Emily Ratajkowski

I don’t see any laws which are unequal in terms of gender. In fact, the courts are lenient towards women in terms of sexual assault, child custody, among other things. Crimes that are more commonly against women such as sexual assault seem to be only crime which don’t require evidence or even for timely reporting by the victim. Could you imagine accusing someone of murder and for them to be sentenced guilty without total empirical evidence?



I’m sorry he was an asshole, but you are protected by the law. If your workplace failed to protect you and it was genuine assault then you could have gone to the legal system. I don’t know any court which would be biased towards a sexual predator if they were truly sexually abusing people—especially with this notion of ‘always believing the victim’ (which is totally dangerous and actually endangers men). Women need to take responsibility for their own actions and justice. I don’t see people wining or hesistating to call the police when they’ve been physically attacked in a non-sexual context.

The disparity between mildly inappropriate flirting and sexual assault is so wide yet often blurred. One ‘mistake’ in treating someone badly doesn’t make someone a terrible person either, so perhaps he deserved to be promoted for being great at his job in his position, perhaps not, despite of his ‘mistake’. What he did was probably shit but everyone needs to stop acting like being touched on the waist or even further sexual advances are the worst crime in the be world if a simple ‘no’ or even ‘fuck off’ would suffice to end those interactions. If they then try to proceed after you’ve not consented and you have repeatedly made it clear it’s unwanted, then you have grounds to sue for sexual assault. It’s pretty simple. There’s a serious hysteria over ‘every single man being a sexual predator that is out to get you!!!’ and to perceive unwanted attention as a potential rape is to just perpetuate all this.

So no, I don’t appreciate Emily’s brand of ‘feminism’ since she should be out trying to advocate for women who aren’t protected by the law instead of enabling women in the West to continue to believe that women are just ‘so oppressed’. And why she looks so short? Beats me.

What you're missing is that America's feminism has an attitude problem, not necessarily a legal one.

Our attitude is that it's OK not only to grab women by the pussy, but to make men who do president. Women without legal protection are a whole other ball of wax. It's perfectly reasonable to advocate that Americans learn how to respect their own legislation.

You can compare it to MADD -- Mothers Against Drunk Driving. While drunk driving was illegal when MADD was founded in 1980, it was still a rampant problem. By changing attitudes, MADD made it normal to designate drivers and confiscate someone's keys when they've had too much, and drunk driving has been reduced by half since its founding.
 
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What you're missing is that America's feminism has an attitude problem, not necessarily a legal one.

Our attitude is that it's OK not only to grab women by the pussy, but to make men who do president. Women without legal protection are a whole other ball of wax. It's perfectly reasonable to advocate that Americans learn how to respect their own legislation.

Culture and law split in the axial age when nomos was uncoupled, and Western society has since been operating with two organizing mechanisms: structural legitimacy aka the law, and social legitimacy viz. interpretations of law and change, aka culture. "How do they reconcile?" Hegel, bitch. It's called dialectics, what you're referring to is the dialectical process, and also I would be cool with feminists seizing to cherrypick when the law is to be followed and e.g. didn't advocate for the abandonment of due process in rape-cases.

You make it sound so easy .But when a woman chooses to report sexual harassment or assault in a workplace, best case scenario is she gets a reputation as a troublemaker or "hypersensitive,"
That's equally facile. Look up "James Damore." Read his manifesto, too, don't rely on the HuffPost "recap" (intellectual honesty, qu'est-ce que c'est?).

And before I really cement my reputation as SGF's designated anti-feminist (which I am, but not that way, the other): my point is not that sexism doesn't exist, my point is a) feminist rhetoric wields more power than you think, and b) "feminism" is little more than a marketing ploy, literally consumerism, and also currently perpetuating arguments initially presented by anti-suffragists to leverage their case against women's rights. "But the etymological fallacy is a logical error?" Yes, I know, and you're the ones making it.

