#resolving gender inequality

[auroramizutani]

(via Olabisi Ajala’s Daughter)

#olabisi ajala #aurora mizutani #dupelola osaretin ajala #an african abroad #ajala legacy forum #olabisi ajala's children #Olabisi Ajala's daughter #little boy & mr scary snake #esay japan #tourists in japan #d. a-gravill #resolving gender inequality

[kiwisa]

dawn ✩ the harpy

Fem! F1 Driver! OC series

series’ masterlist

IN WHICH... the news is out: a woman is joining f1. people are not happy.

As the F1 teams unveil one after the other their line-ups ahead of the 2021 season, Williams has caused chaos by announcing who will compete under its logo this year. While the Russell-Latifi duo remains unchanged, it is the “third wheel,” i.e. the reserve driver, that triggered quite the stir. For the first time in 45 years and Lella Lombardi, a woman will enter the F1 World Championship.

Astrée Iraklidis, a Greco-French woman of 21 years old, has signed for the British team and, with it, has made the internet and traditional media go wild.

While several female figures from all sports ⏤ amongst which Susie Wolff ⏤ have hailed this choice and spoken of a “historic event” for women's status, a wave of hatred from the most fervent motorsport fans is washing over Iraklidis. All are already questioning the ability of the Paris-born driver ⏤ of women in general ⏤ to compete in the F1 championship.

Yet, time and time again, Iraklidis has shown herself to be talented behind the wheel with a track record not unlike that of a Max Verstappen. Becoming the 2014 Karting World Champion at just 15, she went on to win the 2019 Formula 2 Championship at 20 during her first year in the category ⏤ after having faced numerous entry rejections based on her gender.

Therefore, it would not be surprising ⏤ if the opportunity were to arise this season ⏤ to see the little prodigy succeed just as brilliantly in the big league.

However, many women are sceptical about her position as a reserve driver and denounce an only partial progress. According to renowned feminist journalist Alysa Karstensen, “it is a way for the FIA to pussyfoot around resolving the burning issue of gender inequality within the motorsports industry.”

“They're going to milk everything revolving around her appointment and what it means for women, without ever putting her on the track and risking disturbing the established patriarchal order,” she asserts.

Thus, is Iraklidis’ appointment a real step forward in the world of motorsport or just a woke concession that will ensure both Williams and the FIA positive media attention?

⤷ COMMENTS

Anonymous F1 is slowly turning into a joke. Women now and then what, kids? Long gone are the days of Senna, Schumacher… Wokeness is destroying everything.

Anonymous I can't even grasp why Williams thought this was a good idea? She is going to fall into hysteria fits every time she loses (which she will), no thanks.

Anonymous Such a shitshow, I won't be watching until she withdraws. This young lady should know her place. Go back to karting and let the men handle the big cars. Alright?

✩ taglist !

@xcharlottemikaelsonx @i0veless @simping4marauders @muglermami @fxllfaiiry

#f1 fic #f1 x reader #f1 fics #formula 1 fic #f1 x oc #f1 fanfic #f1 imagine #formula 1 x you #formula 1 rpf #formula 1 series #formula 1 x oc #f1 social media au #.theharpy

[communistkenobi]

There’s this post going around about convincing conservatives to support trains by painting cars as “an attack on traditional transport” (I don’t remember it exactly, but they specifically used the words attack on traditional something)

Mostly people were taking it as a joke, or pointing out how this could be also be used to convince people of conservative goals and to read carefully when it comes to inclusive or sustainable language (like pinkwashing or certain ideologies related to overpopulation)

But I saw one argument that it was useful because “if your politics can only convince people who already agree with you it’s not useful” and while I agree you should tailor your arguments to tie audience, using “attack on tradition” specifically feels odd. (This argument was in response to someone mentioning the issues a rail system organized by people with that mindset would have)

I guess I’d like to know what you think about it, since I’m not very knowledgeable when it comes to politics.

I believe you’re talking about this post:

If you wanted to take this screenshot seriously I think it’s a pretty bad way to convince people of your own political beliefs and goals, because you’re not actually convincing them of anything lol. There is a difference between tailoring your arguments to your audience or meeting people where they are versus adopting the framework of your political enemies to make your own goals appear to align with their own. You have not actually convinced conservatives that public transit is good for the reasons it is actually good (the reasons public transit is good is diametrically opposed to their beliefs), you have only convinced them that public transit can fit under a conservative policy framework. Well conservative policies are disgusting! They are hostile to human life, they make the world a worse place to live in. The crux of the argument being made here is that ‘traditional society’ is something worth protecting, and public transit is an avenue through which this protection can be done. I think if you are conceding this much rhetorical and political ground to your enemy to make them ‘agree’ with you, you’re not being savvy or politically strategic, you are just making conservative arguments. The problem is that traditional society is a vile concept and no policy should rest on that kind of foundation. The way you frame a problem determines the potential solution outcomes; the solution being championed here is not that more public transit solves a host of pressing social problems (increased accessibility and mobility for disabled people, the elderly, children, and the poor, reducing/resolving congestion and traffic issues that plague every urban centre, vastly reducing the amount of deaths related to vehicle collisions for both pedestrians and drivers, reducing carbon emissions produced by vehicles, the list is effectively endless), but that ‘traditional society’ can be saved using public transit - this traditional society being built by white supremacist and cishetero-patriarchal politics, a system of explicit racial and gendered hierarchy and inequality, conservative cultural ideas about struggle, rugged individualism, the strong dominating the weak, and so on. You’re just making a conservative argument!

The whole liberal fantasy surrounding debates is that politics is primarily a game of rhetoric where ideas clash for dominance and the best ideas win. If you can’t even convince someone of your own political goals on your own terms using your own ideas - or worse, your political goals are so modular and vague that you believe using fascist concepts like ‘protecting traditional society’ is a productive vehicle for getting what you want - you are at best useless and at worst part of the problem. In either case I don’t think it’s effective or worth your time, you’re literally just increasing the amount of conservative arguments that exist in the world, and if you believe otherwise you’re either an idiot or you’re dangerous 

#asks #my actual answer is just don’t debate conservatives lol #especially not online there’s no point #If you want to evangelise do it with someone far more amenable to your political goals because they might actually be helpful #conservatives are fascists when it comes down to it and we don’t need to win them over to win #using a general ‘you’ btw I’m not talking about you specifically #geography

[cipheramnesia]

I mean saying the movie supported men's rights kind of ignores that what the kens did was painted as bad. Like that was very much the message of the film

That was the text of the film but not the message.

