(Part 2) Best products from r/AskFeminists

Tinder =/= promiscuity. It's just another tool to find partners, it's no different from finding someone in a bar or nightclub. If anything, it's less shallow because you can spend some time screening a person a bit more to make sure everything's kosher first.

I'm not a fan of hook-up culture, but for different reasons. Women generally don't get a lot of satisfaction from casual sex because their partners are less invested. Peggy Orenstein actually just wrote a book about this.

That being said, loving relationships are great, and so are hook-ups for the people who find satisfaction engaging in them. With the right partner, they can be a good way to figure out what you like.

The only things I would really discourage with a hook-up is snagging a hot person to pump your own ego, being a selfish lover, or using casual sex to gain validation. Being sex-positive doesn't necessarily mean being uncritically pro-promiscuity. It's just anti-shame.


Edit: ditched redundancies

It might be easier to pick a topic you're really interested in and find feminists who talk about it. It's hard thinking about other people in the abstract. Maybe sex and dating, maybe economics, maybe media representation in video games or comics. That way you have a foot on the ground.

Since a lot of people I personally know got sucked into RP through pick-up and dating advice, I'd suggest "From Porch to Back Seat" by Beth L. Bailey. It's not technically a book about feminism, or one that lays out defining feminist ideas or defines feminism itself. It does, though, explain a lot of the weird axioms about dating and what makes a good couple we've built up that often contradict each other. It also gives great examples of how any strict and narrow commitment to gender roles (concerning dating and marriage at least) can suck for both genders, even if the specific roles we commit to change over time.

I'm also a big fan of Lindsay Ellis, a youtuber that does long analytical videos about film. Her videos are really well sourced. Again, feminism isn't always the focus, but the things she sources in one video could give you a better reading list than I ever could if you're interested about feminist media criticism. I've been rewatching some of her Loose Canon series, and her series on Michael Bay is pretty great.

Honestly, you could google a bunch of other people's lists on the "essential" feminist reading lists and pick up the Bell Jar or the Feminine Mystique, but that's not necessarily gonna teach you what "correct" feminism is. You're gonna find out that feminists disagree on a whole lot of stuff (a good example is the sex wars that still divide a lot of people). I have no idea what camps or views would appeal or ring true to you. Not that you'd have to pick a side on everything. It's just that theres a lot of women who believe women are disadvantaged, and that they shouldn't be disadvantaged, but they don't all agree on why, how, or what we should do to fix it. You know, like any other big group of people.

That's why I'd suggest picking a spot that overlaps with something you already care about, and then branching out from there.

I'm not going to answer the question, but I have to point out that any business that focuses on ethics at the expense of return on investment is less likely to succeed than "unethical" businesses (including those that are ethical by some other standard). While there is a small market in which consumers will pay a premium for ethical products and services, it is still a minuscule marketplace. This is why these ethical rules need to be enforced by governments: to even the playing field.

And before someone brings an example of some store that has an ethical business model of some kind, I have to highlight that my statement is a statistical one, not an absolute one, so exceptions abound. But it's only fair to look for an example of such a thing. Let's compare Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to Justin's. The former is cheaper and has almost three times the reviews. Even if we weren't aware of market penetration as a function of how often we see the product, we can easily make an inference that Reese's volume of sales is exponentially bigger than Justin's. Nonetheless, I need to echo here what I said at the beginning of the paragraph: mine is a statistical statement.

> Yes but no one is claiming breaking bad embodies that special something that men should be striving for. It's not touted as the masculine ideal.

On the contrary, Walter White and his "Heisenberg" alter-ego are hugely popular characters that tons of men idolize. There's a popular design of the latter you can find on t-shirts - why would (presumably) men want to wear the character's face if they didn't think he was cool, worthy of emulation, or somehow representative of values they share?

If anything, the fact that male anti-heros like Don Draper and Walter White are idolized for being "tough", "smart", and "cool" while destroying the lives of those around them is a tell-tale sign of toxic masculinity.

So, yeah - shows like "Fleabag" are feminist because they pass an incredibly low bar presenting women as complete, flawed characters. Male anti-heros, on the other hand, are nothing new, but the differences between how they are popularly received vs. female anti-heros is highly illustrative.

