Here’s the short version: Women are often harassed online for being feminists, or perceived feminists. Don't do things that encourage that. C+= is satire that reinforces the same stereotypes that lead to harassment.
I'm not sure what you're after here, but it seems to me that you are not here for a discussion, but for a one-sided attack of some sort.
I’ll take some time to clarify, then. So, why I’m still needling you about this:
I came into this thread expecting discussion about programming, a little confused about the title and why it was in the general lounge. Unimpressed by some comments, but nothing I haven’t seen before. I thought about it and realized how often I see this brand of “satire” go unchallenged when it’s really not that funny and contributes to attitudes and behaviors I’d like to see less of. I don’t usually pipe up much about it on most occasions/places because it’s exhausting. But, given the nature of forums it’s not exactly like there’s a timer to respond or anything. I figure I can take my time.
So I’m saying something about it, because some people never think of things like making fun of feminism as a problem and maybe have never stopped to think about it. I think it
is a problem, so I’m explaining why. I’m addressing mostly Galenmereth because you’re the one who made the thread.
You made statements about feminism like it “causes more societal problems as it continues to misinform “ or “feminism is not a solution to these problems, and might just make it worse”, and then when I ask you about what you think feminism is going to make worse and the misinformation it’s spreading, you’ve yet to answer. Again, even if I narrow it to “what is ‘bad’ feminism making worse and misinforming people about?”, you’ve yet to answer.
And now it’s a one-sided attack? I’m addressing things you’ve said and explaining why I have problems with some of those things. I’ve also made my own points like:
“the bee in my bonnet comes from the fact you're using a very ill-informed idea of "feminism", coupled with juvenile satire to make some kind of point about how feminism is spreading misinformation and harming society.”
“ I’m accusing your posts in this thread of spreading misinformation about feminism.
Spreading this information leads to people demonizing the social movement and dismissing all of feminism as “irrelevant” or “nonsensical”, to use polite language. Spreading misinformation leads to harassment.
This harassment STARTS from “innocent” joking around. It begins when you make the ideas about feminism, or social change in general, something worthy of being mocked.”
“I’m saying you shouldn’t make fun of social movements.”
I haven’t shifted any “goalpost” (do you think I’m trying to earn ‘points’ for some mysterious purpose by doing this?); this is the heart of what I’m saying. I’ve been saying it since the first post I made. That hasn’t changed. The text bloat comes from directly addressing things you’ve been saying.
It’s so many words to explain because you’re not sure why I’m here, despite me saying why I’m here from post one. So I’m being thorough and crystal clear in hope you’ won’t be unsure about anything I’m saying. This post is already super long and I haven’t even addressed the points you’re finally starting to make now that the “silk gloves” are off.
I’m also taking the time to zoom out a bit and try and explain that harassment commonly happens to women who are feminist (or even perceived) feminists. In case you weren’t aware of the extent these things happen in the wider seas of the internet.
Look, I’m just pulling quotes from
this one article. It’s far from definitive.
This article has links to
even more instances of women facing harassment, if one example quoting several woman isn’t enough. That article is
one of several compilations/larger posts discussing the online response many women receive.
Here’s a dude talking about this, if you’re sick of hearing about women. Do I expect you to read all of those? Not really. Quite frankly, I’d be surprised to hear you were reading my posts; it’s all very long and unpleasant and it was a pain to write so I’m sure it’s a pain to read. But I’m making sure to establish that harassment is a real issue and one that happens to “good” and “bad” feminists alike.
Eleanor O’Hagen:
“When you start writing, nobody warns you about the abuse you'll receive. For me, it began almost instantly: not outright nastiness, though I have had my fair share of that, too, but attempts to discredit me. The comments came mainly from men and they were always in line with existing gender stereotypes.
Instead of engaging with my opinions, commenters would make me out to be a hysteric, a "silly little girl" or a whinger. I remember some commenters telling me to stop going on. It was like they saw me as a sort of nagging fishwife, not a political commentator.
On the whole, I've managed to avoid the worst threats and misogyny that other women writers endure but I don't think that's luck or because my opinions are more well-argued. I think it's because, very early on, I became conscious of how my opinions would be received and began watering them down, or not expressing them at all.
I noticed that making feminist arguments led to more abuse and, as a result, I rarely wrote about feminism at all. I was so nervous about the abuse I would receive when I wrote an article about cultural misogyny. It felt like I was exposing myself as a feminist.