I'm not going to apply greater nuanced analysis to a movie that had all coherent structure papered over in producer notes. But for a movie that spends a lot of time pointing out situations that are unfair, not equal, or "bad" it didn't have anything to say about why or what might actually resolve the inequality.

Not saying it needs to author the revolution or anything, just it kinda stopped at "patriarchy bad because men rule all and are dumb boys who are gross" and I think that's boring? It's like hey, inequality sure is bad! And it seems like weird and wrong the girl empowerment doll for diverse women is exclusively developed by old white men! Followed by crickets chirping.

I was kinda waiting for the other shoe to drop, like yes, this is a pretty fun satirical look at gender and... and..? And that's it. Barbie world goes back to hierarchical control in a perfect utopia. The real world is unaffected because all those executives are just silly guys who are trying their best. Gloria gets to be a good mom, and hands her ideas over to the corporation. The new line of Barbies are Barbies that just don't want anything at all. And Margot Barbie just leaves.

Which is unfortunate because it starts out with a great deal of very interesting ideas, but ends up without anything much to say at all. It uses all the right words but mostly just kinda ascribes broad universal meaning and morality rather than considering any of it could have some underlying complexity.

We all know feminism can't hold hands with capitalism, but the Barbie movie wants the cache of the feminist movement beholden to the bottom line of Mattel's investors. And as a fun movie about children's dolls it's fine, but it's also selling itself as a feminist film, which it very much is not.

#i sat through months about ryan goslins ken being sold as this super sweet affectionate himbo #only for him to be a bitter and jealous selfish asshole #tbh that was probably the most depressing part his character felt so unhappy and so mean and so petty #it was like idk just establishing gender stereotypes backwards like he was just in a constant seethe of possessiveness #like oh so by ken lives for barbie you mean like in a serial killer stalker way

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 44 – The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

Alright, first full novel I’ve read entirely due to it getting a Hugo nomination. In retrospect that fact that there was absolutely no wait list for it at the library was perhaps a sign I should have paid attention to. I’m not sure it’s a bad book, exactly, but my god is it just chock full of little things that grated on me (which more or less tracks with my very vague memories of casually perusing The Calculating Stars when it first came out, so probably just a sign Kowal’s not for me, really.)

The story’s set in a fairly grounded space age future, on an ultra-lux cruise liner taking its passengers from Earth to Mars in speed and style. Tesla Crane, heiress, celebrity, and generally incredibly famous and unfathomably wealthy, has booked one of the nicest suites in the earth-gravity section of the ship under a false name to enjoy some anonymity on her much anticipated honeymoon cruise. Things of course take a drastic turn as a woman is murdered outside their sweet, and her spouse is framed for the crime. The shipboard security is obstructive and suspicious, bodies keep piling up, and it’s largely up to Tesla to solve the murder and clear his good name.

So first off – this is largely a style thing that grates on me far more than it should, and it probably effects my overall reading experience to an entirely unjustified degree, but – the standard etiquette in the story’s future is for everyone to use the gender neutral Mx. Using gendered terms like wife, husband, sir, m’am, or similar is also called out as being somewhere between archaic and offensively retrograde. Also, it is totally standard courtesy to list someone’s pronouns in any case where you’d their full name. In which case what is the point of taking so much care to be gender neutral of everything else. (In a sense this actually inspired worldbuilding, insofar as it’s exactly the sort of stupid language games high aristocracy or its equivalent tends to love, but the reading experience kind of grated).

The society’s generally very consciously progressive in a way that kind of calls attention to itself. It really wasn’t a surprise to see in the acknowledgement’s section that all the mentions of courtesy masks being a thing were edited in as covid happened. This is all mostly just background noise though, as far as narrative focus the only things that really occupy the story’s attention are its portrayal of disability and its bizarre class politics.

So, a key point of her backstory is that some years before the story, a lab disaster (during a demonstration of a personal assistance mech, which is actually some incredibly bitter dramatic irony I’m surprised the story doesn’t call any attention to?) killed six people and left Tesla with permanent spinal damage, chronic pain, and PTSD. Medical science doesn’t seem to have made many innovations on a cane or breathing exercises as far as mobility aids and PTSD treatment goes, but it does provide the absolutely incredible wish fulfillment device of a switch in your brain that lets you turn your pain sensitivity up or down at will. Tesla’s disability is a recurring thing throughout the book and generally the portrayal seemed fine to me? A couple conversations that bled into ‘giving the reader an important message’ territory, but only slightly and hardly the worst in the book.

The book’s attitude to class and wealth though, woof. Like, okay, the story is clearly a bit of a pastiche, a sanguine attitude to vast inequality and social hierarchy are necessary for the whole fantasy to work, but my god in that case please stop calling attention to it. The book so badly wants to simultaneously be progressive and have Tesla’s life be as maximally glamorous and exalted as possible that it gets twisted into this incredibly awkward spirals showing that she’s a good hyper-elite oligarch which really only call attention to the issue without doing anything to resolve it. Her internal monologue including some variation of the line ‘normally I hate just using money as a bludgeon to get what I want, but” happens a few too many times for it to not make un less likeable than an aristocrat who owns it.

Like, this is potentially uncharitable, but the book seems to take it as read that I find the idea of demanding to speak to a manager and having them grovel and apologize for how I’ve been disrespect far more alluring than I do? Not being that customer is a subject Tesla ruminates on at some length, and at the same time calling up her high priced lawyer and threatening to bury the whole cruise line in lawsuits while they rush to provide apology gifts is definitely portrayed as this thrilling power fantasy. It all left me actively rooting against her, at least a bit.

The actual mystery itself honestly wasn’t much to write home about – a bit confused, red herring introduced blatantly and too late, the obviously suspicious and personally unlikable character was the villain – but in a similar vein it did seem…telling, that the guy who’d been positioned as the unlikable asshole oligarch in opposition to Crane was secretly a murderous gold-digging imposter all along! Also, the fact that this was proven by a photo showing the oligarch to have been a dog guy, and the imposter being quite literally the only character in the entire book who didn’t adore Tesla’s emotional support dog. Like, c’mon.

Speaking of the dog – the book had a few recurring beats which I’m sure I’m supposed to have found funny or endearing but just overstayed their welcome with me several times over. The entire cast’s brains leaking out whenever they saw Tesla’s westie like it was some sort of platonic ideal of canine cuteness was one of them, along with like, Tesla and her spouse making out at a moment’s notice because a plot point meant that their encrypted tele-chat required skin-to-skin contact, and the book doubling as a cocktail guide. All things that if I’d liked the book I could have easily overlooked, but as is were just extra straws on the proverbial camel’s back.

Anyway, yeah, didn’t work for me.