So I've been trying to track down the source for this claim for almost an hour now, because I'm a sucker for econometrics and I would love to see a breakdown by asset class. Business Insider cites this report, which cites this presentation, which in turn cites this book. I can't track down an online copy, so if anyone can tell me where the author got the information from, do let me know. I couldn't find any source for the suggestion that the percentage of wealth held by women is expected to rise to a much higher percentage in the coming years -- Warner only claims that the total amount held by women will rise, but so will the total for men (meaning that the percentages could stay the same, or change in either direction).

With that said, I'd be cautious with an analysis that looks purely at wealth without any accompanying explanation. About half of all wealth is home equity, which is jointly owned and as such most likely counted under both genders. Moreover, women live on average four years longer, meaning that four additional years of compound interest on pensions and home equity. On the other hand, women earn less than men on average and as such end up with fewer assets to earn interest on. However, there is a fairly well-documented effect by which male pensioners deplete their savings much faster than female pensioners. As such, it is not at all clear where we should expect the distribution of asset ownership to end up resting, and we don't really know what a 51% split even tells us.

>instinctual drives that are more a set of goals than they are behaviors. We instinctively enjoy sex and want to survive, but the behaviors we engage in to fulfill those goals vary in every which way

That's an apt description. But the behaviors we engage in to fulfill those goals don't vary randomly. Some of them consistently vary with regard to sex. Again you reference "hard coded" behaviors, which is a biological determinist position. No scientists are talking about 'hard coded,' and innate doesn't mean 'hard coded.' You're oversimplifying the issues yourself, and accusing an entire branch of science of not getting it. But the science is aware of the complexities. It's possible for innate proclivities to be enormously complex and still innate; take language, as an obvious example.

As for parental investment theory, you still haven't provided any examples of the many counterexamples that scientists ignore. I'm unaware of them, and I don't think you'll find any. Likewise for certain tendencies that exist across cultures. The countless tribes certainly didn't share all of our social structure, but some social institutions are as far as we know ubiquitous. Some of the behavioral differences between the genders span age groups and cultures.

As far as what the proper arguments are, and how these studies can be attempted... it's really complicated. I can leave a few papers that if you're interested in, will do a much better job of explaining it. I hope it doesn't seem like I'm just dumping an 'educate yourself' link on you, but I think these papers are representative, and I honestly think that if you read through them without discounting the possibility that biology has these affects, you'll find that the field is not as insane as it can be portrayed.

[This is a good starting point for an accurate summary of an evopsych theory we discussed](
http://www.bradley.edu/dotAsset/165805.pdf)

The book Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities is a very neutral and comprehensive source on what we know about the differences between men and women

More specifically, on the intersection of feminism and science:

This is an excellent paper, and while it likely represents your position much more than mine, I think it presents a good argument that mirrors some of what we discussed


The book Who's Afraid of Charles Darwin and a critique called "more misuses of evolutionary psychology" unfortunately behind a paywall.

This last one is a very on topic; it is a response to social constructionist critiques of EP and a summary of recent debates.
http://www.bradley.edu/dotAsset/196924.pdf

To believe that we already have equality of opportunity would be to believe that it just a coincidence that women “naturally” don’t want to be part of the public places that they were legally banned from for hundreds of years. A much more logical explanation, and one that does not rest on biological and deterministic assumptions about talents/ambitions, is that hundreds and hundreds of years of discrimination has huge effects that will take much more than a few generations to fully understand and correct.

Let’s use politics as an example.

This report explains how gendered socialization can affect political ambitions. More often than men, women are socialized to not have political ambitions. This does not mean that women naturally are less inclined to want to be in politics-- they are actively taught to either give up or never form those ambitions.

Let's say that a woman happens to overcome the socialization that often deters women from having any political ambitions. What happens to the politically ambitious woman? Well, for one thing, the media is 4 times as likely to make comments on her appearance. No big deal, right? What's wrong with complimenting a woman's appearance? Well, commenting on a politician's appearance, no matter if it is a good or bad comment, actually lowers the public perception of that person.

