My Lens

Each Individual has there own way to look at the world. It's definitely a tautology of sorts, so it's obviously true. Each person's individual experiences makes up how they see the world. I figured that as my last post, I would change things up a little and talk about me, and a few core ideas that define my actions and beliefs, and what they mean to me.

Humanist - I think that if I could say that I have faith in anything, I could say that I have faith in humans. I love humans, and I always have. Some people assume that this means that I've not had bad experiences with people. This is an untrue assumption. I have had a number of bad experiences with people. Still, I believe that almost every human has the capacity to be good and kind and so on. I believe that all humans share the same basic human rights, and that we ought to work to view all people as equal. We can do so much! It is and we are so incredible. I hope to continue loving humans. When discussing the future, I tend to look at humans in a positive manner. I want to give people as many chances as I can, even if it hurts me. One of the things that makes me the most sad is when people chose to disappoint me when i gave them the option to easily avoid doing so. 

Transhumanist - Transhumanism is the augmentation of humans through technology. I think that technology is amazingly awesome, largely because we are using it as a tool to improve the human condition. I think that technology will continue to play a large part in our futures; it could give us a way out of many of the problems that we currently face. However, it could also bring about many negatives. Combined with humanism I think that humans will learn to use technology to our advantage, and that eventually humans will have improved bodies, will be able to explore the universe, and will know so much more about the universe

Pacificist - I am a pacifist by nature and by practice. I seldom experience anger, and when I do it's even more rarely the kind of anger that is channeled through physical aggression. In addition to that though, I intentionally try not to harm things. I do not kill mosquitoes, unless there is sufficient reason to do so (one biting my arm doesn't count, but 20 biting me in a car that I need to drive where opening the window would only serve to let in more of them does). Basically, if there is a way to not kill something, I will take that option. I will go largely out of my way to save even hornets, and spiders. 

Well, there they are. They are decently important to me. There are many more things that are important to  me. If you want to know more, please ask me. Good-bye class. 

What Is There?

So, the semester is coming to a close. I suppose I wanted to talk about my understanding on reality and our perception. I am a bit of a fallibilist, so I am not really certain about the extent of the existence of the world outside ourselves. Still, for the sake of functioning with the life that I have, I operate within the world that I seem to operate in regardless of whether or not it actually exists.

I suppose I continue to operate with this theory as the foundation: my thoughts match my perceptions which may or may not match consensus perceptions which may or may not match reality. Actually, I am not sure (go figure) about the connection between my thoughts and my perception, given that my thoughts about my perception tell me that my perceptions may be entirely wrong even if it feels as though they are right. Oh Aramark! This is quite a mess. 

Still, I have an identity in this world, regardless of it's reality. It would definitely be sad if my identity was based entirely on a falsehood, but I am not really sure what to do about that. I am realizing this this particular post is going to end on a rather sour note. I will do my best to make the next (read: final) note happier

A Rose By Any Other Name.

Names, I think, should be less important than ideas. It is more important to believe in the ideas of a religion than to identify as a follow of the religion. It is more important to believe in gender equality than to identify as a feminist, masculinist, or gender egalitarian. Names generally serve to help people draw an easy connection between and individual and what they believe. For example, when someone says that they are Mormon, in general, they are trying to communicate the idea that they believe in the ideas and goals that are associated with Mormonism.

If a person is identifying with a name that tends to hurt their goals, they may want to reconsider how they self identify. If, for instance, a gender egalitarian, feminist, or masculinist claimed to support gender equality, but found that using the terms gender egalitarian, feminist, and masculinist tends to turn many people off of the idea of gender equality, for the sake of the goal that individual should consider whether self-identifying with that term is worth the cost to the goal associated with the name.

I think it can be a problem when people start identifying with names, and history, rather than ideas and future.

Imagine this scenario: people in the abolitionist movements had accomplished much in way of making others see the rights of people of color. Laypeople, however, due to the actions of one radical abolitionist, had begun to associate "abolitionist" with "Satan-worshiping animal-sacrificing Julius Caesar-lovers." Laypeople, due to this association, decided not to support the rights of people of color, and started to protest against abolitionists. Abolitionist were too attached to their label of "abolitionist" to give up the label, even though keeping the label was working against the goal of abolitionism. Slavery has yet to be abolished.

Basically, I think this sort of thing is harming a variety of movements, including the feminist/masculinist movement.

Correcting on the Internet

In response to a classmate (modified slightly to remove dependence on context) - full post here

Masculinism and feminism suffer from the same problem it seems. The definition of words can often say largely different things than the reality of a group practices. The reality is that feminism and masculinism means different things to different people. Some people call themselves feminists and fight for true equal rights, but some feminists advocate only for women's rights and could care less about men's rights.  Some people call themselves masculinists and fight for true equal rights, but some masculinists advocate only for men's rights and could care less about women's rights. Both groups often neglect the rights of non-binary folks.

