Talk:Egalitarianism

I think this page should re-direct to Feminism instead of Equality because feminism is for an egalitarian society, and anti-fem goons like to say "I'm not for feminism, I'm for egalitarianism". It makes sense for RationalWiki to do this, because I speculate the only people who would look this topic up would be trolls who deserve to be re-directed. - Rottinginthemidwest (talk) 01:15, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Modern feminism is not about equality while egalitarianism is, so it makes sense that the two should have separate pages. --DeusKek1987 (talk) 02:50, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Reverend Black Percy (talk) 09:48, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I am serious. Equality has been achieved between the sexes in the Western world. If you disagree, I'd expect you'd be able to provide some concrete examples of where gender discrimination still exists. --DeusKek1987 (talk) 14:44, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * We know you're serious. That is indeed what makes it funny.  hard evidence is not hard to come by.  This was literally in the March edition of Gender Issues.  Their evidence suggests simulated hiring decisions were affected by stereotype strength for job role.  And almost all of the measured effect was caused by participants with strong belief in gender traditionalism.
 * So... that was a grab of the first Western-society related article in professional academic study of gender. And it completely undermines your assertion of gender equality being reached.  You'll have to trust me that I didn't go hunting for something that confirmed my biases, I preplanned my test to get the first article from the most recent edition of Gender Issues related to western society and see if it endorsed or rejected your hypothesis.
 * I certainly haven't seen any compelling evidence ever of the notion that "Equality has been achieved between the sexes in the Western world." ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 16:23, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * What I find interesting as well is the (generally predictable) co-existence of insistence that oppression is completely over in the west already, with — in the next breath — insistence that the west is in dire need of an organized struggle for equality. In other words, if the current west — "as is" — is free from oppression, then that entails by necessity that no current strand of feminism is oppressive, either. This is a lack of nuance which feminists don't have to deal with in their own worldview, as feminists have no problem recognizing the oppressive nature of certain schools of feminism, as well as with anti-feminist societies. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 16:37, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Two things: First, when I say equality, I mean legal equality. As in, equal treatment under the law. (Perhaps I should have specified) This has undeniably been reached. We have multiple, redundant laws that criminalize the discrimination of women in the hiring/promotion process. These are in place specifically to counter the natural human tendency to develop prejudices. You linked to a study confirming what most people already understand: gender stereotypes exist. But gender stereotypes do not equal legal discrimination unless those stereotypes are enshrined in the legal code somewhere. Second, not everyone who opposes the vindictive and spiteful sects of feminism are automatically MGTOW or MRA. I hope you're not preparing to go down the intellectually dishonest path of trying to paint me as an MRA to dismiss my criticisms. --DeusKek1987 (talk) 18:39, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah, you should've specified "legal equality" from the get-go so we didn't assume you just opened a can of worms. Though I still think modern feminism is about equality just as how feminism is always about equality. 18:43, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * My apologies, I should've been clearer. However, if modern feminism is about equality, why is it so inequitable towards issues that primarily affect men? If you bring up male suicide statistics, your garden-variety feminist will dismiss them out of hand. --DeusKek1987 (talk) 18:53, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually, I think tenets of feminism is mainly about combating patriarchy, which we can argue that it also harms men. I'm a feminist. Though suicide is an issue. From what I can remember, females attempt more suicide, but males are more likely to complete the suicide since they use lethal measures, especially using a gun. We can perhaps link to emphasis on "toughness" as a plus for masculinity, and guns are "tough". And of course, that's a big problem. Historically and globally, however, women are disproportionately treated as a minority group, with less rights than men, and so that's why feminism even exists in the first place. Some men's issues like rape also stem from male dominance, but even those aren't taken seriously by self-proclaimed MRA's. I will gladly support equality for men like custody, rape treatment, and abuse, even if those can be argued that they stem from the same issue that plagues women: patriarchy. I don't think any feminist on RationalWiki disagrees on the support part. 19:04, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * @LGM Once more, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 19:08, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * @DeusKek Please note that I was commenting on Ikanreed by going on a tangent, stating "What I find interesting as well is the (generally predictable)...", which certainly isn't a statement which is meant to be personal towards anyone here. Like you say, I will also state that: Perhaps I should have specified [that more clearly]. If you read what I wrote as a statement which stands on its own legs (i.e., as a stand-alone statement rather than any form of reply to anyone), I think it contains a perfectly valid, though general, observation. Now, as pertains to your statement on law... If we're discussing "the west", we need to note that law differs between individual nations. It can also vary between federal and state level, and so forth. The legal process also has a substantial amount of "processing" surrounding it in many nations. Some laws can be vetoed, et cetera... There's also an argument to be made about actual "legally enshrined" inequality (single-gender draft, et cetera). Self-appraisals are always difficult, but as far as I know (as a humanist), I "belong in" the Enlightenment tradition. In other words, I don't generally recognize the criticisms of, say, critical legal studies as being valid in the least. But that being said, I think it's one thing to point to inclusiveness in legal texts, and another to look pragmatically at other aspects of society. Laws are, as we know, no better than how consistently they are enforced. And improper interpretation can make any law into a tool for injustice. But I digest; ramble, even. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 19:06, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * @DeusKek (EC) Regarding male suicide statistics — I gotta be honest with you. I've certainly met hundreds of garden-variety feminists in real life — in the dreaded SJW fortress known as Sweden, no less — and I've never heard anyone trivialize or dismiss male suicide as anything but part of the larger problem called "suicide", generally. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 19:06, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The only reason it's so frequently rejected out of hand is that people like DeusKek never intellectually honestly care about it and work on suicide as an issue(side note: a lot of the difference in suicide rates between men and women can be attributed to relative firearm ownership and usage. I'm all for trying to address that problem... but I strongly suspect our "egalitarian" friend would object).  Dear concerned editor, please tell me of a time you raised the concern of male suicide rates outside of objections to feminism, and a story of how that went.  Please and thank you.  ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 19:15, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm just saying, but... Not once have I even heard a single person in real life — nor, as I can recall, on TV — discuss suicide in terms of "there's too much being done for men", or "not enough men are committing suicide" or "we should divert resources from preventing male suicide to preventing female suicide" or ANYTHING of the sort. Ever, in my entire life. Where does this idea even come from? No feminist literature I've read has ever made an issue out of that, either. It all sounds like some sort of anti-feminist equivalent to the atheist professor myth to me (and no, that's not meant as an accusation, DeusKek). Reverend Black Percy (talk) 19:23, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Stereotypes of feminists, straw-womaning (or maybe "man" as in "man is easy to take down"?) them, and extrapolating them to issues like suicide. I wonder if this revision I reverted can lead to people thinking that I'm a "garden-variety" feminist that rejects male suicide as a whole rather than reject the edit based on a technicality. I have also never heard anyone say "nothing should be done for men", though people might think there are implications on why we focus on women's history or women's problems and why are they full-on courses rather than men. But we still have circles on discussing men's problems and those are very inclusive (everyone is welcome) and supporting and that's what I like to see. :) Anyhow, regardless of what DeusKek thinks, I usually assume intellectual honesty. :) 20:26, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * @ikanreed You don't know me personally, nor do you have any idea how I feel about the suicide epidemic or what I've done to combat it. Your claim that "people like DeusKek never intellectually honestly care about it and work on suicide as an issue" is false and completely baseless. @Reverend Black Percy What about the Warren Farrell protests at the University of Toronto? What about the fact that there is basically no public funding for domestic violence shelters for men, since some feminists have successfully pushed the narrative that only women can be victims of domestic violence? @LGM Of course most feminists aren't going to come out and say, "Nothing should be done for me." That makes their hypocrisy too obvious. We have to judge feminism by its actions as well as its rhetoric. --DeusKek1987 (talk) 22:32, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * @ikanreed You don't know me personally, nor do you have any idea how I feel about the suicide epidemic or what I've done to combat it. Your claim that "people like DeusKek never intellectually honestly care about it and work on suicide as an issue" is false and completely baseless. @Reverend Black Percy What about the Warren Farrell protests at the University of Toronto? What about the fact that there is basically no public funding for domestic violence shelters for men, since some feminists have successfully pushed the narrative that only women can be victims of domestic violence? @LGM Of course most feminists aren't going to come out and say, "Nothing should be done for me." That makes their hypocrisy too obvious. We have to judge feminism by its actions as well as its rhetoric. --DeusKek1987 (talk) 22:32, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Lack of public funding for domestic violence shelters for men is a problem, but that's not a symptom of the rise of feminism. It's difficult to conclude how feminism should be judged since it's an extremely broad movement with many, many branches. Additionally, you can't say "feminists successfully pushed narrative that only women can be victims of domestic violence" especially without considering that it may be symptom of a patriarchal society, where "only women can be victims of domestic violence" because patriarchal stereotypes denote them as passive, weak, subordinate, and reserved" and men as "strong, tough, assertive", and that stereotype manifests across the globe and historically. When the feminists you describe say otherwise and try promoting hatred or dismissal of men's problems, they sound more like a minority extremist and are not representative of what the entirety of what feminism argues. 23:35, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

