Given how odious that closing paragraph is, I wouldn’t bet that Elsa was concerned about how 
have treated FemFrequency.
Well there it is. I swear, I should be angrier about death threats, but as a callous outsider, the thing that I can’t stand the most is people complaining that Sarkeesian did a kickstarter and that people donated money to it. That, apparently, is not evidence that Sarkeesian was proposing to do something that people wanted, but instead evidence that she has employed some kind of media witchery to separate gullible people from their money - people that now must be defended!
If someone wants to write, “I donated to Sarkeesian’s kickstarter and I’m not thrilled with the results,” then sure, let them complain (although, you know, kickstarters promise you literally nothing in return for your money, so expressions of remorse at donating should stop short of an implication of fraud). But Christ Almighty Who Died for My Sins only to Rise Again and Ascend Bodily into Heaven, complaining that someone was successful in getting other people to support their work is stupid.
Why did people donate to Sarkeesian’s kickstarter? WHY DO PEOPLE DO ANYTHING, YOU MORONS!
People who complain about kickstarters should go heckle Amish barnraisings. Convincing other people to help you because they want to see you succeed. The Shame.
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That’s what I was going to reply to them about, except that I was late to the party.
FWIW I have indeed had feminists browbeat me with assertions of feminist orthodoxy, so I do not disagree with that bit. But then the hyperbole swings 180 degrees to “sex positive = gender essentialism” which is contrary for me. I have talked with a few people who think that way, but it in my experience it is neither a common nor well-argued outlook.
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But what does that mean, “feminist orthodoxy?” A popular shorthand for feminism is “the radical notion that women are people.” I’m fine if people want to be doctrinaire about that. Expect it, even. But I get the sense that other assumptions or positions are getting loaded into the phrase “feminist orthodoxy.”
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Orthodoxy – having the right opinion
as distinct from
Heterodoxy-- not in accordance with established doctrines
of course, arguing from etymology is dangerous.
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It means whatever people think it means. Usually it seems to function as an ad populum argument to dismiss others opinions or experience, rather than to seriously consider them. As a chronic outsider with unconventional opinions on practically all social issues, I encounter it constantly, even in progressive circles. It’s the argument for common sense, but limited to a specific subculture or discipline.
“Most feminists wouldn’t agree that your position counts as feminist.”
“Your opinions about homelessness are outré and not shared by others.”
“Nobody else sees it that way.”
It’s a common rhetorical device, and intuitive enough to seem obviously applicable to most without thinking about it. Perhaps not unlike “righties” appeals to individual authority - bringing the constant risk of cults of personality - the “lefties” desire for more egalitarianism can encourage the notion that more people believing something makes it accurate - bringing the constant risk of group-think. This goes some way towards illustrating how/why I distrust partisanship as nearly always being an ineffective oversimplification of social issues. My experience is that it works better for people to audit their own and other’s thinking than to simply choose and defend token ideological positions.
But, apparently, most people don’t agree! XD
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Precisely! But it naturally follows then to ask - doctrine established by whom? The popularly accepted doctrine then becomes its own appeal to authority.
Dangerous to some people’s presumptions, perhaps.
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Etymology tends to focus on what a word meant when it first enters common usage (from a foreign tongue) , and not necessarily on how centuries of usage have changed how the word is used.
Or are you one of those Philologists, more concerned with the literature of long dead peoples than contemporary literature?
Still, the original meanings of ortho, and para, and meta, as well as cis,and trans are still useful in chemistry.
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Tracing the various meanings of words is where it gets interesting. The connections seem far more likely to be made by tracing back from contemporary usage to its earliest origins.
Neither! I do not assume the linearity of history which most do. History depends not only when events happen are are recorded, but when you are. Most everybody assumes that they are “modern”, regardless of when they live.
Their usefulness is largely because of their “prescriptive” - or, as I prefer to say - programmatic qualities.
Word usage becomes yet another instance of ad populum argumentation, where a person using a completely valid sense of a word gets chastised by other who will without any sense of irony assert that “Words can have more than one meaning!”. Which is of course true! But in no way suggests that their preferred usage in a given instance is more applicable. Stuffy people are more likely to use naive semantics “This is what it means!” rather than considered semantics “This is what I mean when I say it.”
I have regularly witnessed people getting pissy and discussions derailed because people will simultaneously affirm the ambiguity and plurality of word meanings - yet insist that their preferred usage is correct, and earlier (even original) meanings are completely incorrect and invalid. For instance, on IMDB one of the most oft abused words is “pretentious”, so one is assailed by both people who appear to use it incorrectly (no clear indication of what they mean), as well as word police who try to correct others with an extremely narrow meaning in usage. I don’t need an etymological dictionary to know that “pretentious” can mean “that which conveys a pretense”, it is literally there for anyone to see. But narrow contemporary usage prescribes what kind of pretense. Really though, pretense does not need to be of a self-important sort at all. So I could say that the claim of Seinfeld being “a show about nothing” is terribly pretentious, and be accurate in my opinion, despite it not coinciding with other people’s usage.
