I am a humanist! That's like saying "All lives matter" when someone asks whether "Black lives matter." So Meryl's in trouble with the good-thinking people, and just when she's got a movie called "Suffragette."
Here's the full interview. Excerpts:
Is being ladylike overrated?Back to the first link, which goes to a column in The Daily Beast by (the delightfully named) Teo Bugbee:
‘I would say it is underrated. Grace, respect, reserve and empathetic listening are qualities sorely missing from the public discourse now.’...
Are you a feminist?
‘I am a humanist, I am for nice easy balance.’...
What single thing would you change about the film industry to make it less sexist?
‘Men should look at the world as if something is wrong when their voices predominate. They should feel it. People at agencies and studios, including the parent boards, might look around the table at the decision-making level and feel something is wrong if half their participants are not women. Because our tastes are different, what we value is different. Not better, different.’
So what is it that’s so undesirable about the word feminist?... The common refrain in moments such as these is that feminism is simply a belief in equal rights.(That's a subject we were just talking about yesterday (here). And it's the way Hillary Clinton defined feminism recently.)
And while that is true, it’s also a vast oversimplification of the history of a movement that has had time to develop over the course of a century. There is not one feminism, but many feminisms...That plural — "feminisms" — which you don't see that much these days, was big in the late 1980s, back when I was one of the many women who felt compelled to read and understand the book "New French Feminisms." The plural was both a burden and a relief: a burden, because it's complicated (and perhaps French!), but a relief because you could use the word your own special way, take charge of the meaning creation, and not have to give yourself to a big group of ideological enforcers.
Bugbee proceeds to distance herself from one particular 80s feminist, Andrea Dworkin, "the radical feminist most often cited when critics of feminism want to find a feminist who is explicitly anti-man." Bugbee assures us that almost no feminist today believes in "radical separatism," so it bothers her "that women are denying feminism because of even the possibility that they might find themselves in a world where they must align themselves against men."
I'd say Streep and others who decline the label are not so much "denying feminism" as wanting to remain independent of a terms that other people are actively defining and enforcing. It seems risky and troublesome: You'll have to keep an eye on them lest they cause you to seem to be saying something you don't want to say. An artist, e.g., Streep, can't be distracted by monitoring all these politcos and web-scribblers.
Bugbee proceeds to talk in a completely political way about liberal issues like funding Planned Parenthood and passing equal-pay laws — that is, to be the very kind of ideological enforcer who makes people worry about the consequences of accepting the "feminist" label... which is the likely answer to the "why" question in the post title.
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The problem, in stylized terms, is that if one says one is not a feminist, then those on the left will say: "How can you not be a feminist when feminism is just the belief that women are full human beings with full human rights?"
But if one says one is a feminist, then those on the left (OK, maybe not the exact same people) will say: "But how can you claim to be a feminist if you don't embrace the entire social agenda of the left?"
Notice she also defined 'ladylike" as "grace, respect, reserve and empathetic listening" and said they are "qualities sorely missing from the public discourse now". I feel myself that whenever I've been on the internet too long it shows as a disregard for every one of those qualities. No matter what I've been doing - even reading art history - suddenly I'm ready to swear, despise and despair.
Bugbee proceeds to talk in a completely political way about liberal issues like funding Planned Parenthood and passing equal-pay laws — that is, to be the very kind of ideological enforcer who makes people worry about the consequences of accepting the "feminist" label... which is the likely answer to the "why" question in the post title.
Feminism as a sensible philosophy peaked in about 2000. That's why female college students and medical students became 50% of more of the total. Now, we have this distorted culture created by leftist ideologues who promote weird theories like "Queer Culture" and the transgender thing which is a form of mental illness.
If feminism was still sane, the advocates would be working on the status of women in Muslim countries and Muslim culture, They are not and seem only interested in a few leftist causes like abortion. The "equal pay" thing is a complete lunacy, just like higher minimum wage laws which benefit only unions.
When not "why"
Because our tastes are different, what we value is different. Not better, different.
Better comes up when you make it into a system, say voting. Then tastes can produce an unstable or stable system.
The tastes are evolved to work in a neighborhood-sized area, not in a government.
The men tend to see stability consequences, the women don't.
Feminists break down into only two main categories, as far as I can tell.
1. Women who believe in equal opportunity with men.
2. Chicks with Daddy Issues.
That about covers it.
I am Laslo.
So what is it that’s so undesirable about the word feminist?
The fanatic defense of baby killing?
The constant attacks against men?
The move to declare heterosexuality as oppression and vaginal intercourse as rape?
The common refrain in moments such as these is that feminism is simply a belief in equal rights.
Which may have been true in the days of women's suffrage, but hasn't been true since the days of Abzug and Steinheim.
Today feminism is all about preserving female privilege and extending female power.
Bugbee assures us that almost no feminists today believes in "radical separatism," so it bothers her "that women are denying feminism because of even the possibility that they might find themselves in a world where they must align themselves against men."
Is this Bugbee person completely ignorant of academic feminism? Academic feminism is explicitly anti-male. Not only do they claim that heterosexuality is a patriarchal tool of oppression and that all vaginal intercourse is rape, they are no longer willing to allow their male minions to identify as feminists.
"Men should look at the world as if something is wrong when their voices predominate. They should feel it. People at agencies and studios, including the parent boards, might look around the table at the decision-making level and feel something is wrong if half their participants are not women."
I'm sure some of them do feel that. And then they wonder why some of the OTHER men don't step aside.
