Dyske on Feminism

Dyske writes on Feminism: He points out a provocative argument:

Feminists cheapened the value of the traditionally female roles by implicitly assuming that traditionally male roles were nobler human endeavors… reinforc[ing] the notion that traditionally male roles were superior.

It’s certainly a different take on things. Your thoughts?

13 Replies to “Dyske on Feminism”

  1. On a side note, I thought that was “Dykes on feminism” for a second there. I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cringe…

    Way, way back when, humanity was a female dominated society since they were (and to an extent still are) the ones that pick the man who’s genes to pass on. However, with the concept of wealth, it became a male dominated society.

    Not being for the feminists here (who I recall in their pure form want equal treatment), but considering that it is males who go walking on the Moon, run for president (however stupid said man is) and of course history is written by men. In effect, it is men who are unwittingly encouraging this enobling of male roles.

  2. Zhi, I don’t think human society was ever dominated by females to the extent that you suggest there – otherwise you wouldn’t have the Lion as the King of the Jungle, but rather the Lioness as Queen of the Jungle. Or the female silverback Gorrilla as the Ghost(ess) of the Jungle. The animal kingdom reflects to a greater extent what we too were like “back then”. Matriarchal societies may have arisen later, but with the Christian era the patriarchal hegemony became pretty well entrenched.

    I think you also missed the point on the second one; it’s an established fact that men have dominated modern society, so there’s nothing “unwitting” about their promotion of male roles. The argument is more that the women demanded parity with males by saying that females should rise to the position of males, implicitly acknowledging superiority of those positions. I don’t know what the alternative approach may have been; the argument he quotes also doesn’t provide it. but yeah, the point was not about males promoting themselves.

  3. I know that his point was not what I said, however to justify his view (which I agree with), I had to point out that it is partially a male fault that our roles are viewed as prodominantly “better”. Perhaps if females were able to promote their traditional roles better, then perhaps the feminist movement may have had a different goal?

  4. Well, guys are stronger, so in a cavemen sense, I’m sure they had more ‘power’ than the female, and things flowed on from there. I don’t think the human race is evolved enough to not have that on the back on the subconscious. I think it is good to demand equal rights, that doesn’t necessarily mean the traditional male roles are more noble, just different, and female should be treated the same as male if they are equally qualified. However, I don’t agree with extreme feminism, because male and female are different, and it’s the difference that makes life interesting.

  5. The article makes some really good points. I guess it depends on how you define feminism.

    If you mean the advancement of women’s role in society, then it’s an infinitely complex topic. If it’s foolish to aim to be in the some position as men then where do they aim? I’d like to think the ideology (initially, at least) was to fight the oppression of women; to have the same freedoms of men but not necessarily the same roles.

    But ultimately I feel the author is guilty of the same false assumptions that it accuses American feminists of. Their way of brushing off America’s nuclear attacks and racial tensions as clear-cut xenophobia and the lassez faire attitude towards implementation of ideals before accusing feminists of not understanding the intricacies of Japanese culture. Sounds like a bit of a cop out to me.

  6. I’m not saying I necessarily agree with all the points of the article, but I did think it was a different way of looking at things. There’s many ways to consider what the “mission” of feminism should have been, but I think by-and-large they succeeded in their primary goal, which (in my mind, at least) was, if not the emancipation of women, giving women independence in a way that perhaps wasn’t possible before. Feminism really was a culmination of a historical trend, and had a great effect on the shape of the second half of the 20th century, and many implications are still being worked out today.

    And yeah, Dyske (more correctly “Daisuke”, but he’s anglicised it) does tend to that – I’ve read articles on and off over the years, and while he starts with a good premise and intriguing arguments, things tend to devolve into something based on his own predefined prejudices. That’s not to say there’s many that do otherwise, but it is disappointing at times.

  7. Aha! I figured it was pronounced Daisuke (yes-I-watch-too-much-anime-and-that’s-how-I-know).

    The economics argument is a really interesting one. I’d like to see some numbers on it though.

  8. I don’t f@#$%! believe it!
    I wrote a massive long comment and it got chopped off!!!

    WTF!!!

    *unsubscribe*

  9. it’s because you s#@$@# included a >< smiley thing! If you want to do that and get away with it, you have to type &gt;&lt;.

    I edit where i spot leftover >s, but I can’t put the remainder of the comment back. That’s the way the commenting stuff works in wordpress – this way you can, if you know the html for it, put in italics and bold. It doesn’t stop you screwing it up, but it makes sure it doesn’t screw the other comments.

    *grumble grumble* don’t be bitchin’ at me…

    [ed] And don’t be relyin’ on the live preview! That does sanity checking to ensure you don’t destroy the live page right here!

  10. yeah, it just does some javascript processing, it doesn’t do the same thing that WP does when it saves to the db. e.g. ™ “( tm )” shows up as the tm symbol, but I don’t think it does the same thing as what wp saves down as.

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