What Are Your Thoughts on Intersectional Veganism?

[knot]

Most of this is baseless internet rhetoric that's so widespread by many many people who've never actually been in any feminist groups/circles or know anything about feminism at all other than the hogwash that's fed to them by the anti feminists. The method is similar to the one used by creationists, make an audacious strawperson caricature, then bash the crap out of the strawperson. in this case say that the ridiculous strawperson is the majority voice of the movement which couldn't be further from the truth and is blatantly obvious to anyone actually within the feminist movement/groups.

I'm not caricaturing anyone, you can look up quotes by any of the prominent radical/authoritarian feminists and you'll see that they are consistently:
-anti free speech
-racist against whites
-anti masculinity
-pro segregation

I suggest watching prof. Christina Sommers on The Rubin Report where she explains how feminism was overtaken by the radicals

This rabid popular anti feminist rhetoric is asinine and is obviously damaging the atheist movement. Many Women do not find the climate in many atheist circles acceptable and the fewer women there are the harder its going to be for women on the whole, for community building, for dating/ partners (its a lonely world as an atheist anyways)

I dont know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I've only ever worked and lived in European countries, and over here it's not really necessary to get together to discuss how god doesn't exist. Everyone's more or less on the same page on that

Women anyways have to deal with society's inherent patriarchal nature

Wat? I suspect you of having a cultural bias. India does seem to have some real patriarchal stuff going on, but that isnt the case for the West. Over here it's quite easy to argue that men are now less priviledged than women on many metrics.

To me its similar to female selective feticide that's rampant in certain communities closer to home. The only thing it winds up doing is messing up your own community. You'd think atheists whose very foundation is based on rationality would be able to see irrational issues, how damaging this is within the movement and rectify it and also participate in dismantling the patriarchy/systemic sexism on the outside but nope. I've always maintained, just because you're atheist and got it right on one part ie belief system/supernaturalism doesn't automatically mean you're right on other issues. you can easily be an atheist and a complete idiot on other issues be it gun control, veganism or feminism.

There is no systemic sexism against women (in the West). Why do you think that? I think you've bought into some narrative that's not based on facts. It's gonna be very hard for you to prove that women don't have exactly the same opportunities as men do.

...However, there's quite a lot of wife-beating, honor killings, forced marriages and gang rapes coming out of our lovely Muslim communities... which is part of the reason why I make sure to name and shame Islam on a daily basis. But you'll never see feminists such as PZ Myers, Anita Sarkeesian, et al. criticize real misogyny like this. Why that is I have no effin' clue. I assume they're too blinded by identity politics to think brown people could ever misbehave -.-

I'd attribute a significant part to how things are currently regarding women in the movement to the likes of atheist youtubers like thunderf00t and their irrational tiirades against feminism which many other popular atheists like Myers, aron have repeatedly pointed out to them but to no avail. (See section on freethought blogs and the subsequent one on feminism http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Thunderf00tt ) to an extent its also about less mainstream representation of women as leaders like how the voice of atheism is often made to look as the four horseMEN though this is changing.

Thunderf00t makes boring, repetitive youtube videos, but as far as I know his opponents never argued against him, but instead just banned him from their website for no good reason. In my book that's the same as admitting defeat

The four horsemen's own comments on women have also been ridiculous or even outrageous on occasion. And the nonsense that women that have risen to prominent positions have to deal with like the well spoken Greta Christina.

I've never heard Sam, Christopher, Dan, Richard or Ayaan disparage women, and I've watched literally all their content

[Corelich]

I've never heard Sam, Christopher, Dan, Richard or Ayaan disparage women, and I've watched literally all their content

I would argue, that Christopher Hitchens might fall in the slightley chovenistic category. He made some pretty sexist remarks (most, if not all in yest though). Not to mention his book "why woman arent funny". Haven't read it so I can't confirm if it is sexist or not.

Richard Dawkins tweets get almost always ripped out of context. A thing I really really hate. He said something as an answer to somebody and somebody else presents what he said in another way with another meaning. Really grinds my gears.