There is also the fact that people who already hold office have advantages when it comes to reelection. Women were lawfully banned from holding public office for hundreds of years, but changing the law did not change the situation in which men already held office and were thus already at an advantage of any newcomer, regardless of sex.

We also have evidence that women are more likely to desire a career in politics if there are already women in politics, and parents are also more likely to support daughters’ political ambitions when she has role models of her same sex:

>In areas with long-serving female leaders in local government, the gender gap in teen education goals disappeared, due to the fact that girls had set higher goals for themselves. Parents were also 25% more likely to report having more ambitious education goals for their daughters, significantly narrowing the gender gap.

In summary: Women are barred from politics due to socialization and lack of parental support. Women are actively taught to not aspire to powerful positions; power is not for women. If a woman happens to disregard the socialization that is thrown at her from tons and tons of places, she still faces a barrier in that society at large will treat her differently and actively make it harder for her to get elected because of her sex. To claim that women have equal opportunity in politics is laughable. It is not illegal, sure, but equal opportunity, unfortunately, doesn’t exist. And it’s not something that we can fix by changing laws; we actually have to change the public’s views, which is much harder to do and will take many years.

I think you're vastly overestimating the strength and power of biological determinism in brain structure and development because you underestimate the power of neuroplasticity and the influence that socialization has on neuroplasticity.

No one in a research article is going to claim the blanket statement of "testosterone increases aggression," but rather "testosterone increases X behavior which we use as an endpoint measure of aggression in this group of animals of this species/in this group of humans of this age under Y pressure."

None of this means that the levels of testosterone or that men's response to testosterone does not have a socialized component, whether in initial brain wiring during development or due to other social factors.

Here are some articles which challenge the assumption that testosterone and biological determinism sufficiently account for sex differences in humans, as if testosterone can be demonstrated to promote other behaviors in certain circumstances, the causal link between testosterone and aggression is clearly not true or context-dependent:

Effects of Gendered behavior on Testosterone in Women and Men
>Testosterone is an exemplar of biology studied as natural difference: men’s higher testosterone is typically seen as an innate “sex” difference. However, our experiment demonstrates that gender-related social factors also matter, even for biological measures. Gender socialization may affect testosterone by encouraging men but not women toward behaviors that increase testosterone. This shows that research on human sex biology needs to account for gender socialization and that nurture, as well as nature, is salient to hormone physiology. Our paper provides a demonstration of a novel gender→testosterone pathway, opening up new avenues for studying gender biology.

Testosterone causes both prosocial and antisocial status-enhancing behaviors in human males
>Although empirical research and popular opinion center on its role in driving aggressive and antisocial behaviors, direct causal evidence for this link is weak in men. Some have suggested that testosterone instead promotes both aggressive and nonaggressive behaviors that enhance and maintain social status. Here, we experimentally manipulated the testosterone levels of young males and tested the fundamental predictions of these theories against behavior in a two-player economic bargaining game.

Testosterone Rex: "Fine puts under the microscope our assumption that testosterone is the wonder hormone that makes men risk takers and competitive and, in its absence, women less so."

Scientific American: Strange but True: testosterone alone does not cause violence
>Indeed, the latest research about testosterone and aggression indicates that there's only a weak connection between the two. And when aggression is more narrowly defined as simple physical violence, the connection all but disappears.

Meet the Neuroscientist Shattering the myth of the gendered brain
>So out goes the old ‘biology is destiny’ argument: effectively, that you get the brain you are born with – yes, it gets a bit bigger and better connected but you’ve got your developmental endpoint, determined by a biological blueprint unfolding along the way. With brain plasticity, the brain is much more a function of experiences. If you learn a skill your brain will change, and it will carry on changing.” This is shown to be the case in studies of black cab drivers learning the Knowledge, for example. “The brain is waxing and waning much more than we ever realised. So if you haven’t had particular experiences – if as a girl you weren’t given Lego, you don’t have the same spatial training that other people in the world have.
>If, on the other hand, you were given those spatial tasks again and again, you would get better at them. “The neural paths change; they become automatic pathways. The task really does become easier.”
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Well, I strongly identify as a trans-feminist, and I am often hesitant of feminist spaces that aren't queer-centric for the very reasons that you list. However, for me it is important to educate those feminists who are transphobic or cissexist etc to help broaden feminist thought into a more intersectional frame of thought that addresses the sexism of all different identities.