#book review #sff #hugo nom #the spare man #mary robinette kowal

[haggishlyhagging]

The aspects of feminism currently given voice in pop culture are the most media-friendly ones, the ones that center on heterosexual relationships and marriage, on economic success that doesn't challenge existing capitalist structures, on the right to be desirable yet have bodily autonomy. Watson's speech to the UN was centered on “inviting” men to get invested in feminism, in order to better legitimize it. Sheryl Sandberg's much-heralded Lean In philosophy is about women conforming to workplaces that increasingly see them not as human beings but as automatons with inconvenient biology. The feminism they espouse is certainly reasonable, but it's not particularly nuanced. It doesn't get to the root of why men might not be invested in feminism or why corporate culture forces untenable choices. It doesn't challenge beliefs or processes or hegemonies so much as it offers nips and tucks.

Despite every signal boost for feminism, every spot-on viral video about beauty standards, every badass, take-charge female film or TV role, and every catchily named nail polish, the beliefs behind the word "feminism" remain among the most contested in political and social life. The question that has always been at its heart—Are women human beings, with the same rights, access, and liberties as men?—is increasingly posed in spheres where it should have been resolved decades ago. This increasingly looks not like a world that has finally emerged into fully realized feminism, but like a world in which we are letting a glossy, feel-good feminism pull focus away from deeply entrenched forms of inequality. It's a feminism that trades on simple themes of sisterhood and support—you-go-girl tweets and Instagram photos, cheery magazine editorials about dressing to please yourself. The fight for gender equality has transmogrifted from a collective goal to a consumer brand.

-Andi Zeisler, We Were Feminists Once

#andi zeisler #pop feminism #feminism and capitalism #feminism lite

[nerdygaymormon]

Isn't it strange that a male can be given the priesthood but then when they come out as trans and start transitioning, they are told they don't have the priesthood anymore. And a female who transitions to male also doesn't get the priesthood.

It is nonsensical, isn't it? As long as he's a man, he has the priesthood, but when she says that actually she's not a man, suddenly *poof* the priesthood is gone. But it doesn't work in reverse, someone afab who says they're male doesn't get to have the priesthood.

This could all be resolved if we were to stop limiting the priesthood based on gender. It would also stop a lot of inequities in church, or at least provide possibilities for them to be undone.

I'm not sure of any reason why in the LDS Church we limit the priesthood only to men other than it's tradition. In the Bible we do have examples of women as prophetess and in the role of apostle.

I believe we have the groundwork on which we could repeal the gender inequity we have in regards to priesthood in the LDS Church.

One way to think of the priesthood is that everyone who makes & keeps covenants has the priesthood. This includes baptism and the temple endowment. In the temple, endowed women exercise priesthood authority to pronounce blessings on other women (during the initiatory ceremony). I think this concept could be used to be more expansive in how we think about priesthood.

Beginning at age 11 , men are ordained to the priesthood and assigned to offices such as priest or elder, without needing to first go to the temple. Women do not have a parallel experience. Many positions at church are restricted according to priesthood office, which means they exclude all women from holding those roles.

We also assign certain duties to people in priesthood roles. There's no reason young women couldn't pass the sacrament trays to the congregation other than we assigned that duty to young men who've been ordained to the Aaronic priesthood and the office of Deacon. We could unassign that duty to a particular priesthood office. We used to only let men with the priesthood serve as a witness at a baptism or a temple sealing, now anyone who is baptized can be an official witness to a baptism and anyone who is endowed can be a witness at a temple sealing. Is this them using the priesthood they received when they made covenants?

LDS women serve in ways that would require ordination in many other religious traditions, such as when they lead Relief Society, Young Women and Primary organizations; preach and pray in congregations; participate in leadership councils; and serve as missionaries. We teach they are operating with priesthood authority, but we also say this authority was granted to them by a man, that a man with priesthood keys has delegated some authority to them to operate in these positions.

I think we should expand our concept of who hold the priesthood and who gets to use that priesthood in church. I don't know that there's a widespread movement inside the LDS Church for women to be ordained, but there is more talk about it than there used to be, but mostly among younger women.

What I fear is that if there becomes a push for women to be formally ordained, like we do with men, that the top leaders will warn that to allow this would mean to allow trans members to have priesthood and serve, that this fear of legitimizing queer people and our experiences will be used to justify denying full inclusion for anyone other than cis men. I think that is contrary to the concept that all people are alike to God, that all are loved & valued by God

[jordanianroyals]

2 October 2023: Queen Rania urged young leaders to make the most of their time to further the cause of peace, a “lifelong mission” that requires “not only every ounce of our strength, but every ounce of our time.”

She made her remarks in the United Kingdom, while speaking to a gathering of over 2,000  youth activists and leaders at the One Young World Summit in Northern Ireland’s city of Belfast. This year’s summit commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement between the British and Irish governments, which was signed in Belfast. (Source: Petra)

Thinking back to the year 1998, Her Majesty recalled how the signing of this agreement inspired His Majesty the late King Hussein to remain hopeful about achieving peace in the Middle East. She also highlighted King Hussein’s role in the Wye River negotiations, which took place that same year, as he was battling cancer and undergoing chemotherapy.

She argued that, despite his poor health, he insisted on traveling to the United States to push for the signing of a memorandum between Palestinians and Israelis that aimed to resume the implementation of the Oslo II Accord.

“He saw our time on earth for what it is: finite, fragile, and never to be taken for granted,” Queen Rania said. She also relayed the late King’s words at the agreement’s signing, where he said, “If I had an ounce of strength, I would have done my utmost to be here, and to help in any way I can.”

“Cancer reminded King Hussein once again of how limited time can be. And once again, he chose to live in the fullness of that time…to give meaning to every moment he had so that future generations could live in peace,” she said.

Her Majesty explained that despite time’s limited nature, “hope can endure the test of time,” and people can expand the time we have “by using it well.”

The Queen also emphasized the urgency of the world’s biggest challenges, from polarization in politics to growing refugee crises, climate change, and ongoing discrimination and gender inequality.

“At a time when we’re talking about advanced technologies like AI, it is preposterous that many still fall back on the primitive thinking that the color of one’s complexion determines their worth. And it’s shameful that gender equality is still a goal, not a reality,” she said.

Noting that, 25 years after the Wye River Memorandum, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains a prominent example of an overlooked emergency in need of peaceful resolution, Her Majesty called attention to the injustice and brutality that Palestinians are subjected to on a daily basis.

“Already in 2023, more Palestinians have died at the hands of Israelis than in any of the past 15 years. And every second of every minute of every day, millions of Palestinians are being robbed of their freedom, their rights…their very identity,” she stated. “Palestinian families are being uprooted from their land. Worshippers at Al Aqsa are attacked and brutalized, while 12-year olds are jailed just for throwing stones.”