(unrelated but allowed, since following a red thread isn't a premise for feminist debate anyway: if you see all my posts and wonder why n-1 is edited, obsessively moving commas around is my kink, ok)
 
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Our attitude is that it's OK not only to grab women by the pussy, but to make men who do president.
If that were the prevailing attitude, would Trump have gotten all the criticism he did when that statement came out? Including from fellow Republicans and even his running-mate? You make it sound as if that sound clip strengthened his campaign, i.e. another example of over exaggerated feminist rhetoric, latching onto a dramatic phrase (grab her by the pussy) and then using it to sell t shirts, pins, bags, and of course, an ideology.
 
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Culture and law split in the axial age when nomos was uncoupled, and Western society has since been operating with two organizing mechanisms: structural legitimacy aka the law, and social legitimacy viz. interpretations of law and change, aka culture. "How do they reconcile?" Hegel, bitch. It's called dialectics, what you're referring to is the dialectical process, and also I would be cool with feminists seizing to cherrypick when the law is to be followed and e.g. didn't advocate for the abandonment of due process in rape-cases.

I mean, just as not all men rape, not all feminists advocate for abandoning due process. Those who do could be considered extremists; I might group them with the 40% of millenials who think offensive language should be censored: well-meaning but severely misguided.

What I'm referring to (personally, and as a feminist) is more like, how do we treat people after due process has occurred?

For example, I know a manager who was reported for sexually harassing several of his subordinates. To make the point that feminism affects men too, I'd add that most of the sexual harassment was toward men -- including a young male intern who lived with him.

This was the second time the company agreed the guy sexually harassed people. It was also the second time he fired those who made the complaints.

Due process and no-retaliation policies are great in theory, but what's the point if everyone is willing to keep this guy in his position like nothing ever happened?

Obligatory anecdotal-evidence-is-not-evidence and all that. My point is that this type of story happens all over America because our culture allows it to.
 
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I mean, just as not all men rape, not all feminists advocate for abandoning due process. Those who do could be considered extremists; I might group them with the 40% of millenials who think offensive language should be censored: well-meaning but severely misguided.

What I'm referring to (personally, and as a feminist) is more like, how do we treat people after due process has occurred?

For example, I know a manager who was reported for sexually harassing several of his subordinates. To make the point that feminism affects men too, I'd add that most of the sexual harassment was toward men -- including a young male intern who lived with him.

This was the second time the company agreed the guy sexually harassed people. It was also the second time he fired those who made the complaints.

Due process and no-retaliation policies are great in theory, but what's the point if everyone is willing to keep this guy in his position like nothing ever happened?
I think the tricky part of all of these cases is that they happen in the workplace, or in government, and thus bringing justice by firing the person accused would cause a major disruption in his(/her?? are we discussing cases of "her"?) environment, and perhaps a drop in company/government quality if the accused is good at his job. I'm not providing a solution, but I'm just saying that perhaps the reason for the slow justice process and the flippant attitudes of people has more to do with business and $$$ than it does sexism.
Obligatory anecdotal-evidence-is-not-evidence and all that.
:nod:

"Sexual harassment" is ambiguous and defined differently by everyone. What other 18 year old girls in NYC call "sexual harassment," I call "a brain-dead lowlife junkie on the subway telling me he wants to fuck me."
 
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Just adding my own thoughts here because I have had a love hate relationship with feminism because since the 1st wave there have always been flaws within feminist ideas i.e., lack of intersectionality in the beginning and to its hyper commodification at its present.

I don't even think that true feminism exists anymore because it either contrived and diluted by people who think that they're so cool because they don't shave their arm pits or decide to walk in women's march just so they can instagram it, or it is exclusively a marketing ploy. Even if it's subtle, take these Vogue articles for instance.


Unfortunately these days, everything is turned into a trend to make money, from feminism to gay rights, to human rights, etc. People are going to see Emily Ratjaifanajhf-whatever, and think "oh wow she's into feminism, cool. Me too now." And some of those people are going to take an interest for vapid idiotic self indulgent reasons, and others might actually have a contribution to the mess that our society is in right now. And I don't know if that's good or bad (it's definitely sad), but that might be what it damn takes to make these issues come to the forefront.