Wat? I suspect you of having a cultural bias. India does seem to have some real patriarchal stuff going on, but that isnt the case for the West. Over here it's quite easy to argue that men are now less priviledged than women on many metrics.

Man suffer in equality in a lot of ways aswell. Thats why I take my stand for equality in opportunities for both genders.
If that also means, that if one gender tends more towards engenieering (my profession) and one more towards social then a natural pay gap will arise from that. If this is cultural, i hope we can change it. Programs like ada lovelace trying to do this (and I wish them good luck!)

[garrethdsouza]

thunderf00t minions.

Next time i just talk to a wall.

Did you read the rational wiki article i linked about criticism of him?

In Germany the Gender pay gap is 22% if you just average over all professions. Corrected for average worktime (without overtime) and profession the gap gets to about 7%.

That's like the cholesterol/sat fat confusionism, if you correct for cholesterol levels of course you won't see a difference (if youve been following plant positives videos). Same case here, women are stereotyped as not liking particular professions that are deemed intrinsically male ne are they encouraged to pursue those professions and there aren't any role models for them there either, though there's no actual rational basis for any of it, its a watered down version of women are naturally fit for the kitchen and household work except here it's different professions that are incidentally on the whole lower in pay than the other higher paid male dominated jobs.

Subjugation of groups has been through employment opportunities just like it exists in Hindu's caste system. That's why you see a big difference when you average across professions but not much when you control for profession. It's not for the same work that we're referring to for which the difference is much less AFAIK.

Of course the self professed feminist whose actually an anti feminist by definition, Christina Hoff sommers is the sort who perpetuates these rationally baseless aka faith-based positions that women aren't suited for some jobs and are naturally inclined for, the household chores and kids, I mean the intrinsically manly accidentaly low paying jobs..

This and other gender equality issues (inclusing of men) in the united states of jesus are discussed here.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_ ... ted_States

According to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the primary cause of this gap is discrimination manifested in the tendency of women to be hired more frequently in lower paying occupations, in addition to the fact that male dominated occupations are higher paying than female dominated occupations, and that, even within comparable occupations, women are often paid less than men.[21]

https://ergebnisse.zensus2011.de/#Stati ... _5,m,table

12,5 % less female atheists then male. But honestly, I don't see, that this necessarily comes from sexism.
Until I see well done research about this, i withhold believe in either way. Many of those "christians in those survey are more cultural christians than believers in christ I guess. At least thats what my experiance here in germany is, when somebody says to me hes christian.

I think http://www.atheistcensus.com/ isnt very representative. Yet at least. It does not correlate well with other sources.

That's good to hear, I wonder if the same issue is elsewhere and if that's the case what the issue is with atheist census.

[garrethdsouza]

Richard Dawkins tweets get almost always ripped out of context. A thing I really really hate. He said something as an answer to somebody and somebody else presents what he said in another way with another meaning. Really grinds my gears.

It's not out of context at all, Dawkins has been off the mark on his twitter account for a whole range of issues. He specifically compared - a woman who was being made drunk by a male who intentionally kept himself sober so that when she was too drunk he could rape her - to driving while being drunk by saying if you didn't want to be raped you shouldn't have got drunk. Umm, she was being intentionally coddled into having too many drinks, sort of like using a date rape drug, by a guy who wanted to rape her. why compare it to intentionally getting drunk and then driving?

See criticism of it here:
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/03/new_ath ... _p_EXh4xSQ


He's belittled or dismissed several women's experiences, as a guy he might just not get what it like, so dismissing a victims own lived experience is pretty sickening. [/quote]

Man suffer in equality in a lot of ways as well. Thats why I take my stand for equality in opportunities for both genders.

some men related issues were also discussed in the wiki page in the previous post. Both genders assumes gender binary. But ya calling oneself an egalitarian is obvious. One wouldn't take objection to calling oneself an lgbt activist but a feminist and people take offense when all it has to do is pro woman's rights, and yes the strawpersons cooked up by the antifeminists aren't what you see as the norm in the movement, anything but.

