Of course "feminism" isn't a unified lockstep movement.
But is there a thing, let's call it "pop feminism", which is widespread enough and whose adherents share enough basic ideas and positions, that we can usefully predicate things of it? Absolutely. And, well, that's the problem.
For example, when I see people use terms like "patriarchy" in earnest, I tend to grimace a bit. Not because I think they're crazy radical idiots, but because I think they're dangerously behind the times. The concept of unilateral patriarchy (i.e., a system in which most/all advantages based on gender accrue to men while most/all disadvantages based on gender accrue to women) is something like thirty years out of date at this point. We know now that the enemy is gender essentialism, which rigid, constrained roles and systemic advantages/disadvantages emerge from. We also know now that it's not a unidirectional oppression -- the resulting roles have aspects which harm people of all genders, and give at least some advantages to people of all genders.
But for every one person who gets this there are a thousand, or more, who just read sites like Jezebel, or feminism-related tags on Tumblr/Facebook, and end up imbibing pop-feminism ideas that are woefully out of touch with what we now actually know about gender in our society. What's worse, those ideas tend to reinforce essentialist gender roles rather than seek to overturn them.
The wage gap, currently being argued in the usual stupid way in another front-page thread, is actually a wonderful example of this. Research has shown, time and again, that much of the gap results from women being assigned, by society as a whole, a "childbearer/caregiver" role. And the consequences are clear. Women are more likely to work part-time, women who work full-time work fewer hours and less overtime, women actively seek out "child-friendly" workplaces, women start out with relative earning parity but it falls off a cliff once they have or start thinking about having children, a whole raft of stuff that adds up really really quickly.
A real solution to this would be to throw out the essentialism and the notion that child-rearing is "women's work". A real solution would seek to push women out of automatically assuming that bearing and raising children is a vitally important life goal, and would seek to push men out of automatically assuming their role doesn't involve caring for kids. A real solution would question basic ideas about what a successful life looks like and throw out any and all assumptions about "I am of this gender, therefore I should desire that"
But pop feminism doesn't do any of that. Instead it assumes that being a woman is mostly identical with wanting to have children and be their primary caregiver. So pop-feminist articles focus on how to "have it all", how to "balance" raising two kids with working 80-hour weeks at a law firm or running your own business, and argue that the important thing is to provide things like on-site day-care and generous maternal-leave policies to ensure women can keep right on performing the same rigid role they've had imposed on them for centuries.
What's more, we know these policies really don't work. There are countries which have implemented them, and they still see drastic drop-offs of women's lifetime earnings post-childbirth. What those policies do really well is make it easier to slide back into that role of "raising children is what I'm really supposed to do with my life".
But rather than attack the real problem, and ask the real, really hard questions about gender roles and how to overturn them, most people who identify as "feminist" just forward and share and retweet the same old pop-feminism drivel. And if you believe there isn't a relatively large group of people who identify that way and do exactly that, with relative ideological unity in terms of underlying assumptions, then I just don't know what Internet you're spending time on.
You're basically describing the patriarchy and modern feminism.
When people now use words like "patriarchy" now, they don't mean "all and any man opressing all women", they mean what you talk about, rigid gender roles. You post basically describes the patriarchy and how it's bad. The idea that women should so some work (e.g. nursing) and men shouldn't do some work (e.g. nursing), is patriarchy.
I can't find any FAQ on Jezebel (since I don't read it much), so I can't find their definition, but there are definitions on http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com, a Feminist 101 site.
Imagine a patient with appendicitis who goes to a doctor, and the doctor just hands over a prescription for pain medication and says "no worries, this will make you feel better right away".
The pain meds will make the patient feel better for a bit, but really they're just masking a symptom of the underlying disease, which is still there. And sooner or later that appendix must be treated or got rid of, or the patient's going to die.
The pop-feminism practised in places like SRS, Jezebel, Tumblr, etc. is the social-justice equivalent of giving the appendicitis patient pain meds. "Smashing the patriarchy" will still leave the underlying disease of which it's a symptom (essentialism and roles assigned on the basis of gender) untreated.
Of course, that's an oversimplification, since the popular conception of "patriarchy" is deeply flawed in other ways (it lacks the explanatory power to say anything more glib than a 101-style "of course it hurts you too, sweetie" to men who are also being harmed by the deeper disease of essentialism, to take one example).
But I've long since given up trying to get this through to most people on internet boards, which is why I now do it under throwaway accounts.
The pop-feminism practised in places like SRS, Jezebel, Tumblr, etc. is the social-justice equivalent of giving the appendicitis patient pain meds. "Smashing the patriarchy" will still leave the underlying disease of which it's a symptom (essentialism and roles assigned on the basis of gender) untreated.
Now I'm confused. I'm an SRSer, and "the patriachy" is gender roles. "smashing the patriachy" means ending gender roles & essentialism.
* the popular conception of "patriarchy" is deeply flawed in other ways (it lacks the explanatory power to say anything more glib than a 101-style "of course it hurts you too, sweetie" to men who are also being harmed by the deeper disease of essentialism, to take one example).*
Firstly, the fact that you continue to use and insist on an overladen (with decades' worth of baggage) term that obscures what you're talking about, rather than just say what you claim to mean, is not an encouraging sign to me.