It is best to provide a holistic approach, noting that both groups have goods and bads, radicals and non-radicals. Regardless of intent, understanding, and subjective opinion, I do not think it is a good idea to post, for the entire internet to see, "while both groups understand that gender inequalities exist, feminism focuses on equating women to men and masculinism seeks to keep men as the dominate group in society." This statement is largely biased in that it ignores radical feminists who don't focus on equating women and men, and it ignores masculinists who believe the best way to achieve gender equality is to equally focus on both rather than trying only to move men up. It's promoting feminism and degrading masculinism in a way that is unjustified and not consistently true. Both groups include people who are genuinely for equality and people who genuinely believe that one sex is better. Gender equality should be less about names of groups and more about the ideas. Generalizing one group as entirely bad is no way to achieve true equality. 

Leaving alone sweeping generalizations that are objectively/empirically false, I think, is not a good thing. Imagine seeing someone post on the internet, for everyone to see, "I've not met a feminist who supports men's and non-binary people's rights, therefore all feminists only support women's rights" or "I have not met, talked to, or read about a homosexual woman, therefore there are no homosexual women." I think that you would be in the right to suggest that their experiences were inadequate to leave them with a realistic impression - some women are homosexual, and others are not; some feminists support equal rights across all genders, and others do not. Their views, regardless of how many sources they have used or how many years they have had those view, do not reflect the reality, and as soon they meet a homosexual women or a feminist who actually supports equal rights they cannot say that homosexual women, and equal rights supporting feminists do not exist, unless they pretend that the homosexual woman's and the feminist's experiences are invalid.

(Wikipedia, which is not always the most accurate site (but is not always as awful as people make it out to be), gives Warren Farrell's (Ph. D in Political Science, and B.A. in Social Science) definition of masculinism, which is largely positive and also focuses on women's rights. This renders to sweeping generalization inaccurate.)

Views and experiences may be subjective, and a blog is a place to state those things, but knowledge is not subjective, and experiences help to build knowledge. People can think whatever they want about anybody, but as soon as those thoughts translate to action, such as giving a biased view on a subject matter, their thoughts are no longer protected by subjectivity. People have every right to argue with someone if they spread biased information about feminism, saying that it is only bad. However, people have the same right in regards to other misinformation. 

Feminism and the Reinforced Binary

Feminism as a word from the Latin fēminīnus meaning woman. I think that this is one of the simple reasons that people choose not to identify using feminism; Feminism, despite claiming the definition of "activists for gender equality," does in its very root etymology, neglect men, and people of non-binary gender. Even the feminist symbol does not include the symbol for men or people of non-binary gender.

This is the feminist symbol

And this is a symbol the represents all genders

Additionally, many people who identify as feminist present society is such a way that dichotomizes gender - this often takes the form of "men do this and that to women" and sometimes includes "women do this and that to men." Quite apart from its truth value, we can see that it neglects to discuss the issues of non-binary genders. Many feminists, I am sure, recognize that non-binary gender people exist, but I seldom see any who constantly include those individuals in part of their world view. Many feminists use exclusively 'she' in their writings. which certainly works for enacting revenge for the years of male-specific language, but does little to solve gender equality problems when it outright neglects non-binary people.

Intersectionality

In response to Skyla - full post here

Personally, I support intersectionality as a conceptual theory. That said, I don't think it is a good idea to go labeling it as a feminist theory; it seems counter-effective. The idea of intersectionality, as far as my understanding goes, is that all social rights issues share features, and that equality is best achieved through recognizing that, refusing to play in the oppression olympics, and fighting together. So, it seems strange to try to elevate feminism using intersectionality.

Personally, as someone who recognizes the intersection between social issues, I try to use the broadest, most inclusive term that I can. I generally refer to myself as a humanist (and transhumanist, but that's another topic) foregoing the less specific labels like feminist, masculist, (insert thing here) activist. I think that the best way to achieve equality is to give up words like 'feminism,' and focus on the largest group that we can. I am not sure if holding on to these terms are actually doing any good anymore, I imagine that soon, if they haven't already, they will start to harm equal rights movements.

We see this sort of problem all of the time. We try to become equal by vilifying those who are not part of a group, or praising those who are part of the group. I mentioned in one of my last posts that this doesn't work. Instead of "driving the difference spike" by promoting Female History Month, Black History Month, Black Female History Month, etc., we need to use history and include people from all these groups.

Ignorance: Sometimes A Choice In the Age of Information

In response to Skyla - full post here

It's quite a shame really when people try to 'advocate' for things they do not really know about. In general, I do not think that ignorance is a choice, and therefore, I do not think that it is punishable (in the loosest sense of the word). However, I think that there is a kind of ignorance that characterizes many people in our contemporary society. I suppose we could call it intentional ignorance.

In the age of information, knowledge, in "first-world" at least, is available on the internet at many peoples' fingertips throughout various points of the day. If a person is going to support a cause, they should, using the internet, learn as much as they can about whatever they are supporting.

Many people, for instance, use the acronym LGBT but don't know for what the T stands, yet they do not look it up. Many people also say that they support the T of LGBT, but they still don't know what it stands for. Even people who do know for what it stands sometimes do not know what it is, or how to actually support them without causing harm or spreading misinformation.

Again, in an age of technology, sometimes ignorance is a choice.