[Corelich]

I'm sorry but we are in disagreement here. I really think thunderf00t is on the point in terms of FTB and tumblr feminism. It really poisend the discussion about real equallity and made many people care less about the topic in hand. He's not good in his wording (titeling it feminism in general is a bad move in my opinion). If this is intentional or not, I don't know. But if you look at the crazyness FTB and alot of the community turned into, I think his participation is valuable.

Edit: Thats not "an" issue. That was the sentiment at the time overall between some bloggers..
The tweet is now what? 4 years old? Im sure as hek wont look through a huge amount of her tweets since she tweets often, sorry.

Ps. as someone who followed the FTB blog closely, i can assure you the wiki entry is higly biased and does not represent the reality of some communications in my view. Many of phil masons videos are reactions to bullshit and should not be viewed as about feminism in general, even if he sadly uses the word to general.

PPS. I'm still a feminist. Or euqalitarian, i dont care about semantics. I care about the message. And thunderf00t is right. FTB and SOME SJW are highly toxic to feminism.

Look at total biscuit and his story. He is in therapy because of this tumblerite shit. It breaks my heart hearing him talk in his podcast and how he lost joy in life because of nonsense under the disguise of (radical distorted) feminism and social justice. This man is in therapy for cancer and get deathwished because hes one of the main characters in gamergate (he talked about ethics in game journalism since years). And they talk shit about thinks he never said and talked about.

Yes I read the Wiki entry and responded to it. In my opinion its biased, wrong and and not worthy to be in a wiki which calls itself rational.
I read FTB at this time. I was watching the Videos and read the blogs of both sides. Immature describes watson and PZ far better then thunderf00t.

Your last link gives me a 404. I dont know every tweet of Richard, so it may be, that he said something very bad. Most things people outrage though... petty bullshit often taken out of context.

[Corelich]

That's like the cholesterol/sat fat confusionism, if you correct for cholesterol levels of course you won't see a difference (if youve been following plant positives videos). Same case here, women are stereotyped as not liking particular professions that are deemed intrinsically male ne are they encouraged to pursue those professions and there aren't any role models for them there either, though there's no actual rational basis for any of it, its a watered down version of women are naturally fit for the kitchen and household work except here it's different professions that are incidentally on the whole lower in pay than the other higher paid male dominated jobs.

I urge you to come to germany. My best friend (female) got a stependium which is for woman in MINT only. You often can take woman only or mixed classes (your choice). There are several projects to get woman into the field (for example ada lovelace project, for which my best friend works). You know what she and alot other students say? The educational system is highly sexist against men. Still, the ratio of woman gets higher, the less math and the more social aspects are involved. Like I said, their may be a social aspect to it, like upbringing, but sorry, its not sexism in opportunity. And opportunity is all i care for.

[brimstoneSalad]

I want to say, I see myself as a feminist in the traditional point of view, in that I want equallity of opportunity between the genders.

Traditional feminism came from a time when women were being systematically oppressed by having fewer rights, and dealt with giving more rights to women up to the point of equality before the law. This has been technically achieved, so that notion of feminism isn't relevant anymore in the first world -- as such, the definition has shifted and now covers womens' advocacy on more contentious issues where there is no such thing as technical equality.
For example: How do you deal with responsibility for children? A woman can give a child up for adoption or have an abortion and never notify the father, or keep it and the father has to pay child support -- all of the choice rests with the woman in many cases, and a father can't relinquish his responsibility in the way a woman can. This is based on biological differences of child bearing, and there's no way to come up with a solution that's perfect for everybody.

He prefers other terms instead of feminism, I personally don't care about semantics.

If you don't personally care what you're called, then I strongly encourage you to call yourself an equalist instead of a feminist, because if you call yourself a feminist it will risk giving others the wrong impression of what you believe and support.