Those who argue for language use being descriptive rather than prescriptive get rather authoritative and uptight when my real-world usage isn’t to their liking.
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Yeah, but if your position is that women should be barred from workplaces because most women want really want to be at home raising families but feel forced to work and are therefore oppressed, then those feminists would be right. For every good new idea there are hundreds or thousands of stupid-as-fuck new ideas. Objectively, if you find yourself disagreeing with the consensus, it is more likely that you are a moron than that you have anything worthwhile to add.
Of course all progress is dependent on people who have new ideas being convinced that their new ideas are good ideas and advocating for them. So you know, go do that, just in case you’re one in a million. I think I’m going to just hide under a blanket instead.
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Thanks, but if I wanted a post-modern recursive deconstruction of the term, I would have asked popobawa. 
Seriously, though, thanks for responding in earnest.
I am gathering that the phrase is most often used as a term to differentiate one’s own brand of feminism from what one thinks is mainstream feminism. This make no sense to me. One would have to believe in a monolithic definition of “feminism” or that one version is best and should be dominant. But we’ve got such flavours as 1st wave, 2nd wave, 3rd wave, sex-positive, and even Jewish Orthodox feminists, etc., etc. If one of these has been anointed supreme, I’ve not gotten the memo. Indeed, I thought one of the strengths of feminist philosophy has been the tolerance for other strains of feminist worldviews.
To me the lowest common denominator of feminism would be to see women as people, as individuals who each have their own interests, skills, weaknesses, proclivities, and above all AGENCY. To deny that is sexist, to promote that just common sense.
Or, as Humbabella said:
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Orthodox tea is theft.
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Depends how they got it!
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXediteditedit
The bitter pill to swallow is I think that consensus is delusional. But, granted, it would be extremely convenient if it was a realistic concept. The masses who complain about social issues are often people who do not do anything to implement the reforms they think are necessary. The pragmatic approach them seem to be to understand how the injustices which are witnessed actually function in the world. Who perpetrates them, why, and how have they gotten away with it? But this is creepily matter-of-fact, and abstracted from the moralising and token sympathies which many prefer. But if people cannot bring themselves to understand in cause-and-effect ways what is happening (as opposed so obvious social and historical rationalizations) then they are in a position where it is unlikely they will effect any directed change in these areas. Attempting to discuss this stuff in tactical and strategic terms gets many people extremely hot and defensive!
For example, as per your example of feminism:
I don’t quite agree with this, but I think there is something to it, which I have explained as that the entire concept of “victimhood” seems top me to be disempowering - it can serve to deny agency to the very people who need it most. This discussion had come up in a discussion moths back about sexual assault, and I offered this as a conclusion I had come to based upon my own experiences of having been sexually assaulted. Even though I explained that respect and agency are paramount, and that empathy for people who have experienced these sorts of violations is important, I was instantly attacked by people who loudly denied me my own position. Instead I was being told that I thought it was ok to rape people! When going out of their way to misrepresent what I said was only so effective, I was told that my presence in the topic was intrusive, and that it was categorically inappropriate to discuss my experiences, and I was banned from the topic - as well as other topics about sex and gender for a week or so. My posts were all deleted.
It is hard for me to feel that my position was really in disagreement with the consensus, because people instantly disregarded what my actual position was, and instead gravitated towards one point I made, which they took way out of context. Am I not qualified to tell people “this was my experience, and what I learned from it”? How would this honestly be an “entitlement” which prevents others from discussing their own experiences and opinions?
Going back to your
My position on this appears to again be dangerously unconventional, and likely to be instantly misunderstood.
- sexism is not acceptable
- people should not be barred from employment based upon their sex
- in practice, employment often does more than anything else to undermine people’s agency
- women and men alike would do better to only approach employment on their own carefully-considered terms, or else avoid it altogether.
Explaining this in a normal, conversational paragraph which doesn’t happen to be in the Sup Marxists? thread would get me instantly attacked by some who insist in interpreting it as me implying that women should not be “allowed” to work where they choose. Because, again, it rethinks something that seems to be central to their understanding of the issue, as they identify with it. So everything else I said gets ignored or twisted into something else.
It is hard for me to accept being the moron without anything worthwhile to add when it seems apparent that I have as much or more experience with what is being discussed than those who claim that avoiding my input would be more progressive. People tell me that I am a naive white-tower wanna-be philosopher who doesn’t know The Real World, but when I explain that I have - lived as homeless/ been sexually assaulted/ successfully fought cops/ etc then people just complain or wish me away.
I don’t mind if people disagree, but the problem seems to be that when they suspect that they disagree, that they almost invariably argue against things I explicitly took pains to explain do not even represent my position on the topic. This is why I complain about token positions on social issues, because many people then seem to be unable or unwilling to discuss different perspectives of what is happening or how to deal with it.
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No, no, no…
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Gah - I’m slow!
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Earl Grey is not proper tea. At. All. Nope.
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I would like this, but I’m out of likes.