Her Majesty therefore urged leaders to exert every effort in achieving lasting peace and progress, recommending that they join His Majesty King Abdullah, who, despite headwinds, “continues to walk the hard, and often lonely, path of peace.”

“It is time we populate that path,” she said, asking leaders everywhere to “snap out of complacency and put in the hard work that lasting peace requires—in the Middle East and elsewhere.” 

Queen Rania also underscored the need to remain committed to hope  in order to resolve pressing issues, explaining that despite having reason for cynicism, hope remains “a choice  – a decision we make, irrespective of the circumstances.”

Referring once again to the Good Friday Agreement, Her Majesty noted that after its signing, it took nine more years of negotiations for the terms of the agreement to come into fruition. She also cited the years-long efforts of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which provided restorative justice following the end of apartheid.

“Miracles don’t happen overnight. Complex problems defy hasty fixes,” Queen Rania said. “You cannot secure peace with the stroke of a pen any more than heal a bullet with a Band-Aid. The truth is, we have to take our time in order to use it well.”

Noting the difference in approach among many modern politicians, Her Majesty said, “Today, many political leaders cater to the now; they care more about the next election cycle than the next generation. And many seem more inclined to break treaties than broker them.”

The Queen also pointed out that it is ironic that those most affected by conflict are often excluded from conversations about long-lasting reconciliation, “even though they have the greatest motivation to find the creative compromises that genuine peace demands.”

One Young World is a global platform that identifies, connects, and promotes young leaders from around the world, hosting an annual summit that convenes in a different city each year. Considered one of the world’s largest youth leadership summits, this year it takes place in Belfast, Northern Ireland, from 2-5 October.

Summit participants, who are working to accelerate social impact, include a number of young leaders from over 190 countries and more than 250 organizations. The participants are invited to deliver speeches and participate in workshops, and networking opportunities, as well as receive counselling by influential figures attending the summit. In previous years, counselors included U.S. President Bill Clinton, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and the late South African human rights activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

#Queen Rania

[auroramizutani]

(via Olabisi Ajala’s Child)

#olabisi ajala #aurora mizutani #dupelola osaretin ajala #an african abroad #little boy & mr scary snake #resolving gender inequality #ajala legacy forum #esay japan #tourists in japan #olabisi ajala's children #olabisi ajala's daughter

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Jul 26, 2023

As our culture war rumbles on, there are hordes of denialists at hand to reassure us that it either “doesn’t exist”, or that it is a mere “distraction”. Labour MP Ben Bradshaw warns us that we need “to resist the Tory culture war”, as though it had been concocted by the very party that has presided over its worst excesses. Writing in The Scotsman, Joyce McMillian claims that the SNP’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill is “being used as a culture-war distraction”. Times columnist Matthew Parris insists that the “Why-Oh-Why War with Woke” is “not a real culture war”, and if we “stop thinking about it, stop talking about it, it will finally go away”.

Wishful thinking only explains so much. A cynic might take the view that all this talk of “distraction” is a way to minimise the significance of the culture war, a tactic likely to appeal to those who support the creeping authoritarianism of our times. But perhaps the better explanation is that culture warriors have been so successful in misleading the public when it comes to their methods and objectives. The claim that the culture war is a “distraction” is, in other words, a distraction.

This is not to deny that some tabloid “woke-gone-mad” stories are frivolous. It is, of course, eminently sensible to shrug off bitter screeds about vegan sausage rolls or reports of young people tweeting about how old sitcoms are “problematic”. All conceivable opinions are available on social media if one searches long enough. Just as the devil can cite scripture for his purpose, so too a lazy tabloid columnist can quote “the Twitterati” to confect some juicy clickbait.

That said, these kinds of trivialities are often symptomatic of a much deeper cultural malaise. We may laugh at the university that appended a trigger warning to Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, informing students that it contains scenes of “graphic fishing”, but the proliferation of such measures is an authentic concern. It points to an increasingly infantilising tendency in higher education, one that accepts the dubious premise that words can be a form of violence and that adults require protection from ugly ideas. Worse still, it is related to growing demands that certain forms of speech must be curtailed by the state. Only this month, a poll by Newsweek found that 44% of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 believe that “misgendering” should result in criminal prosecution.

Such developments are anything but a distraction. What has become known colloquially as the “woke” movement is rooted in the postmodernist belief that our understanding of reality is entirely constructed through language, and therefore censorship by the state, big tech or mob pressure is fully justified. In addition, this group maintains that society operates according to invisible power structures that perpetuate inequality, and that these can only be redressed through an obsessive focus on group identity and the implementation of present discrimination to resolve past discrimination. This is why the most accurate synonym for woke is “anti-liberal”.

When James Davison Hunter popularised the term “culture war” in his 1991 book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, he was describing tensions between religious and secular trends as well as alternative visions of the role of the family in society. He was using the term in its established sense, where any given “culture war” has clearly defined and oppositional goals (such as the Kulturkampf of the late-19th century, which saw the Catholic Church resisting the secular reforms of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck). Hunter’s application of the term mapped neatly onto accepted distinctions of Right versus Left in American politics, which is perhaps why the notion of a “culture war” is still so often interpreted through this lens.

But our present culture war is not so simple. The goals are certainly oppositional, but the terms are vaguely defined and often muddied further through obfuscation. Rather than a reflection of antipathies between Right and Left, today’s culture war is a continuation of the age-old conflict between liberty and authoritarianism. John Stuart Mill opened On Liberty (1859) with an account of the “struggle between Liberty and Authority”; the only difference today is that the authoritarian impulse has been repackaged as “progressive”. This would help explain why a YouGov poll last week found that 24% of Labour voters believe that banks ought to be allowed to remove customers for their political views.

The idea that defending liberal principles is a kind of “distraction” amounts to an elaborate form of whataboutism. Contemporary critics of Mill might well have argued that in writing On Liberty, he was allowing himself to be distracted from more pressing causes. Why wasn’t he writing about social reform, for instance, or the Franco-Austrian war? Similarly, while some commentators ask why we are discussing climate change during a cost-of-living crisis, an environmentalist might well ask why we are discussing the cost-of-living crisis in the midst of climate change. The extent to which we are being “distracted” is very much dependent on our individual priorities.

That is not to suggest that there are not important issues that are being neglected. Matthew Syed has observed the curious lack of interest in the possibility that we are facing self-annihilation due to our rapidly advancing technology. As he points out, in an age when the full sequence of the Spanish flu can be uploaded online and reconstructed in a laboratory, “how long before it is possible for a solitary fanatic to design and release a pathogen capable of killing millions, perhaps billions?” And why, Syed asks, aren’t world leaders devoting time and money to confront these existential threats?