Feminism as a word is inherently gynocentric, and implies that male issues don't matter or are unimportant relative to women's issues. Not all people who happen to call themselves feminists think that way, but words and definitions matter quite a bit, and by talking about equalism instead you probably do more toward the ends you want to see.


That said, I support modern feminism and MRA as adversarial, and I think that by arguing with each other (as in a court, with the prosecution and defense) may be the best way to educate people on these complicated issues and ultimately reach compromises that perhaps nobody likes but everybody can live with and are generally seen as fair. In this case, feminists have to advocate for women and against men, and MRA have to do the opposite.
Adversarial systems are, to date, the best method we have to resolve dispute and achieve balance where no clear and true perfectly equal outcome is possible.
It's OK to be feminist, it's OK to be MRA, and it's OK for them to fight each other. The equalists are the jury; the ones sitting on the sidelines, and hoping for the best compromise possible.

[brimstoneSalad]

In Germany the Gender pay gap is 22% if you just average over all professions. Corrected for average worktime (without overtime) and profession the gap gets to about 7%.

That's like the cholesterol/sat fat confusionism, if you correct for cholesterol levels of course you won't see a difference (if youve been following plant positives videos).

I'm surprised at you, you should know better than to make this comparison.

It's not at all like that, unless you're suggesting that doctors and lawyers are paid more as a profession (including women) because doctors and lawyers are mostly men, and waiting tables is paid less as a profession (including men) because that profession is dominated by women.
That would be insane.

To use a more appropriate comparison, what you're doing is more like saying fish is healthy (men are paid more for being men) because people who eat more fish have better health outcomes -- when it's not necessarily because of the fish, but because people who eat more fish also tend to eat less meat from land animals, and more vegetables (e.g. have more STEM jobs).
What Corelich is saying is that we have to adjust for vegetable and other meat consumption to find out if fish is actually healthy overall (whether being a man is inherently beneficial).

There are other confounding factors here that are unrelated to the nutritional quality of fish itself (unlike cholesterol/saturated fat, which are part of a food), and those factors are so strong that it's hard to get good data through all of that noise.

The cholesterol/saturated fat comparison is patently wrong.

The fact is that the pay gap for the same work is very very small, or even non-existent (what are the margins of error here? Some studies show women making more in certain jobs), and the main issue is that there are differences in jobs -- which is what Corelich said. That's another issue entirely, like saying people need to eat more vegetables, rather than more fish.
Very different prescription.

Good video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T09Bx6xoHSQ

Same case here, women are stereotyped as not liking particular professions that are deemed intrinsically male ne are they encouraged to pursue those professions and there aren't any role models for them there either, though there's no actual rational basis for any of it,

What are you saying?
Aside from an absurd conspiracy theory that society just decided to pay lawyers more because they're associated with men, and waiters less, because that's associated with a women's job?

No, it's the only reasonable conclusion at all: The main "problem" is that there are fewer women in these higher paying jobs.
The reason for that is more complicated, and something we need more research on, but it isn't even necessarily a problem.

Part of it is certainly women not liking those jobs as much (due to social conditioning, and maybe other factors). That's a very different issue, with a very different solution (STEM programs for girls, for example), if you consider it a problem. The answer is not to mandate that doctors and lawyers be paid the same as waiters. It's also not to restrict men's access to these jobs until women catch up. We need as many people in these jobs as possible.

Fighting capitalism is an uphill battle, and a pointless one in this case.

Subjugation of groups has been through employment opportunities just like it exists in Hindu's caste system.

First, women are not a caste.
The West doesn't have the same degree of prejudice based on caste, and even in India, that's only relevant if you're trying to work for a prejudicial company.

If you're looking for solutions to this "problem", then start your own company, and only hire your own caste if you want. Capitalism will find a way.
In terms of outsourcing, at least, I don't care what caste you are, if you can develop software and give the best quote, you have the job.
The issue in that case is more access to education. Poor people stay poor because they're poor, not just because they're being oppressed from the outside (sometimes that's true too, but it's only part of the story, and doesn't really matter since if they have education they can form internal economies).