I personally really care about LGBT+ things (and as you can see the LGB movements have not always been trans friendly either), and feminism as well. I assure you that not all feminists are like those individuals your friends experienced, and I am sorry they both had to go through that. It sounds like what they experienced is what Julia Serano has called "cissexism" or, "the belief that transsexuals' identified genders are inferior to, or less authentic than, those of cissexuals." This sort of sexism is something that I think the feminist movements would benefit from addressing.

I know that it can get really depressing reading and experiencing feminists being transphobic and cissexist etc, but one author (and really great speaker) who I have really enjoyed reading is Julia Serano, who is a trans woman and a feminist. You can check out her book "Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity" and I am looking forward to her new book coming out called "Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive" which I think is something you might be interested in looking into.

Jacqueline Carey is probably exactly who you want to read. She has a three trilogy series known as Kushiel's Legacy, and it is amazing. She is very good at character development, world-building, AND the series is complete, so you won't have to wait around for years hoping to get more. It's full of politics, intrigue, drama, travel, courtesans, spymasters, royalty, pirates, romance (epic, happy, and tragic)...anything you want, it's in there. The first half of the first novel is intense world-building/set-up, but it's all interesting, and when the story kicks into full-gear, it's hard to put it down!

The first trilogy is Kushiel's Dart, Kushiel's Chosen, and Kushiel's Avatar.
The second trilogy is Kushiel's Scion, Kushiel's Justice, and Kushiel's Mercy.
The third trilogy is Naamah's Kiss, Naamah's Curse, and Naamah's Blessing.

Here is the Amazon description of the first novel in the first trilogy, Kushiel's Dart:

"A nation born of angels, vast and intricate and surrounded by danger... a woman born to servitude, unknowingly given access to the secrets of the realm...

Born with a scarlet mote in her left eye, Phédre nó Delaunay is sold into indentured servitude as a child. When her bond is purchased by an enigmatic nobleman, she is trained in history, theology, politics, foreign languages, the arts of pleasure. And above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. Exquisite courtesan, talented spy... and unlikely heroine. But when Phédre stumbles upon a plot that threatens her homeland, Terre d'Ange, she has no choice.

Betrayed into captivity in the barbarous northland of Skaldia and accompanied only by a disdainful young warrior-priest, Phédre makes a harrowing escape and an even more harrowing journey to return to her people and deliver a warning of the impending invasion. And that proves only the first step in a quest that will take her to the edge of despair and beyond.

Phédre nó Delaunay is the woman who holds the keys to her realm's deadly secrets, and whose courage will decide the very future of her world.

Not since Dune has there been an epic on the scale of Kushiel's Dart-a massive tale about the violent death of an old age and the birth of a new. It is a novel of grandeur, luxuriance, sacrifice, betrayal, and deeply laid conspiracies. A world of cunning poets, deadly courtiers, deposed rulers and a besieged Queen, a warrior-priest, the Prince of Travelers, barbarian warlords, heroic traitors, and a truly Machiavellian villainess... all seen through the unflinching eyes of an unforgettable heroine."

Also: opening up space and providing methodological instruments to allow for the academic study of men and masculinities - something that wasn't even on the horizon until early 3rd wavers rolled onto the scene.

If you're a dude looking for what the 3rd wave has done for men, I'd say that's a pretty big check mark right there.

Here are some resources for you to look at, if you're interested:

1. Masculinities, by R.W. Connell
   
2. The Men and the Boys, by R.W. Connell
   
3. Men's Lives, edited by Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner
   
4. Men and Masculinities, a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted entirely to the examination of men and men's lives.
   
5. Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions, by Lisa Wade and Myra Marx Ferree. Features a whole lot of discussion about men and masculinities
   
   This is just the tip of the iceberg of academic research on men and men's lives, and the overwhelming majority of it is a direct result of the revolutions in feminist thought brought forth by what we now think of as 3rd wave feminists.
   
