only white women could vote in 1920.

So someone telling me that "if I believe that women should vote, then I am feminist" is "naming" me because just because I might agree with one item does not define me as something I am not.  I just have "different beliefs and reasons for believing them."

A total bigot and racist might believe it is ok for someone of a different race to vote but not to hold office -- then they are still a racist.  

"naming" me as a "feminist" is like telling me that I "only have Asperger's so how could I understand what suffering a person with Kanner's has."  Yes, I have a different experience of autism but it is valid because it is my experience.  My experience of autism is different from someone with Kanners but it is still valid.  

Do you understand what I am saying?

"Before anyone gets upset, note that I used the word "historically".  As it is 4am, I'm not inclined to look up references, but it is a fact that negative adjectives were technically assigned to women, in the past.  Current men reading this, if any, please do not take offense."

I take offence at the suggestion that feminist thinking is 'fact'.  It's no more 'factual' than any other biased thinking, including patriarchal expression (and I'll note that 'patriarchy' sent men to die in muddy trenches...millions of them).  Believe me, many negative adjectives (and a good few unpleasant nouns) have been levelled at men over the millenia, by both men and women.  Your example loses any validity as 'fact' when taken out of context of a masculinist and an equitist theory - one side of the story is just that, storytelling.  Facts need to be a bit more objective than that.

I take offence, too, at your suggestion that only men might take offence.  Feminism is not compulsory, mandatory or necessary thinking for women...even if you could find a coherent school of feminist thought.  In fact (and it is a fact - and an unsurprising one), feminist academics, activists and fellow travellers can no more reach an agreement about what is right and best for 'women' than men could for 'men' or 'society' or 'our tribe'.  Note, I say "no more" - I also say "no less".  At any rate, I know plenty of feminists who would chastise you for apologising to men - and plenty of women who actually like men, sex, babies and so on who are only too keen to say "I'm not a feminist".

Right, I'll go and read the actual thread now.  I might post about that later....

Nah, I'll have to post as I go along...I skipped a couple, but this:

"To be a little gross, as a woman, I have no idea what it's like to have a penis"

can't wait.  It is not (oh the power of naming with negative adjectives!) 'gross' to have a penis and it is not 'gross' to discuss them.  You're right though - there are some things you are ignorant of...

Now watch male posters stand up for what will be read as an attack on a woman - and female posters to unleash their animas.

As a rule of thumb, people are raised by women.  We are all prejudiced, to some degree, about 'other'.  To mothers, from the dawn of time, the male is 'other'.  Women raise men - and they do it from position of prejudice (in a range of individual degrees, including the value zero).

I despair that this civil war can be resolved, but it needs a philosophy of love, not one of hate and blame and being 'grossed out' by the 'other'

Think yourself lucky I haven't posted my penis.

Max, "That's it. That's the unassailable truth. "Different from = Inferior to" -- and the persons of power and privilege define The Other."

Bravo - people have been searching for the unassailable truth for the whole of human history.  Different truths even go to war over their claims.  Do you really need another war, Max?  I'm assuming you're male?  It'll be you that has to fight it...and the women at home handing out white feathers to the men they want to mark as cowards.  Feminism undermined women - they always had a sphere of power, handed to them by the men they raised.  "You don't hit women" - who wasn't raised that way?  I never hit anybody, but that's probably just my AS...

It doesn't take power and privilige to define the Other (though I'd spread that story, if I wanted to raise something up enough to topple it.  Note that women own 'story', by the way).  Power & privilige can help, but they are measured in individual circumstances.  If I walked alone into a black bar in segregation USA, back in the day, I would have neither - and I would face prejudice.

I treat people as individuals, Max - I think that's important (it might even be an unassailable truth).  Can you justify treating them as part of an homogenous labelled group?  You do know that, in addition to the comment about black voters in 1920, that in the UK at least some women had the vote long before some men?  Has that story (or 'fact') ever been revealed to you by a feminist?

I had to laugh at your 'best form of defence is attack' - to label (oh the power of naming!) anyone who might disagree with you as an enemy of 'progress' (and of other-sexuals...well you said 'gay' but I take offence at that word...other races (well, you said...etc)...and of women).  It's indicative of a closed mind - but that would make sense, given that you started by declaring an 'unassailable truth'.  Good luck with that...

Thanks very much for the comments, everyone.

I really didn't want to start a fight, but I guess I should have known better.

The thread was about, as Max perceived, insiders defining outsiders.  I can't address all the comments that I disagree with here in one post (or in one day), but I really just wanted to make that one point.  Thanks, Max, for helping me make it!

I just think it's pathetic to read absolute lies about autism written by NT "experts."

M, you're right about my naming you a feminist.  Didn't work, did it?  I just want to force my opinion on everyone!!  And that is, that women are democratically equal in value to men, and I name that feminism.  

I agree that Betty Friedan's book had some unforseen consequences, and it certainly personally damaged me and my life.  I started studying feminism when I was 18, and now I'm 44.  When I was a little girl, I planned to be a mother.  However, I also lived my childhood watching my mother be a doormat/slave, as I saw it, and I really was not looking forward to that, but saw it as my lot in life, as a female.  When I started reading the radical feminists of the 1970s, (The Dialectic of Sex and Amazon Odyssey, for example) some of them definitely stated outright, do NOT get married, do NOT have children, which was pretty damn confusing.  I don't claim to have figured it all out now.  I have my opinions, and it's nice to find other people who agree with me, such as quickduck and Max.  

