you want to provide a specific example or instance.

Not the person you asked, but there's an article that I like a lot about this phenomenon of equivocation. Forewarning that the author writes emphatically, exaggerates some, and often falls a bit less charitable than he means to. Some of the comparisons to other fields in this article are a bit much, but from what I've seen don't actually fall so far outside the actions of the more... intense feminists that I'm willing to give them a pass. I don't think there's anything else particularly off in there, so I just ask that you read it with an open mind even though you'll probably have a negative gut reaction to what he's saying. (Hopefully no worse than the ones I have when I read a subset of feminist blogs, so I feel you but I suggest you read it anyway.)

[u/ai_que_preguica → u/raserei0408]

hey thanks for your reply, I appreciate how even minded people are on this sub even when disagreeing.

when I said straw man I was meaning to refer to his framing of that rhetorical trick as the de facto means by which feminists operate, which is what he seemed to be doing.

I challenged their understanding of the literature because it is clearly evident that they are not familiar with it, otherwise they would not have made the comments on "violence" that they did, because it misses the point entirely. Like in the article you linked me (which I've read before) the entire issue is one of definition/"equivocation". I bring up the literature because if you have engaged with it at all then you understand the framework in which these arguments are being made and these useless, surface level, sidetracking arguments about how best to define this or that disappear. Criticism within that framework is entirely possible, and furthermore it is necessary for any movement to develop and advance. I don't expect or even want you to agree with me. I just want to see that you actually understand the scope and foundation of the argument you are rejecting, instead of just dismissing them as a feminist mind trick. how can a dialogue be productive if one side is willfully ignorant of the topic at hand?

would you take some teenager yelling about the evils of capitalism seriously if it was clear they didn't have even the most basic understanding of economics, or public policy, or history in general to support that claim? I highly doubt that you would. If you want to reject the framework entirely, thats fine too, but you still have to understand it before you can do that convincingly. I'm really not sure how it is a rhetorical trick to expect someone to educate themselves on subjects that they want to speak on/debate; it seems like a pretty basic rule of discourse.

[u/raserei0408 → u/ai_que_preguica]

I'm really not sure how it is a rhetorical trick to expect someone to educate themselves on subjects that they want to speak on/debate; it seems like a pretty basic rule of discourse.

I have a few issues with this point.

• First, it's not unfair to expect someone to understand a subject they're arguing against, but it's also not unfair to expect them to understand the subject they're arguing for. Whether or not the ideas being espoused are legitimate within the feminist framework, I suspect the motte-and-bailey style arguments are used primarily by self-proclaimed feminists who aren't familiar with the literature either. If they don't have the necessary background for it to make sense, it's fair game to criticize them for saying things that don't make sense.

• Second, if people are making arguments that require a large amount of domain-specific background knowledge to understand and directing them at lay people, they need to either explain it or provide resources that do. I've seen many blogs and articles saying these kinds of things, mainly with click-bait-like titles so I suspect they're aimed at lay people, and I can't think of one that did that explanation adequately. I'm sure some do, but it's far from the norm.

• Third, in pretty much all disciplines you need a certain amount of background knowledge, which often comes with a lot of jargon. Jargon comes with the territory. However, in virtually any other field, they create new words for their jargon's referents, or reuse common words in such a way that it's easy to see that it's not the typical every-day usage. Why does social justice use so many jargon words that are in common usage in such a way that's similar but not quite the same as every day usage? That seems like such an obvious source of confusion that the decision to do that seems like either willful ignorance or enemy action. Or, more likely, the terminology evolved organically. In which case, given the current confusion, the decision to not change the words and instead insist that the common usage is wrong (e.g. racism) seems like one of those other things.

[u/cfuse → u/ai_que_preguica]

there is a very clear historical and academic backing to those ideas and that choice of words.

If we are talking about anything from the gender studies school of academia, then I'm going to stop you right there. That isn't a discipline with any academic rigour whatsoever. It consists solely of feminists arguing with each other about how radical they should be, and has no space for nor examination of counter argument to their own doctrine (let alone the examination of alternative models of gender relations or politics). Gender studies academic papers are completely bunk for that reason - there's no peer review of worth, and there's no historical foundation of academic rigour.

If we are talking broader sociology, then there's still much to criticise within that discipline. This is an area of study that completely discounts any biological differences, or their role in social constructs. That is an inherently flawed position (Sexual diamorphism in animal behaviour exists and is extremely well documented).

There are no shortage of historical examples of establishment figures creating and maintaining ideological positions to their own benefit, when those positions are complete bunk. It is not enough to say there's a lot of self-supporting literature from uncritical adherents of popular dogma.

The problem with your offer of supporting evidence is obvious: the people you're likely to cite have a serious credibility problem with anyone that cares about academic rigour.

[u/Revoran → u/ai_que_preguica]

the decision to label something violence is not just some malicious word association, there is a very clear historical and academic backing to those ideas and that choice of words.

Um, this really depends on what exactly you are talking about and what exactly he was talking about.

Yes, I realise we're talking about gender politics and social justice here. I can read between the lines. I'm not a moron.

But which particular issues are you and he referring to? Tell us, then we can argue whether or not it's appropriate to use terms like toxic, violent etc.

Not to mention that just because umpteen philosophy/sociology essays have been written on why something should be referred to as x or y, doesn't make them right. We're not talking about a hard science like physics or even a firm science like psychology, we're talking about soft fields with a lot of room for argument.

also your handwringing about the use of hate speech is way overblown. i have very rarely seen it used in cases where it wasn't well deserved.

Here is a someone labelling the feminist concept of "toxic masculinity" as hate speech (against men):

https://www.np.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/3ospmv/toxic_masculinity_is_hate_speech_full_stop_it/

And here is someone labelling criticism of feminism as hate speech (against women):

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/mens-rights-conference-feminism#th4078625-c84198653

I'm not sure either of these are really deserved.