Syed writes persuasively, and I certainly share his concerns. But I part company when it comes to his diagnosis of our culture war as “a form of Freudian displacement”, that “the woke and anti-woke need each other to engage in their piffling spats as a diversion from realities they both find too psychologically threatening to confront”. Syed is right that there are some who specialise in the trivial, but there are many more who are undertaking in earnest the crucial task of halting the ongoing erosion of our freedoms.

The liberal approach to redressing injustices, one now routinely dismissed as “anti-woke”, has a long and illustrious history. We might look to Mary Wollstonecraft, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King and many others who understood that freedom of speech and individual liberties were fundamental to human progress. Identity politics in its current form is directly opposed to the ideals of these great civil rights luminaries. While many of today’s culture warriors promote polarising narratives of distinct and incompatible group identities, the proponents of universal liberalism — as embodied in the movements for black emancipation, second-wave feminism and gay rights — have always advanced individual rights in the context of our shared humanity.

Far from being a distraction, then, our culture war still cuts to the heart of what kind of society we wish to inhabit. While it continues to be misapprehended as a conflict between Left and Right, those of us who are urging vigilance when it comes to the preservation of our freedoms will continue to be mistrusted and maligned. The likes of Matthew Parris are free to assert that ignoring the agents of authoritarianism will make them “go away”, but I am not aware of any historical precedents that support this view. When it comes to the culture war, apathy is tantamount to surrender.

#Andrew Doyle #culture war #anti liberal #antiliberalism #wokeism #cult of woke #wokeness as religion #woke #liberal ethics #liberalism #liberal values #freedom of speech #free speech #authoritarianism #woke authoritarianism #religion is a mental illness

[silverity]

Why do you call yourself a "marxist feminist?" your analysis is closer to mainstream reactionary narratives and radical feminism in general - why the obfuscation and lies?

i became a communist, specifically a marxist leninist, at about 15. i educated myself on Marx, Lenin, Engels, Mao, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Che Guevara, Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Sankara, Kim Il Sung — id say most of the fundamentals necessary to developing a communist understanding.

from my own Black upbringing i already knew Malcolm X, but i read further about the civil rights movement's Black leaders and revolutionaries, such as the Black Panther Party, Black Liberation Army, Fred Hampton, Huey P Newton, Kwame Ture, George Jackson. read Black scholars like James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, bell hooks, Du Bois, Fanon. also read Parenti, Said and Freire. i made sure as a Black woman to learn from Black women and marxist women, so i both read about and read the works of Rosa Luxemburg, Claudia Jones, Assata Shakur, Kathleen Cleaver, Nawal El Saadawi and Angela Davis.

so i was a marxist leninist in marxist circles for a very long time, and for all that time i was very pro-trans. now, there's been a rising tide of misogyny in the mainstream for the last couple of years, and i noticed men of all races in marxist circles were either failing to address it or addressed it only with reactionary, backwards analyses. many started voicing outright misogyny themselves under the guise of criticizing "bourgeois white women". it seemed they'd only read the works of marxist men and hadn't paid any attention to the women as i had. even other marxist leninist women, though their analysis was solid, were not focusing on women's issues directly. there's this tendency among marxists to treat feminism as some inborn component of marxism though they're not doing any direct study nor work on it at all. they think a class revolution will resolve everything when that's not entirely true. we will have to restructure society around gender/sex, race and many other inequalities, not just class.

so i turned to feminism. i went back to the aforementioned marxist women, who cover topics such as anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, prison abolition, Black nationalism and so on, but for the first time focused exclusively on the situation of women. this time i read marxist women for their marxist feminism, incorporating also Evelyn Reed, Silvia Federici, Ellen Willis, Clara Zetkin, Sharon Smith. as you may have noticed from the name, marxist feminism is sourced from feminism (yes, radical feminism) as much as it is marxism. many of these marxist feminist women drew from radical feminist women, both to further their own marxfem theory as well as to contrast it.

& i wanted to read what they were referencing for myself, so i began to read radfem works for the first time. i was surprised that what marxists had always dismissed as "white bourgeois feminism" was actually incredibly intersectional and insightful. and that even the white radical feminist authors were accounting for race and class, with many directly interrogating marxist theory and building upon Engels' analysis in Origin of the Family. i now firmly believe that to wholly understand the oppression of women you must understand our position under the intersection of both capitalism and patriarchy.

so!!!! i arrived at marxist feminism but with heavy influences of radical feminism. i would say my politics are a combination of the two (which some would call socialist feminism) but i prefer to keep the marxfem label owing to my marxist leninist origins (socialist is too broad a term), and also because my approach is still generally that of a more marxist leninist structural analysis, first and foremost. where marxist feminism provides a materialist, anti-capitalist analysis of the exploitation of women, radical feminism scrutinises the interpersonal relations between the sexes under patriarchy and its gender hierarchy. radical feminism also covers a lot more ground pertaining to women: women's history, feminist anthropology, women in media, science, psychology & so on. im particularly interested in radfem deconstructions of Judeo-Christian theology as of late.

thus it was with this new radical feminist understanding of women's oppression, and the analysis of other radfems of the trans rights movement, that i realised The Terfs Were Right All Along: gender identity ideology is regression masquerading as progression and will never liberate women from our degraded position so long as the female body continues to be exploited and abused. our oppression under both capitalism and patriarchy is the oppression, exploitation, and regulation of our female biology. after all, it's only women who are able to produce workers for the capitalists and the state, and children for the men and the society. this is the origin of women's oppression that began thousands of years ago. the oppression of women today is the systemic exploitation of the human female.

i went back and recalibrated my marxism as well and in doing so realised dialectical materialism doesn't lend itself to gender identity theory whatsoever (something a lot of other marxists have realised too). a liberation movement has to address the situation of women, it has to address our material reality. it cannot work off of idealism. i find mao really great on dialectical materialism, so let's look at his writings. according to Mao, "Idealism considers spirit (consciousness, concepts, the subject) as the source of all that exists on earth, and matter (nature and society, the object) as secondary and subordinate" whereas "Materialism recognizes the independent existence of matter as detached from spirit and considers spirit as secondary and subordinate.... [Idealists] cannot point out the materialist truth according to which consciousness is limited by matter, but believe that only consciousness is active, whereas matter is only an inert composite entity."