Or it's all just a distraction from other political travesty going on i.e., Nixon and Watergate
(look up Baudrillard but I won't get into it because I can go on and on)

Also, this is the exact embodiment of the "mass ornament" a la Siegfried Kracauer. Although hopefully not completely because he thought with the intent reproduction or to mass produce would equate into a mass society or a mass ornamentation where all individuality is lost and thus all meaning and/or valid connection becomes void.


And then there's the whole idea that "mass culture" has been gendered as feminine and thus uncultured, monolithic, etc., and "high culture," being modern and masculine. Oh man, I'm sorry. I'll stop now hahaha but if anyone is interested read Andreas Huyssen "Mass Culture as Women; Modernism's Other."

I just miss all my theory classes and got a little over exited..... I'm also a little sleep deprived and loopy. DON'T MIND ME
 
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Hmm -- I have one thought. While mainstream commodified "pussy hat" feminism is quite silly, I think it is shortsighted to argue that women are wrong to criticize societal inequity. Though one's level of disadvantage is a mixture of race / class / religion / gender / etc, dismissing the idea that empirical justice within the legal system is imperfect is...misguided at best.
 
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dismissing the idea that empirical justice within the legal system is imperfect is...misguided at best.
Not sure whose response you were referring to specifically, but I’m in no way suggesting that we should do this. I just think it should be examined through all lenses before writing it off as “sexism,” which is just as easy to claim as it is to deny, so that line of thinking accomplishes nothing. I actually think that analyzing things through a gendered or “feminist”, if you will, lens is very useful and interesting, as in feminist literary criticism (I feel uncomfortable using the term because it is inherently female, but feminist critique really examines gender relations in general and the experiences of men and women.)
Though one's level of disadvantage is a mixture of race / class / religion / gender / et.
How? Some of these sound like they are referring to very specific situations or settings (rural Southern America comes to mind for a few of these.) But generalizing and saying that, because a Muslim is disadvantaged when dealing with an islamophobe, or a woman is disadvantaged when dealing with a sexist, these groups are oppressed people (when under the law they are not) is false.
While mainstream commodified "pussy hat" feminism is quite silly,
That’s exactly the kind of feminism EmRata is giving us ;)

Sorry I replied to your points completely out of order:facepalm:
 
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My point is that [X happens] because our culture allows it to.
Yes, that was my point too, though it seems to have escaped popular notice. Pardon my hungover meandering, but I also didn't think my observation needed formalisation to expedite you girls' arrival in proper semantic territory.

it is shortsighted to argue that women are wrong to criticize societal inequity
This does not follow logically from any of the recent posts except inadvertently(?), and on a slightly contentious reading of anne's injudiciously conservative proposition that "i]t's perfectly reasonable to advocate that Americans learn how to respect their own legislation." Does this also apply to the drug legalisation activists? Asking for a friend.

That said, it is of course perfectly fine to counter criticisms of social inequity, particularly if you like me don't subscribe to totalitarianism. Equality and equity are not synonymous, but precision is probably a masculine value anyway.

Though one's level of disadvantage is a mixture of race / class / religion / gender / etc,
It's called being an individual. Why not add attractiveness and IQ to the intersectional set?
 
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edit: I lost half my post! let me post the first half.

It's called being an individual. Why not add attractiveness and IQ to the intersectional set?

I respect all of you, so I'd like to do my argument a bit more justice. I don't mean to incite a bitch fight or suggest that you are objectively wrong (what even is objectivity am I right? I wouldn't know -- I am woefully undereducated in terms of such philosophical questions), but I would like to clarify my stance and have you all hear me out.