"Egalitarian has become a buzzword anti-feminist MRAs use to pretend to be progressive. In their minds, everyone has an equal opportunity and therefore feminism (and other progressive movements) is unnecessary, rather than recognizing how not everyone gets an equal outcome out of that initial equal opportunity." So, is that saying that women don't have equal opportunities when compared to men in our society? If you believe that, I'd like to hear some evidence/examples. Or perhaps the argument is that equality of opportunity isn't important, just equality of outcome. If that's the case, I'd like to hear somebody defend that position and explain why equality of outcome is preferable and how attaining it would even be possible. --DeusKek1987 (talk) 19:42, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Egalitarians are feminists by definition - what definition?
"Another issue is that egalitarians are by definition feminists, as an egalitarian believes everyone is equal, and a feminist believes in equality for the sexes, meaning that feminism describes an egalitarian's belief on sexism. However, this doesn't always go both ways, as there are some transphobes in the feminist movement."

There are feminists who disagree that the definition of feminism is about equality, saying that it is, rather, specifically about women's liberation. Proof: https://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/mary-kenny/i-believe-in-womens-liberation-not-in-some-unattainable-notion-of-equality-31013326.html (sadly paywalled but start is visible; the good thing about this link is that it is a mainstream source and can not be written off as just TERF).

Separately, there are feminists, and also there are male allies of feminism, who state that men (or cis men) should not identify as feminists. Proof: https://brightthemag.com/male-feminism-is-fakery-be-a-femally-f109ef37e9a3 (male ally, apparently NOT transphobic)

So for these two reasons, we can't really say that a genuine egalitarian is always a feminist by definition, because among the various definitions of feminism, some are not about equality and some do not include men (or cis men). And we see all that *without* invoking the TERFs. Ramendik (talk) 22:29, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The point isn't that all feminists are egalitarian (obviously not true, although I suppose one could use the "not real feminism" argument), it's that all actual egalitarians are feminists in some sense. It's a square and rectangle situation. 23:21, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Well yes, "in some sense". But I think that it is quite valid for a male person to not call himself a feminist even when "in some sense" he is. He might disagree with some views of some or most feminists while still being, yes, a feminist "in some sense". He might also *agree* with the views of some feminists such as: http://www.thecrimson.com/column/femme-fatale/article/2017/3/23/hu-beware-male-feminist/ . Therefore, the quote "If you see someone proclaiming themselves as an "egalitarian" rather than a "feminist" run away as fast as you can", explained as "they are basically an MRA", is not correct. By far not every man who refuses to call himself a feminist is a mini-Paul Elam. Ramendik (talk) 01:24, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

This is the kind of argument that occurs when one wants to argue that feminism is popular. If one assumes the Merriam Webster passive definition, "1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes." Then feminism is very popular. On the other hand, as an active definition states "2 : organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests," feminism is less popular as an active political movement, perhaps in part because of divergent feminist ideologies. Today, in America, feminist orientations have been adopted by the Democratic Party. So now, Republicans often can reject feminists for unsound reasons: the zero sum gaming now typical in US politics. Ariel31459 (talk) 02:30, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Why people choose the title Egalitarianism (in relation to Feminism)
Think about it this way, your feminists of very extreme variety have the biggest mouths and will go on talk shows to demonize all men. They might be fairly small in size but they know how to speak the loudest. Hypothetically, lets say you were unfamiliar with equality for both sexes and you heard the hate speech from the extreme group of feminists the most, would you want to be lumped in with them? Hell, I don't even want the feminist label attached to me. Not because I support inequality, because of the extreme variety getting the most publicity and tainting the label. --Rationalzombie94 (talk) 01:19, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

What's an MRA?
Somewhere there is a quote in the article relating to feminism, which uses the acronym MRA. Are there not enough pixels in the page to include what the frig this means and stands for?! --82.21.97.70 (talk) 00:41, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Men's rights activist(s). The name is somewhat misleading. 01:03, 22 September 2020 (UTC)