Why is it OK for men to have the whole variety of fields of employment open, but all women are supposed to like/enjoy/flourish with just the one field, child care?  I think that was Friedan's point, and it's a valid one.  I love my daughter more than any other person on earth, but her birth did not end my love for working in libraries either.  I choose to take care of her, and I value that labor, but it is awfully good to have a choice now, something Friendan didn't feel she had.  I also quarrel with the idea that feminism alone devalued stay at home moms.  Cultural values say women's work is paid less, and stay at home work is not paid at all.  Those are facts, not opinions.

I also apologize for using the word gross.  I was actually afraid I'd be censored, but wanted to use an extreme example.  It was a poor choice of words.  I do that a lot.  Maybe has something to do with a COMMUNICATION PROBLEM???????

I don't think the penis is gross.  I'm quite fond of my husband's penis, for example.  I just wanted an extreme example to make my point, HYPERBOLE.  Obviously I don't have a penis, and it would be insane for me to describe what having a penis is like.  That's all I meant.  Very sorry to offend any owners of a penis.  

Also accept the criticism that not only men would be offended by my stating historical problems of sexism.  

energeia, thanks very much for your post, especially since it reminded me of my dreadful experience interviewing for a job in 1988, with my freshly earned Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering.  We few females grads were explicitly told to deny any plans that we had to either get married or have kids, if we wanted a job.  Though no interviewer could legally ask that question, we were EXPLICITLY told to not discuss this at all.  The male grads had no such warning.  I did earn the EXACT same degree, but somehow the fact that I did not have a penis made a big difference.  Likewise, when I interviewed with Uniden corporation, where a very good friend of mine worked, he told me that the man I interviewed with had assured him and the entire department that he would NOT hire any females.  I'm not kidding.

Oh well, there you have it.  I guess I did have time to post, or just got so worked up that I didn't feel I had a choice.

Yes, it's good to treat people as individuals.  Too bad I've experienced little of that.

Excellent points.  I'm working on writing something making the analogy between neurotype and gender, as an offshoot of a comment I made to a family member that curing autism because autistics have a harder life and are discriminated against would be like if the early suffragettes had gotten sex-change operations so they could vote instead of lobbying for women's sufferage.  Which got me thinking, many of the pro-cure arguments about autism could also apply to femaleness, to a certain extent now but especially in the past.  Women have less earning power than men, just as autistics have less earning power than non-autistics, so is it acceptable for parents of daughters to give their little girls testosterone shots to increase their earning power?  So why would it be acceptable for parents to try to drug or change their children's neurotype to increase their earning power?  Autism is a part of who we are, just as gender is part of who we are.

"Too bad I've experienced little of that"

People like categories.  You've established some - possibly the most fundamental...'men' & 'women' (we'll ignore the high percentage of '3rd gender' or 'other', though many ancient and indiginous cultures recognised a 3rd gender).

You know the difference (between these, arguably two, putative 'genders') because you're taught them from birth.  You know the differences between the sexes because that's hard-wired, but sex isn't gender.  Gender is locally constructed, which is why there is no Grand Unifying Theory of feminism (beyond 'they did it! blame them!').  Ask the Queen of England "What do women want?" and she would probably answer "a new yacht" (they took her yacht away! :O )

Women teach gender.  It's a story they tell to us from birth.  A mother might ask a new mother "How heavy?" or "How long?" first, but "boy or girl?" will be in the top three...for everyone.  Somewhere in that daily story, that 'unassailable truth' we bond with, might be a rhyme about snips and snails and puppy dogs tails...all handed down, mouth to mouth (never underestimate the power of personal communication).  

'Mouth'...feminist etymologists are currently engaged in reclaiming '****' (and in their honour, I repeat it here...) and arguing somehow that being a 'penis' or some other kind of male genitalia-related insult is somehow more pleasant.  They also claim that '****' (and let's face it, half the world has one) shares similarities with other ancient, feminine words.  'Mouth' shares a few with 'mother'...

The stories the first women told (and which were passed from generation to generation as 'unassailable truth') were about the weather, the cycles, the crops, and we venerate them for those truths that have sustained our shared cultures.  They also told stories about those 'Other' that appeared from them and among them.  Ancient cultures, we are assured by feminist...theorists?...were matriarchal.

Is it any wonder, then, that when we finally got some power, we didn't let you vote for a while?

Startlingly hilarious!!

WOW!!!!
I just had a marvelous tingle in my brain reading that sentence about suffragettes getting sex change operations!!!  Please, please write this, and distribute it widely!

"Startlingly hilarious!!"

I've never seen feuds as funny, but I'm of the gender that expects to get hurt by them.  You can't win wars, jewelie - you win peace.

"curing autism because autistics have a harder life and are discriminated against would be like if the early suffragettes had gotten sex-change operations so they could vote instead of lobbying for women's sufferage."

I'm an Aspie for Freedom, yeah, right on...but I feel obliged to point out that I can vote and perhaps we're stretching a dodgy analogy?  The message of feminism could so easily be to value anyone - but it isn't.  I got sacked recently by a feminist who couldn't encompass my right to be.  She knew she was allowed to be...but she was pretty sure I and my autistic traits weren't. (I told her the honesty she told us she was prepared to hear - that she has no management skills of any value, except PR, and would she please listen to the engineers who were screaming about the shuttle widgets...it's going to blow.  I wanted to leave anyway...)

So it sounds like we've both had some verifiably negative experiences in the gender wars.  I have no solution, other than the personal one.

Well, my solution is to stop focussing on gender, and particularly to not imagine that 'my side' needs to tell everyone, all the time, how bad the 'other side' is.  It's a peace thing, but I can see that it's not a popular approach.