To me, misogynistic abuse is an attempt to silence women. Traditionally, men have been the ones who influence the direction of society: I think there is still a sense that it's not women's place to be involved in politics. That's why the abuse women writers experience is really pernicious and needs to stop. Women will never achieve equality so long as they're being intimidated out of the picture.”
Dawn Foster:
“Occasionally, I'd respond to emails casually, to show the sender hadn't affected me in any way. Their responses usually disintegrated into unhinged ranting, away from discussing how much they hated me and into their hatred of women in general.
Blog posts sprang up about me, full of ad hominem attacks, and assumptions about my views. Speaking to friends who also blogged, but were men, I learned this type of abuse wasn't common, unless you were a woman.”
Someone who wished to remain anonymous:
“We feel like our arguments have to be tight at all times and that we'd better not type out anything less than reasonable (in anger) because the punishment we receive is likely to be disproportionate to the intellectual crime.”
Jane Fae:
“So I am in the fairly unique position of having written under both genders -- and having sight of my email postbag as male and female. There IS a marked difference. In fact, when I first started to notice the difference, I was quite shocked.
First off, even the nice comments seem, at some level, to be more personal. I won't say I never got strongly dissenting views before I transitioned: but there was usually, mostly, some appeal to the rational argument underlying. Not so much any more, as many of those critical of what I have to say seem far readier to reach for the personal attack:
the implication that I only say what I say because I am a woman. Or, as one politely put it, "an ugly woman".
Or a feminist, natch. I have lost count of the comments that use the phrase "typical feminist", before going on to accuse me of being an inadequate parent, mother, person and to call into question my parenting skills”
I thought about putting this entire discussion about harassment women often receive while writing on the internet into a spoiler or something. It’s long, in a monolith of a post, and I’m not accusing you of directly harassing anyone. But it’s still relevant, because I’m saying that holding up the C+= project as “good satire” and Schlesinger as someone worth making a public forum thread to mock contributes to an atmosphere that encourages harassment or the dismissal of harassment.
At the very least, it encourages dismissive attitudes about feminism as a whole. All of the women quoted above, and the others in the article? Unless you look at their work or what they have to say, you have no way of knowing if they’re one of the “good” feminists you’re okay with or the “bad” ones you feel the need to publicly mock. Yet they’ve all been harassed and they’re all regularly dismissed for being feminists, as a whole, regardless of what they have to say.
Just so we’re clear: women are often harassed online, especially if they show signs of being “feminist”. This happens because of stereotypes and common misconceptions about feminism, among other factors.
So now I’m talking about Schlesinger.
She's working on a thesis project. I agree in that I think it's not one I personally care about, but hey, she can do whatever. I've seen more niche topics done for a thesis. As to the "she can't even answer her own question",
again, if you don't know how thesis projects work. Typically you don't approach a thesis project with a pre-formed answer. Research and experimentation are huge parts.
As mentioned, there’s been a lot of backlash against Schlesinger. I’m more interested in the backlash, and why you think C+= is good satire.
"Do you really think that feminist programmers could ever, in a million years, put this together themselves? The implementation for such languages will be written in assembler and C by old-school programmers like me. But I hope the feminist programmers can afford us; I charge extra when contracting for female bosses.
"If you could impress feminist thinking onto a computer the resulting torrential flow of illogic would be most entertaining."
"Wow. Just wow. This makes me so angry that I am like literally screaming at my computer screen, and I want to vomit because it is so disgusting. Because matriarchy. I don't need to listen to this womansplaining."
There's political cartoons about this woman. For
daring to write her thesis on some combination of feminist theory and computer science.
There's this recurring trend: that the
very idea of a feminist language is ridiculous, even weirdly enraging to some folks, and that the reason this is such a ridiculous idea is because feminism is a ridiculous idea. Not the “bad” feminists you’re perfectly fine making fun of, feminism as a whole. As if the very idea of “people tired of seeing women treated poorly” is ridiculous.
Here’s the point of this:
Arielle Schlesinger, in the wider internet space, has garnered the usual response women get when they write online, especially when they ID themselves as feminist in some way.
The C+= project contributes to that response.