Secondly, if SRS is really a place where "serious conversations", as you put it, take place, then they certainly were adept at hiding it from me back when I frequented. After a while, one gets rather tired of the LOL DILDZ and LOL MRAS and wants to actually accomplish some good. Perhaps it's now a better place, but given how toxic the culture was I very much doubt it.
> A real solution would seek to push women out of automatically assuming that bearing and raising children is a vitally important life goal [...]
If bearing and raising children is not a vitally important life goal I don't know what is. The failure to do so would literally spell the end of civilization. Perhaps this view accounts for birth rates declining below sustainable levels in developed nations.
> [...] and would seek to push men out of automatically assuming their role doesn't involve caring for kids.
Of course no father should assume this.
But I feel this entire argument is pushing for indistinguishability more than equality. There will never be indistinguishability between men and women. Equality doesn't mean eliminating all differences.
Gender roles are pervasive, but are more obvious for women, who tend to get defined in terms of their wombs rather than any individual characteristics. Essentialists who hold traditional/conservative views don't really go much beyond that -- bearing and raising children is what women are for. Essentialists who hold progressive/liberal views try to hide this, but are still basically assuming that all women really want, deep-down inside, to be mothers above all other goals, so the discourse is all about how to do other things at the same time as that.
And that's a problem regardless of who's doing it or why. A developed civilization can remain viable without needing every woman to be a baby factory first and foremost, so why do we still push that attitude from basically all sides?
And although there probably always will be some life paths that are incompatible with having children, most of the ones that are incompatible today are not necessarily incompatible; they're only contingently incompatible as a consequence of how our society is structured (with its focus on career advancement and measuring one's worth in terms of titles and raw dollar values, and the resulting need to work insane hours). We could tear down all those assumptions, and have a society where everyone has the option of multiple ways to lead a fulfilling life, with raising children being one of those. But we don't do that, and even the popular incarnations of movements which claim to advocate for real equality of opportunity don't try.
Gender roles can be very harmful for some men. Gay men (sorta). Effeminate or camp men. Men who crossdress etc.
We could tear down all those assumptions, and have a society where everyone has the option of multiple ways to lead a fulfilling life, with raising children being one of those.
Yep, that's what feminists are doing, smashing the patriarchy.
But we don't do that, and even the popular incarnations of movements which claim to advocate for real equality of opportunity don't try.
But is there a thing, let's call it "pop feminism", which is widespread enough and whose adherents share enough basic ideas and positions, that we can usefully predicate things of it? Absolutely. And, well, that's the problem.
For example, when I see people use terms like "patriarchy" in earnest, I tend to grimace a bit. Not because I think they're crazy radical idiots, but because I think they're dangerously behind the times. The concept of unilateral patriarchy (i.e., a system in which most/all advantages based on gender accrue to men while most/all disadvantages based on gender accrue to women) is something like thirty years out of date at this point. We know now that the enemy is gender essentialism, which rigid, constrained roles and systemic advantages/disadvantages emerge from. We also know now that it's not a unidirectional oppression -- the resulting roles have aspects which harm people of all genders, and give at least some advantages to people of all genders.
But for every one person who gets this there are a thousand, or more, who just read sites like Jezebel, or feminism-related tags on Tumblr/Facebook, and end up imbibing pop-feminism ideas that are woefully out of touch with what we now actually know about gender in our society. What's worse, those ideas tend to reinforce essentialist gender roles rather than seek to overturn them.
The wage gap, currently being argued in the usual stupid way in another front-page thread, is actually a wonderful example of this. Research has shown, time and again, that much of the gap results from women being assigned, by society as a whole, a "childbearer/caregiver" role. And the consequences are clear. Women are more likely to work part-time, women who work full-time work fewer hours and less overtime, women actively seek out "child-friendly" workplaces, women start out with relative earning parity but it falls off a cliff once they have or start thinking about having children, a whole raft of stuff that adds up really really quickly.
A real solution to this would be to throw out the essentialism and the notion that child-rearing is "women's work". A real solution would seek to push women out of automatically assuming that bearing and raising children is a vitally important life goal, and would seek to push men out of automatically assuming their role doesn't involve caring for kids. A real solution would question basic ideas about what a successful life looks like and throw out any and all assumptions about "I am of this gender, therefore I should desire that"
But pop feminism doesn't do any of that. Instead it assumes that being a woman is mostly identical with wanting to have children and be their primary caregiver. So pop-feminist articles focus on how to "have it all", how to "balance" raising two kids with working 80-hour weeks at a law firm or running your own business, and argue that the important thing is to provide things like on-site day-care and generous maternal-leave policies to ensure women can keep right on performing the same rigid role they've had imposed on them for centuries.
What's more, we know these policies really don't work. There are countries which have implemented them, and they still see drastic drop-offs of women's lifetime earnings post-childbirth. What those policies do really well is make it easier to slide back into that role of "raising children is what I'm really supposed to do with my life".
But rather than attack the real problem, and ask the real, really hard questions about gender roles and how to overturn them, most people who identify as "feminist" just forward and share and retweet the same old pop-feminism drivel. And if you believe there isn't a relatively large group of people who identify that way and do exactly that, with relative ideological unity in terms of underlying assumptions, then I just don't know what Internet you're spending time on.