Lotus wrote:Skarjo wrote:I mean, did you read that article though? I don't necessarily agree with the way she makes the argument, but it's difficult to argue that the crux of the matter (that women lusting over male actors is not necessarily equal to men lusting after female actors) isn't correct.
I did read it. And I disagree. For me the issue is the same with all of these double-standards; a behaviour is either acceptable or it's unacceptable, and therefore you apply the same standards to everyone. You don't start making exceptions based on skin colour, or gender, or anything else.
These issues sure are simple when you think about them devoid of any nuance or context. But where does your lust for reductionism end? Is it in your eyes rank hypocrisy that - to give one example - black people can use the N word and you can't?
Out here in the human world, actions and words don't exist as singularly and statically well-defined objects. Actions and words are given degrees of power and subtle implications by the social context of the author. The Guardian piece you linked so disdainfully earlier isn't out to make "exceptions" or "double-standards", it's trying to illustrate that social context for you.
One problem with "egalitarianism" (as it's used by Internet egalitarians) is that it ignores the realities of our culture and society. You can insist that you "don't see race/gender/sexuality/..." all you like, but others will still notice your social attributes and the social attributes of the person you are speaking to and assign meta-contextual information to that conversation, and if you're interested in equality you can't just refuse to deal with that. Another problem is that "egalitarianism" (again, at least as espoused by Internet egalitarians) is that it fails to recognise scenarios in which one people really ought to be treated preferentially. For example, often a disadvantaged candidate from a minority background that's under-represented in your field will be a much more valuable contribution to your company than some posh toff with slightly better credentials, for a whole range of reasons -- they probably worked harder to get there, their perspective will be more unique, and so on. How can you make the right choice in that situation if you "don't see" their social attributes?
It seems like we've now got a growing crowd of people who think they are advocates for equality, but who refuse to accept that social equality ever has nuance, and are therefore actually really regressive people who end up not helping at all, or - in the worst case - actively perpetuating inequality. And then they go onto Internet forums and say things like "best option is to avoid the feminism guff altogether". If you don't want to be that kind of person - if you've ever felt sympathy for a woman who has been belittled or bullied because of her gender - then you should support feminism as a broad-church ideology, even if you disagree with some other individual feminists on implementation details.