I'm not saying you're spreading misinformation for making fun of Schlesinger's article. It’s the statements like:
You see, those people don't want equality anymore; they misinterpret the meaning of the word willfully. They want feminism
people keep confusing feminism with the fight for equality, which it isn't, but it's become almost synonymous in a lot of media.
this is what I feel is the absolute worst part of a lot of feminist movements: these movements try to make it so that women and men are completely the same, as if there are no biological differences between the sexes.
Feminism is not a solution to these problems, and might just make it worse.
There’s a reason I spent time talking about common misconceptions about feminism in my first post. Because these ideas get paraded around so often and a lot of what you initially said were common stereotypes about feminism. So often these discussions happen without an “actual” feminist around, and just reinforce stereotypes.
To clarify, I am a proponent of feminism as a movement. I'm just not in agreement with some of the people who identify themselves as part of it.
You then modify your earlier statements with this. I’m not impressed by the “I only think some feminists are bad” line of approach and like I said earlier, it’s not the overgeneralizing I take issue with. It’s why you think feminism is worth the mockery. In case it hasn’t been abundantly clear, I don’t care about your distinctions between “good” or “bad” feminists. What even is a good feminist? Someone who agrees with you and doesn’t use scary words like patriarchy? Dividing it into good/bad is useless.
Here’s why I think the C+= project is ****ty satire: Satire is supposed to challenge prevailing ideas, and the brand used in C+= does not. It doesn’t challenge prevailing feminist ideas, and feminism is something that’s still stigmatized. All it serves is to reinforce negative stereotypes about feminists. These stereotypes are applied to both “good” and “bad” feminists and used to discredit their ideas.
Again, that's the whole point of the project; to make fun of this kind of ridiculous nonsense that makes feminists look bad. Yes, that's right; that kind of article means less and less people take a serious, important movement seriously.
You know what causes fewer people to take a serious, important movement seriously? People who feel the need to publicly mock feminists for being feminists. People who accept feminism as a target for jokes based on stereotypes. People who, when faced with words or information they’re unfamiliar with, choose to dismiss and ignore everything that person says rather than trying to understand them, or engage with their ideas.
You claim to support the feminist movement, and I’m saying that threads like this, and publicly mocking feminist writers, does more to hurt that movement than help it. Good satire punches up the social food chain, not down it.
Is Schlesinger some kind of major feminist voice? She’s
already getting feminist critics who engage with her better than drafting a mockery of her thesis topic and spreading it around the net as satire. Her writing doesn't make people take feminism less seriously, it’s this response of mockery on such a large scale. And again, for what purpose? So what if she’s writing her thesis on some weirdly niche combination of topics? It’s not hurting anything. But these responses of public mockery and projects like C+=
are harmful.
I do not have control over what people write in the comments of the project I linked – I did not make it. But Ariel Schlesinger decided to post her theory on the internet, for all to see. This is a rebuttal to what I and others consider a laughable article from her, but the project doesn't attack her person, only her article. That is not harassment.
I’m not accusing you of harassing anyone. I’m saying your rebuttal is a poor one – satire based on stereotypes that does harm to “good” and “bad” feminists alike – and that letting this kind of public mockery go unchallenged builds attitudes and beliefs that often lead to harassment.
This nonsense about "if you criticize me (because my ideas are ridiculous), you're harassing me!" is another problem with modern feminism, and why I usually stay away from it. It happens almost every time someone with bad ideas gets called out on it.
Let me repeat: I’m not accusing anyone in this thread of harassing Schlesinger. (or anyone else, I hope!) I’m saying that when you have these kinds of discussions where stereotypes about a group of folks are discussed and unchallenged, this leads to those stereotypes being upheld. And no good can come of that.
I just figure I'd point out here, C+= is not a satire of feminism, even though it is inspired by that post about feminist coding languages. It is a satire of tumblr SJW's and their frequently ridiculous logic. This is coming from a browser of the thread on /g/ itself. Most of the people involved don't hate on "feminism", they hate when it is MISUSED by the SJW's who claim that anything akin to disagreeing with them is "harassment" and like to throw the word privilege around a lot.
Modifying it to “tumblr sjws” doesn’t change anything. Again, I mentioned in my first post there’s a lot wrong with both feminism and, in your specific gripe, the “tumblr sjw” culture. They’re not perfect movements. Criticism like the C+= project is not a good criticism of these movements, whether you take it as satire or not.
