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When people write screeds like this about feminism, in my mind I always wonder "Which kind of feminism"? Because nowadays, "feminism" means pretty much whatever the person using the word wants it to mean, whether that is "Women should be able to vote" or "Evil civilization-hating penis-removing witches."
It's not just that there have been many different waves and schools of feminist thought, it's that it literally has become such a generic term that essentially anything other than a neolithic model of gender relations can be called "feminist." That's not even an exaggeration when we have people here on the Motte who literally believe that women should be property and it's those fucking bitch feminists who are the reason they aren't.
This is my personal opinion, not a mod note, but "feminism is a mind virus," "feminism is objectively false," "feminism is cancer," etc. reads as very boo-outgroup to me when you don't even specify what you mean by it. Generally I assume you more or less mean modern progressive feminism, 3rd wave or whatever, sex positivity and equal rights etc. etc. And before you think I'm white knighting or some shit, I think I have made it clear enough in the past that I largely agree with the criticisms of modern feminism. But I don't think someone who believes "Women should be allowed to vote" or "It should be illegal to beat your wife" is the same as someone who's pushing whatever specific progressive feminist thing is enraging you.
And yet there is one thing that it never means, which is applying the same standards to men and women. For example, is there any subset of feminism that (also) studies toxic femininity?
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All the ones that self-identify as such. It is that simple, at present - the label of deminism is in a strong social position, so anyone willing to promote it can only gain by associating with it. This isn't like "fascism" or "cultural marxism", where you have to forcibly pin the label on people so you can attempt to lump them in together. The feminists will proudly tell you they're part of the same movement or ideological group. It's public. And I'm deliberately not going off of some hard defitnion, since the memeplex contains everything from mild suffragettes to the evil witches, which are indeed not the same, but they voluntarily adopt the same label. Put on the same uniform and mark themselves as belligerents in the gender/culture wars, so to speak.
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I can't speak for where the usual TheMotte user stands on these things, this place attracts and tolerates people with well outside the overton window takes without being brigaded by downvotes and redditor insults, as long as they can do so with some sort of rigour and charity.
That said, when I rail against "feminism" as a mind virus, I'm targeting the existing, mainstream, culturally dominant version: the 3rd wave plus progressive bundle that dominates media, academia, HR, policy advocacy, and campus and corporate norms. The version that rarely, if ever, distances itself from female favouring asymmetries (family courts, affirmative action, distortionist history, #BelieveAllWomen defaults, benevolent sexism as privilege, etc.) and almost never features prominent mainstream voices aggressively holding women accountable for exploiting them or calling out female hypergamy, entitlement, invasion of male spaces or bad behaviour as systemic problems rather than individual flaws.
Also, earlier waves of feminism heavily baked in original sin dialectics (men as inherent oppressors, patriarchy as omnipresent original sin women are born into resisting), while lounging off of the comforts of the modern world (which allows for systemic equality between the sexes and offers vocations that women can fill without being bogged down by physical disadvantages), which itself was built upon and continues to be sustained by (mostly) male physical labour. And radfem roots (still influential in TERF corners and academia) strategically seek to halt the progression wheel short of full gender abolition so biological females retain sex based privileges indefinitely. At least the 3rd wave goes the whole 9 yards, with a little more nuanced understanding of systems and not blaming individual men.
But no feminist school consistently critiques female privilege, enforces symmetric accountability, or disavows the bundle of progressive stances that tilt the field toward women in culture war flashpoints. There is no feminist aligned with the mainstream calling out the harmful propaganda pushed by multimillion dollar shows (I'm speculating) like Netflix's "Adolescence", nor the blatant falsehoods associated with its messaging (implied or blatant) that run against actual hard data. I don't take issue with women earning or owning property, but it does not function as a buffet where you only pick what you like. It's a package deal, it comes with all the policy and CW outcomes that disadvantage men. That is why I'll never side with feminists, even when I agree with them.
I'm on my bus home so apologies if this comes across as a brain dump, but I hope my point was sufficiently cohesive.
You might as well just call this bundle "fourth-wave feminism" like Wikipedia does.
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