There may be an issue, as Corelich said, but it's much smaller than you're making it out to be, and you harm your credibility by exaggerating and ignoring the real issues that explain the lions share of the perceived pay gap.
And insisting that fewer women being in these higher paid professions is even a problem (or like a caste issue?), or that it means something to veganism is very troubling.

Anyway, as I said, I do not even necessarily see this as a problem.

There are low paying jobs, and high paying jobs. I don't care if all of the women are in low paying jobs and all of the men are in high paying jobs, or if all of the women are in high paying jobs and all of them men are in low paying jobs. It's a thing that bothers me not at all, because all I see is equal humans working jobs, some of which are shitty but all of which are part of the total pool of jobs, and the overall state of the economy.

It's the same reason I don't care if Americans have the jobs, or the jobs are sent overseas to China. We're talking about human beings, in either case, being employed or unemployed.

I don't care if the Brahmins have all of the high paying jobs and the Sudras have all of the low paying jobs, or the Sudras have all of the high paying jobs and the Brahmins have all of the low paying jobs. They're all just people. And I don't care much if they're mostly locked into those jobs either (why does this matter? This is an asinine issue of "rights" and "fairness", not of consequential ethics). All I see is human beings doing human jobs, and filling economic niches. Low paying jobs suck, no matter who does it, and I'm not obsessed with some meaningless concept of fairness when it does nothing for overall socioeconomic well being.

You first need to prove why it matters if most of the low paying jobs are occupied by people who happen to be women, or Sudra, or black, or whatever. I just see a society with an economy that provides shitty and good jobs, and people filling those jobs (as needs be). I don't care what they look like, or what genitalia they have, they're all just people.

Arbitrarily choosing to bring what you see as "women" up by swapping out some positions and bringing some "men" down is meaningless to me.
If you're not bringing everybody up, you're not helping anybody on the net.

I am concerned with legal equality, since that has serious social ramifications (civil unrest), and it's just nicer to live somewhere where everybody is equal before the law (it's good practice), but I don't see the point in all of this other rabble rousing and conspiracy theorizing.

[brimstoneSalad]

Feminism isn't in any sense sexist nor is it against men's rights, its not much of an adversarial system.

It is by definition, but that's OK. Each side in an issue needs advocacy. If some people who define themselves as feminists aren't being adversarial on contentious issues, they're doing it wrong.

Women's rights groups have also helped in getting rights for men on many occasions. Four instance different drinking age limits, custody issues, tax issues, etc

That's as meaningful as saying women's rights groups have on occasion also had knitting circles, so feminism is all about knitting.
It's an extraneous hobby that they also happened to share as human beings, unrelated to their feminist interests. If they assumed they were related, they were just wrong.

Intersectionality is wrong in veganism, and it's wrong in feminism too.

That's not what intersectionality means.

Your recounting of the theory is more of a post hoc rationalization for the intersectional approach.

In practice, the idea of intersectionality is that we need to handle and advocate ALL of these issues, including the contentious ones that as I mentioned before, I don't even necessarily regard as issues.

It's really just social justice warriors trying to hijack various movements and make it about everything they care about, and attempting to convince other people that they have to do that too. All it does is cause divisiveness where people could otherwise agree and work together on a SINGLE common cause.

Its not Veganism but the vegan movement that needs to take into account the multiple problems that people face to going vegan and try to dismantle them rather than assuming an approach that works for some will work for all or that all people equally have the same problems in going vegan with the goal being animal liberation.

Using a message people will relate to, and helping people solve their problems with going vegan (and only that) is just regular effective vegan advocacy, nothing special. You don't have to solve every problem people have (or think they have) in life to get to veganism.

People can be sexist, racist, poor, minority vegans. That's fine. Those are issues for other social justice movements, the membership of which may not even be vegan.

[ThatNerdyScienceGirl]

I apologize for sparking debate about this topic...