   Now bear in mind that this is all academic stuff, but think about what that means for a moment: each semester, tens of thousands of students from all over the world, are asked to think critically and sociologically (or anthropologically or psychologically, whatever your preferred brand happens to be) about men, men's lives, and the issues facing men and boys today. The textbook I'm currently working on has a whole chapter that focuses on the challenges young men and boys face in North American schools, and the textbook I'm using to teach a sociology of gender course this year devotes about half of its space to examinations of men of all shapes, sizes, orientations, and expressions. That's huge. That's really huge. It's huge because action - and activism - need to be grounded in knowledge, and that's what 3rd wave feminists have helped to provide; knowledge of the unique and often serious challenges facing men and boys today.
   
   So that's what 3rd wave feminism has done for men and boys in academia. I'm sure there are resources around online that can help expand on this.

Most people will say TERFs. I'm trans, so, yeah, TERFs, but I'll also add white feminism generally.

A lot of the time when feminism encourages serious institutional change, I think it becomes paternal, and re-enacts within itself all other pre-existing social divisions. The loudest, richest feminists tell all other women what's good for them. This seems like a huge oversight to me, but I don't know exactly what to do about it.

Like, if feminism creates a culture where women are expected to work, and through this rich women attain positions of power, what's that going to do for poor moms, who are now expected to both raise children and are expected to work a shitty job? What's feminist theory going to do for girls who can't read?

I've never known how to respond to this problem and I think about it a lot. "Woman" is just such a huge and diverse class. The only solution I have to offer is local activism and bottom-up organizing. Charity starts at home.

> What you say would only makes sense if germs guns and steel would have been unrelated to immigration

My point is that immigrants to the US will not be able to colonize us using superior weaponry, resources, or immunity asymmetry. They will not be able to overpower us with their superior numbers. We are in no danger of going the way of Native Americans or Texas. With or without a more secure border.

>native Americans who were so stupid to think the refugees they helped would be grateful in the long run and treat them with respect and behave as guests?

Well, for one thing, Native Americans were so outmatched that they could not have prevented us from immigrating, as many attempted to do throughout the the Continent. Particularly after we unleashed several deadly plagues.

>By contrast the Africans who did resist immigration/conquest still have their culture and way of life

Your example of African is not nearly the gotcha you think it is. People on the African continent traded with Eurasia for thousands of years and built up an immunity to diseases like small pox, what's more many African regions had their own deadly diseases that Europeans were not immune to. A big part of the reason that Africa put up a better resistance to colonization was that they had the same type of immunity asymmetry that Europeans had in North and South America.

Source

More info


>A lot of them quite prefer living under white rule and emigrate to white areas like South Africa and Europe and most people would say their life would be better off if we accept our way of life (doctors transportation jobs economy all around whiteness) as better, but they have a choice to live like their forefathers or not.

This really has nothing to with your point, but it is still a profoundly ignorant understanding of colonization. For one thing, South Africa is a majority black state. Doctors, transportation, and jobs are not exclusively the white way of life. Just ask China who had such advanced "transportation" that they could have make a trans Atlantic or trans Pacific voyage several hundred years before Europeans.

What's more colonization is the systematic pillage and dominance of another country. African countries did not have to be invaded and stripped of their sovereignty and resources in order to import European innovations such as cars.

There are many people all over the continent of Africa that do choose to follow a more traditional way of life. And, like you said, many African countries have economies that are prosperous and culturally more similar to European and Asian countries. There are also a number of countries and regions that are still struggling with the atrocities of the past five centuries, and do not "chose" to lack jobs, doctors, and "transportation"(cars?, highways?).

> Most of the academic feminism I have read words it as the exact opposite. ... Are you suggesting that the feminine has usurped the masculine as the normative?

One of my Women's Studies classes used an older edition of Men's Lives. Some of the essays described "growing up male" as the struggle to not be feminine. Schoolyard bullying (among males at least) tends to pick on boys who are insufficiently masculine. Long before boys know what sex or sexuality is, or even how to spell it, they're gender policing each other.