marxism is alternately termed "scientific socialism" for a reason. we are not idealists like the utopian socialists. we do not deal in idealism, we analyse reality through the scientific method of historical materialism. as Mao writes "Materialist dialectics is the only scientific epistemology, and it is also the only scientific logic. Materialist dialectics studies the origin and development of our knowledge of the outside world. It studies the transition from not knowing to knowing and from incomplete knowledge to more complete knowledge; it studies how the laws of the development of nature and society are daily reflected more profoundly and more extensively in the mind of humanity."

to "[belong] to the materialist camp" in Mao's words, we must "[recognize] the independent existence of the material world, separate from human consciousness — the fact that it existed before the appearance of humanity, and continues to exist since the appearance of humanity, independently and outside of human consciousness. To recognize this point is a fundamental premise of all scientific research.... what we call consciousness is nothing else but a form of the movement of matter, a particular characteristic of the material brain of humanity; it is that particular characteristic of the material brain which causes the material processes outside consciousness to be reflected in consciousness."

in essence, the internal is a product of the external. not the reverse. this does not support the supremacy of "gender identity" over sex, nor does it support the extreme position assumed by some in the trans movement, of the subjectivity or non-existence of sex altogether. we have to transform society in order to transform ourselves, which in this context would mean the abolition of gender throughout the whole of society— not the promotion of individualist self-identification with ascientific microlabels. gender identities do not liberate anyone from the confines of gender—they further lock you in, making you an ardent defender of the tool of your own repression. evidently, supporting gender identity ideology would not only be the betrayal of the proletarian woman and the fight for her liberation, and the liberation of everyone repressed by this system, it would be the betrayal and the distortion of marxism itself. a vulgar materialism.

if you want a more thorough breakdown of my ascent to terfdom or anything more about marxism leninism that'll probably have to be another post. let me know! i'll leave you with this from Mao on dialectical materialism: "The world is nothing else but the material world in a process of unlimited development.... If the proletariat and all revolutionaries take up this consistently scientific arm, they will then be able to understand this world, and transform the world."

#you didn't ask for my life story but i gave it to you anyway #marxist feminism #dialectical materialism #radblr #mao #radical feminism #marxism #marxfem #terfblr #marxism leninism #original posts #edited

[giulianaadellorusso]

Gender Inequality

In the year 2024, it is crazy to believe that the gender inequalities between Men and Women have still not been resolved. Women all over the world have been facing gender inequality issues since the beginning of time, and are still fighting to be equal to Men. Gender inequality can be defined as the discrimination of one’s gender, causing differences and unfair privileges to arise. With fights from Women all over the world, there has been huge improvements to the way they are treated in society and in the workplace, however there is still a lot of work to be done. Women today must continue to fight to be equal to Men in all areas of life! 

After the Industrial Revolution in America, Women began entering the workplace. Before this, Women were banished to the house, with their only job being to take care of their husband and children. It was believed that Women were incapable of anything other than basic house chores such as cooking and cleaning. It wasn’t until Men started going off to war that the opportunity arose for Women to enter the workplace and help support their family. A big inspiration for Women at this time was Rosie the Riveter, as she stood as a symbol of strength for Women in the workplace. Although it was incredible that Women were allowed to go to work and earn money for themselves, they weren’t receiving the same amount of compensation as men would. This is extremely unfair because Women would be working the same jobs as Men, and they would have to work more hours to get paid the same as Men. On June 10, 1963, President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act to protect against wage discrimination between genders. This allowed Women to receive the same amount of pay as Men, which was a huge victory for Women all across America. In America, Women have had to fight to get their rights and have come a long way since the 1800s. 

In today’s society, Women are still not equal to men. To date, there have been no female Presidents of the United States, and there is a huge lack of Women in leadership and authority positions. Underrepresentation of Women in authority positions lead to Women feeling discouraged and underappreciated, especially young girls. Social media has been a big help to combat these feelings and allow girls, teens, and women to feel empowered and worthy. Recently, the Barbie movie was created as a way to empower Women and show them that they can be absolutely anything they want to be. This movie allowed Women of all ages to come together and feel seen and inspired. Female activists such as Malala and Gloria Steinem. Malala’s life purpose has been to fight for the rights and education of women to be equal to men’s. In 2013, Malala co founded the Malala fund to help girls receive education and feel empowered in society, which later led to her receiving the nobel peace prize in 2014. Not only did this directly help girls, it inspired others to follow in her footsteps and fight for their own rights. Gloria Steinem has dedicated her life to Women's rights and touring the world to share her message. Steinem helped to found the Coalition of Labor Union Women, Voters for Choice, Women Against Pornography, and the Women's Media Center. She has been a direct help to Women gaining their rights. It is important that Women continue to feel inspired to become whoever they want to be as easily as a Man can!

In conclusion, Women have come a long way in the persistent battle of gender inequality. Brave Women in the media and female activists fighting for rights act as a huge inspiration for Women of all ages, and especially the upcoming generations. These female pioneers are the reason why women have freedom in today’s society. Although gender inequality in still apparent in this day and time, women will continue to fight until there is no difference between Women and Men.

#gender inequality #women's rights

[schmem14]

10 books to get to know me! 

No one tagged me, but I want to do it, so there. Ha!

And Then There Were None- Agatha Christie GOLD. There are so many of hers I love, but this one takes the cake, best UHEA I have ever read, bar none. If you only read one Agatha Christie in your life, this is it. Consult me if you want more recs. 

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings- by Maya Angelou is such a richly told autobiography. Heartbreaking, beautiful, and captivating.

A Tale of Two Cities- Basically EVERYTHING by Charles Dickens is delectable, but nothing beats the scene of Sidney Carton going willingly to his doom. Do I love tragedy? I think I’m sensing a theme here. 

Flowers for Algernon- by Daniel Keyes CHANGED MY BRAIN CHEMISTRY FOREVER. Seriously. This is a fucking masterpiece, told through the eyes of a mentally disabled man who gradually undergoes an experimental operation to increase his IQ.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine- by Gail Honeyman. What a beautiful, heartfelt story this was. Eleanor is endearing, wounded, and deeply troubled. I adored her transformation with my whole soul, and the discourse this opens about mental health and healing as a never-ending process. 

The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Edith Eger. Holocaust stories never fail to break me, and this was no exception. I cried through this whole book, raged against everything evil and horrid the holocaust represented, and made me resolve to absorb the sadness into myself as a lesson on how to heal. Many sleepless nights over this one. 

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men- by Caroline Criado-Perez. This book angered me. I’m still angry about it. It was fucking brilliant, but I can’t stop seeing gender inequity in literally all aspects of life. The best part, it’s not an opinion piece. It’s all data delivered deadpan, and it’s shocking as hell. EVERYONE should read this. 