Or maybe she should cowgirl up, get with the program, and use her tremendous power to randomly point at X% of the men in the meeting and say, "You, go! You no longer have a place here. Fetch me a woman".
Well, it IS a dirty word.
No one word describes me. That would be a good reply to the silly question Are you a Feminist?
" People at agencies and studios, including the parent boards, might look around the table at the decision-making level and feel something is wrong if half their participants are not women."
To me, the important phrase here is "decision-making".
Women can be good at analyzing issues, but they seem to think that the point of a meeting is to analyze forever in increasing levels of minutiae, not to actually Make The Decision.
That is where the Men come in.
I am Laslo.
"something is wrong if half their participants are not women."
Remember when Kim Bassinger decided to negotiate her own movie deal ?
Well, that worked so well, she went bankrupt.
Yes, more women negotiators. I prefer them on the other side.
"Men should look at the world as if something is wrong when their voices predominate"
When was that?
"Suffragette". You just know the movie will have no action sequences, cool special effects, or nudity. What lame brain approved the making of such a movie. He should lose his job.
No one word describes me. That would be a good reply to the silly question Are you a Feminist?
..and my immediate reply would be: "Well is feminism one of the words you would use to describe yourself?".
Meryl is the greatest actress of all time. Period.
.
All women are actresses.
"All women are actresses."
But not all actresses are women.
I am Laslo.
I bet most of the college girls who have naked selfies on the internet would call themselves 'feminists'.
So that is an OK category.
Most of the high-school girls who have naked selfies on the internet would probably call themselves 'feminists', too, but we are not supposed to look at them. Nope. Young minds, still forming.
Like their breasts.
Still: Nope.
I am Laslo.
Somewhere a town is missing its idiot and a fish is furiously trying to find a bicycle.
Sounds like she has learned a bit since Alan.
the plural of "feminist" is "feministas"
You could read Julia Roberts in Notting Hill as no longer wanting to be an actress as a woman's experience; and Hugh Grant's reactions as the male's, in general.
"Why, why, why, will you not allow yourself the empowerment of letting me label you?
I think feminism is perceived by many--including me--to be pro-woman. And this becomes a bias in which feminists overlook men and overlook babies. Basically they overlook anybody who is not a woman.
Thus in the context of abortion, feminists talk about the issue as if the only concern is the woman. "It's my body, it's my choice." There is no baby in that rhetoric. There is no father in that rhetoric. Feminism sees woman as the only important person. Everybody else is degraded into second-class status, or out of existence altogether.
As a matter of reality, this is absurd. Every pregnancy has a baby. Every pregnancy has a father. This abortion rhetoric reflects a bias, a distortion of reality, as if women spontaneously impregnate themselves, and do so without creating a baby or anything like that.
We also see this bias in discussion of rape, as if rape laws do not affect men in any way. We are told that every man is a potential rapist and that no woman ever lies about rape.
But the problem with this ideology is that there is a reality. Ordinary women know men. They have fathers, brothers, sons, boyfriends. They know innocent men, and love them. They have men that they care about. So this idea that we should demonize men, and not care about false charges, fails with many women. So too does this abortion rhetoric. Women who undergo pregnancy often become pro-life, or closer to pro-life, because of the experience. They feel the baby kick inside their uterus. And denying humanity is not something they want to do anymore.
Most women like men, and babies. Most women want families. This is why so many women are not feminists. Feminism is seen as the danger, as an ideology that is hostile to men, to babies, to family itself.
‘I am a humanist,’ she replied
The word "humanist" includes men and babies. Streep is expanding her concern beyond women.
That's like saying "All lives matter" when someone asks whether "Black lives matter."
Yes, exactly. It is a rebuke to sexism, in the same way that "all lives matter" is a rebuke to racism. That's exactly what it is, a rebuke to the callous and narrow-minded liberal mind.
Modern feminism has always been a Trojan horse for leftist ideological enforcement. Women have equal opportunity and equal rights today, but lefty feminists have to pretend otherwise in order to justify their anti male hate movement. That's why more and more women reject feminism. Honest women know it's become pro-female sexist bullshit and not about equality.
Saint Croix:
Feminism is seen as the danger... to life itself. Any ideology that demonstrates a prejudice when reconciling individual dignity, intrinsic value, and natural imperatives poses a threat to the quality and viability of life.
Feminists need to take a step back and curb or rather prioritize their dreams of pleasure, leisure, and luxury. The so-called "male chauvinist" motives.
I wonder how many men are actually so shallow and frivolous. I would guess that most men aren't, and neither are most women, despite decades of aggressive indoctrination.
SGT Ted:
There was and will continue to be a different treatment (e.g. deference, chivalry) of the two sexes motivated by intrinsic differences. However, this was and is circumstantial. I cannot imagine that most fathers would want less for their daughters than for their sons. Fortunately, most people have an idealistic, yet rational, grasp of life, people, and circumstances.
"Feminist" is not a dirty word. It's just rather like saying, "I am a phrenologist."
Unknown said...
the plural of "feminist" is "feministas"
The plural of "feminist" is "owners of many cats."
"So Meryl's in trouble with the good-thinking people,"
Yes, Meryl's in trouble with the group-thinking people. But that says more about the groupthinkers than about Meryl, doesn't it?
Why don't the people writing this arctical stop bullying people into being into their group.
Meryl can define herself and stand for anything she wants to. Feminist are such assholes.
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