zlacker

>>femfos+(OP)
My wife, who is a second wave feminist that believes that women should be given the same opportunities, but are not victims, ran across some of the craziness a few years ago.

She was in a tech forum where a woman was complaining about her experience at a company. It amounted to this woman having a perception that she was not being valued as much as a male colleague and was immediately jumping to the conclusion that it was sexism. My wife jumped in and suggested that from the sound of things, it sounded like there may be some other things going on that this person could work on and that it may have nothing to do with sexism etc..

The other people in the forum, including men, crucified my wife for those statements. This along with her daring to suggest in other women in tech forums, groups etc. that not every piece of feedback that is not positive is sexist led her to be banned from several women in tech organizations. Many would not even tell her why, but if they did it was for "being harmful to women" and "suffering from internalized misogyny" among other things.

Given her experience alone, not to mention other things we have all seen in the community none of this is surprising to me. Ironically, one of her concerns when she saw the "micro-agressions" etc. trend take hold, beyond the fact that she felt it was trying to fix one wrong with another, was that it would lead to this...and here we are. [edited for clarity]

>>lgleas+R81
Feminism as it is practiced today in the West is a lost cause, but it's been dying for decades. Like many movements around social justice it was hijacked by radicals and became totalitarian in its beliefs, to the point that it brings dubious value to or even harms the interests of most women.

The big topics like violence against women have not been properly addressed and feminists focus instead obsessively on minor topics like abuse of Hollywood actresses or gender imbalance in software engineering.

The strategy has also changed - such factions are focusing less on equality and more and more on taking something for themselves, transforming the dialogue into an us versus them and turning it hostile. The problem with this thinking is two-fold:

1) One can take only so much before the ones that are being taken from push back, especially since there's no shortage of groups that want to take.

2) Other factions also want a piece of the pie and don't care about female victimhood. Feminism has for example failed to tackle both culturally influenced violence against women perpetrated by misogynist immigrants and the zero sum game they play with transsexuals.