How to Be an Antiracist- Ibram X Kendi, this book is one of my favorites about fighting racism, though there are a lot out there. This is just the one I keep returning back to again, and again. 

Sourdough- by Robin Sloane. You may have heard of Mr. Penumbra’s 24 hour library, but THIS is the unsung hero in his published works. It’s a quirky love story about learning to enjoy life in all its flavor, turbulence, and catastrophe, in a world where everything is blah. Plus, I’m a sourdough baker, so I enjoyed the tall-tale aspects of sourdough starters in all their wild complexity. One of my favorite discoveries of all time. 

Jane Eyre- by Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre gets a bad rep for so many reasons, but damn, this woman is my hero, in so many ways. I love this unremarkable, tenacious character with my whole soul. (and don’t talk to me about Mr. Rochester. Yes, we know he hid a whole WIFE in the attic, but remember, Jane LEAVES him to wander in the moors until she’s almost dead from hunger, and doesn’t go back until it’s on her terms. This woman is Goals.)

I seriously wish I could do more, but I will not oversaturate ;) tagging @the-francakes, @wolfpants, @vukovich, @nanneramma, @sliebman10, @foxfoots, @lumosatnight, @nv-md, @peachpety, @vdoshu, @lqtraintracks, @crazybutgood if you want to participate! (AND SERIOUSLY, it was so fun to go down memory lane. Join in if you want, I can’t always remember which mutuals like doing these things. Tag me and I’ll check out your list, too!)

#Tag game #Killing time #Give me ALL the books you adore #I read like i'm drinking from a firehose

[jozeldaso]

"FIGHT FOR GENDER EQUALITY"

We are all living in a world full of judgment, discrimination, and inequality, especially in terms of gender. We receive unequal treatment and distribution of rights in our society because of our genders.

For many years, the dominant gender has been men while women were the minority. It was mostly because men earned the money and women looked after the house and the children. Similarly, they didn’t have any rights as well. However, as time passed by, things started changing slowly. Nonetheless, they are far from perfect. Gender inequality remains a serious issue in today’s time. Thus, this gender inequality essay will highlight its impact and how we can fight against it.

Gender inequality refers to the unequal and biased treatment of individuals on the basis of their gender. This inequality happens because of socially constructed gender roles. It happens when an individual of a specific gender is given different or disadvantageous treatment in comparison to a person of the other gender in the same circumstance.

Impact of Gender Inequality:

The biggest problem we’re facing is that a lot of people still see gender inequality as a women’s issue. However, by gender, we refer to all genders including male, female, transgender and others.

When we empower all genders especially the marginalized ones, they can lead their lives freely. Moreover, gender inequality results in not letting people speak their minds. Ultimately, it hampers their future and compromises it.

History is proof that fighting gender inequality has resulted in stable and safe societies. Due to gender inequality, we have a gender pay gap. Similarly, it also exposes certain genders to violence and discrimination.

In addition, they also get objectified and receive socioeconomic inequality. All of this ultimately results in severe anxiety, depression and even low self-esteem. Therefore, we must all recognize that gender inequality harms genders of all kinds. We must work collectively to stop these long-lasting consequences and this gender inequality essay will tell you how.

How to Fight Gender Inequality?

Gender inequality is an old-age issue that won’t resolve within a few days. Similarly, achieving the goal of equality is also not going to be an easy one. We must start by breaking it down and allow it time to go away.

Firstly, we must focus on eradicating this problem through education. In other words, we must teach our young ones to counter gender stereotypes from their childhood.

Similarly, it is essential to ensure that they hold on to the very same beliefs till they turn old. We must show them how sports are not gender-biased.

Further, we must promote equality in the fields of labour. For instance, some people believe that women cannot do certain jobs like men. However, that is not the case. We can also get celebrities on board to promote and implant the idea of equality in people's brains.

All in all, humanity needs men and women to continue. Thus, inequality will get us nowhere. To conclude the gender inequality essay, we need to get rid of the old-age traditions and mentality. We must teach everyone, especially the boys all about equality and respect. It requires quite a lot of work but it is possible. We can work together and achieve equal respect and opportunities for all genders alike.

@joezerkemuel

JOZEL WEN M. DASO

12-ARISTOTLE

#gender equality #say no to gender inequality #stop gender inequality

[puttingherinhistory]

A number of high-profile whistleblowers in the technology industry have stepped into the spotlight in the past few years. For the most part, they have been revealing corporate practices that thwart the public interest: Frances Haugen exposed personal data exploitation at Meta, Timnit Gebru and Rebecca Rivers challenged Google on ethics and AI issues, and Janneke Parrish raised concerns about a discriminatory work culture at Apple, among others.

Many of these whistleblowers are women – far more, it appears, than the proportion of women working in the tech industry. This raises the question of whether women are more likely to be whistleblowers in the tech field. The short answer is: “It’s complicated.”

For many, whistleblowing is a last resort to get society to address problems that can’t be resolved within an organization, or at least by the whistleblower. It speaks to the organizational status, power and resources of the whistleblower; the openness, communication and values of the organization in which they work; and to their passion, frustration and commitment to the issue they want to see addressed. Are whistleblowers more focused on the public interest? More virtuous? Less influential in their organizations? Are these possible explanations for why so many women are blowing the whistle on big tech? 

To investigate these questions, we, a computer scientist and a sociologist, explored the nature of big tech whistleblowing, the influence of gender, and the implications for technology’s role in society. What we found was both complex and intriguing.

Narrative of virtue

Whistleblowing is a difficult phenomenon to study because its public manifestation is only the tip of the iceberg. Most whistleblowing is confidential or anonymous. On the surface, the notion of female whistleblowers fits with the prevailing narrativethat women are somehow more altruistic, focused on the public interest or morally virtuous than men.

Consider an argument made by the New York State Woman Suffrage Association around giving U.S. women the right to votein the 1920s: “Women are, by nature and training, housekeepers. Let them have a hand in the city’s housekeeping, even if they introduce an occasional house-cleaning.” In other words, giving women the power of the vote would help “clean up” the mess that men had made.

More recently, a similar argument was used in the move to all-women traffic enforcement in some Latin American cities under the assumption that female police officers are more impervious to bribes. Indeed, the United Nations has recently identified women’s global empowerment as key to reducing corruption and inequality in its world development goals. 

There is data showing that women, more so than men, are associated with lower levels of corruption in government and business. For example, studies show that the higher the share of female elected officials in governments around the world, the lower the corruption. While this trend in part reflects the tendency of less corrupt governments to more often elect women, additional studies show a direct causal effect of electing female leaders and, in turn, reducing corruption.

Experimental studies and attitudinal surveys also show that women are more ethical in business dealings than their male counterparts, and one study using data on actual firm-level dealings confirms that businesses led by women are directly associated with a lower incidence of bribery. Much of this likely comes down to the socialization of men and women into different gender roles in society.

Hints, but no hard data

Although women may be acculturated to behave more ethically, this leaves open the question of whether they really are more likely to be whistleblowers. The full data on who reports wrongdoing is elusive, but scholars try to address the question by asking people about their whistleblowing orientation in surveys and in vignettes. In these studies, the gender effect is inconclusive. 

However, women appear more willing than men to report wrongdoing when they can do so confidentially. This may be related to the fact that female whistleblowers may face higher rates of reprisal than male whistleblowers.

In the technology field, there is an additional factor at play. Women are under-represented both in numbers and in organizational power. The “Big Five” in tech – Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft – are still largely white and male. 

Women currently represent about 25% of their technology workforce and about 30% of their executive leadership. Women are prevalent enough now to avoid being tokens but often don’t have the insider status and resources to effect change. They also lack the power that sometimes corrupts, referred to as the corruption opportunity gap.

In the public interest

Marginalized people often lack a sense of belonging and inclusion in organizations. The silver lining to this exclusion is that those people may feel less obligated to toe the line when they see wrongdoing. Given all of this, it is likely that some combination of gender socialization and female outsider status in big tech creates a situation where women appear to be the prevalent whistleblowers. 

It may be that whistleblowing in tech is the result of a perfect storm between the field’s gender and public interest problems. Clear and conclusive data does not exist, and without concrete evidence the jury is out. But the prevalence of female whistleblowers in big tech is emblematic of both of these deficiencies, and the efforts of these whistleblowers are often aimed at boosting diversity and reducing the harm big tech causes society. 

More so than any other corporate sector, tech pervades people’s lives. Big tech creates the tools people use every day, defines the information the public consumes, collects data on its users’ thoughts and behavior, and plays a major role in determining whether privacy, safety, security and welfare are supported or undermined.

And yet, the complexity, proprietary intellectual property protections and ubiquity of digital technologies make it hard for the public to gauge the personal risks and societal impact of technology. Today’s corporate cultural firewalls make it difficult to understand the choices that go into developing the products and services that so dominate people’s lives. 

Of all areas within society in need of transparency and a greater focus on the public interest, we believe the most urgent priority is big tech. This makes the courage and the commitment of today’s whistleblowers all the more important.

#honestly I don't think women are naturally more virtuous than men #or any bioessentialism shit like that #but women are often raised to care more about their community and doing the right thing #we really need to start raising boys better #but I think that's why more whistleblowers are women #because women are more likely to have been raised to think of the community and to do the right thing

[positivelife112]



Home

 

Feminist movements have historically lacked inclusivity, often growing within a limited Western upper-class psyche, based on their own challenges and needs. The digital revolution has paved the way for a new iteration of feminism. The digital space can bolster feminist activist movements by encouraging inclusion and improving accessibility in organising collective action. It also helps weave local stories with global narratives to highlight common structural inequalities. At the same time, however, the digital space can also become a breeding ground for sexism and misogyny. This brief attempts to analyse how digitisation can affect women’s movements, especially in emerging economies like India. It does so by viewing contemporary cyberfeminism through postcolonial and postmodern feminist theories. The brief also highlights the strengths and deficits of digital activism.

Feminism consists of social, economic and political movements and theories that are concerned with gender inequalities and gaining equal rights for women. In the West, the evolution of the feminist struggle is often referred to as ‘waves’ of change, reflecting peaks and troughs of the movement. The first wave of feminism began in the late 19th and early 20th century in the West, with the primary goal of securing voting rights. The second wave emerged in the 1960s amid a rising self-consciousness for minority groups, and against the backdrop of civil rights and anti-war sentiments. The movement largely focused on empowering minority groups over issues like reproductive rights and sexuality.2 The third wave of feminism began in the early 1990s, surging from the new postcolonial and neoliberal world order. The third wave deconstructed the idea of “universal womanhood,” with the focus moving from communal objectives to individual rights.

This brief borrows the wave analogy to establish the chronology of Indian feminist politics. The foundation of Indian feminism—the first wave—was laid by the reform and anti-colonial movements of the 19th century.  The aims of the movement centred around including women in public life with better political rights, access to education and employment in the context of the colonial state. Various social reformers took up specific issues to improve the status of women. Reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, for instance, argued against the ideas of sati, polygamy, early marriage and permanent widowhood. Further, the Brahmo Samaj gave impetus to mass education of girls and women. The movement for education and social reform was largely led by upper-caste Bengali Women. The reformist movement, as a result, led to various social gains such as the legalisation of widow remarriage in 1856 and the abolition of sati. The later part of the struggle remained preoccupied with the issues on property and inheritance, limiting the composition of the movement to upper-caste and elite class women.

After independence, India began to look inward to resolve social issues and create a systematic development plan for women. This second wave of feminism became broader as the intersectionality of caste, class and culture were recognised by the state. The movement entered the private sphere to claim equal rights pertaining to marriage, divorce, succession, justice for dowry and sexual violence, and economic opportunities. An exemplification of this can be found with the passing of Hindu code bills in 1950s, which provided equal rights to women through laws on divorce, marriage, adoption and inheritance. With the improvement in literacy levels and free movement, Indian women were beginning to determine their place in society and develop identity-consciousness. The key difference between the first and second wave was that the former was espoused by men on behalf of women and did not seem to challenge the hegemony of the Indian patriarchal social structure, instead focusing on specific cultural issues that conflicted with the idea of Western liberalisation. The latter was largely led by women and women’s organisations. The lines between women’s social, economic and political rights became blurred in this period. The Chipko movement in 1973, for instance, saw women protest for their rights against environmental and economical calamities. This movement is key in Indian feminism because not only was it a demand for constitutional rights, it also stood against the patriarchal social structures at a grassroots level.

In 1980, the Five-Year Plan decided to focus on the health, employment and education of women, marking the beginning of the third wave of Indian feminism. Women-led non-government organisations proliferated in a bid to provide support to other women. The movement also took up the rights of Dalit and marginalised women. The developmental programmes and women’s groups largely directed their effort to raise the economic and social status of women. Principally, women’s groups sought the empowerment of women to integrate them into the mainstream.

With the effects of economic liberalisation and the advent of modern technology, by the 2000s, women in India witnessed a cultural shift that stressed on rights such as women’s freedom, choice and independence. Although the term ‘fourth-wave feminism’ originated in the West, it emerged in India almost synchronously due to the widespread use of social media.

Anandam work by Shubham Mahmia