I'll cop to the lack of precision, and would like to clarify that none of my previous comments are in defense of emrata (in case anyone was worried). I'm also intrigued by the above. Pardon me as I veer extremely off topic -- I promise to bring it all back in the end:

This is nitpicking, but IQ is a flawed metric to begin with. It has less to do with "intelligence" (a nebulous concept as it is) and more to do with external environmental factors including race, alcohol consumption, socioeconomic status, and even tobacco consumption. Though I hate neuroimaging studies, this neuron paper illustrates my point (sorry if you encounter a paywall, I'm not sure if the paper is open access and I am writing this while connected to a wifi network with institutional access).

While it is valid to argue some looser and fractionated interpretations of intersectionality are harmful and reductive, there are more nuanced perspectives on the concept that aren't as reductive as your garden-variety liberal arts campus jargon.

While my quoted post read as a list of identities that fall into discrete categories, I was (ineffectively) trying to point out that I acknowledge that not all women are treated equally.

My point, more precisely put, is that I take issue with the assertion that women are fully protected by the legal system in its current form. This actually has been stated in prior posts!

(cont'd below)
 
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If someone is being a sexist bastard then sue the piece of shit. It can’t be an ‘institutionalised’ thing if the most important institution—the the court of law—protects women (proper law enforcement is a whole other can of worms).

you are protected by the law. If your workplace failed to protect you and it was genuine assault then you could have gone to the legal system.

(An aside: a recent study actually found that women citing abuse as a reason for divorce don't actually have a significant advantage in obtaining sole custody of their children. Whether you want to dispute the veracity of their claims of domestic violence is up to you, I suppose).

Are we fully protected by the court in issues of gendered violence? Justice Roslyn Atkinson (grain of salt: she is Australian and obviously does not represent the American justice system, but many of us are non-American so I will use her as a broader example) suggests that evidence presented by female defendants is subject to more scrutiny. I have a PDF if anyone is interested. She also suggested that part of the worry women (not just self-proclaimed feminists) have w/r/t the legal system is in part bolstered by the relative lack of female justices in the courts. This assertion holds up in the US justice system. While this lopsided distribution is not definitive proof that a court populated by male justices is inherently misogynistic, it is safe to say that women and men are fundamentally different and that a 50/50 gender ratio would be preferable, no?

I don't claim that my argument is bulletproof, but I hope the above is sufficient to convince all of you that my concern is not unfounded.

So, I'll say it again: I don't agree with many of the slippery tenets of mainstream feminism, but I do agree that they have a point when they suggest that the legal justice system (as it currently exists) does not fully protect us from gendered violence.

Woo! That was fun! I much prefer this to looking at pictures of droopy lipped emrata!!
 
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Though I hate neuroimaging studies, this neuron paper illustrates my point (sorry if you encounter a paywall, I'm not sure if the paper is open access and I am writing this while connected to a wifi network with institutional access).

Sorry for the triple post, but my browser suggests that I accidentally linked to the wrong article. Don't click unless you are interested in some supplementary data for a paper about circular RNA (thrilling).

here is the right one
 
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I don't mean to ... suggest that you are objectively wrong (what even is objectivity am I right? I wouldn't know -- I am woefully undereducated in terms of such philosophical questions), but I would like to clarify my stance and have you all hear me out.

Feminist epistemology is characteristically subjective, so +1 to you for intuiting the concept of objectivity as void in this context. I'm actually quite sympathetic to the substantial thrust of these philosophical contributions, except their pathological insistence on gendering the different epistemic domains which makes me gag.

As for proving my argument wrong, (1) I haven't actually provided an argument in this discussion, so that's a category mistake, and (2) your response is largely targeting the legal protection of women, about which I have said absolutely nothing, but I'm happy to provide my standard pedantic commentary anyway.

This is nitpicking, but IQ is a flawed metric to begin with. It has less to do with "intelligence" (a nebulous concept as it is) and more to do with external environmental factors including race, alcohol consumption, socioeconomic status, and even tobacco consumption.
(1) I skew heavily toward the nurture side of the disjunction too, but I wasn't aware that the environmental factors are decisively settled as primary to intelligence as yet. Was taught in cognitive psych that IQ qua logical, semantic, and mnemonic function is a good indicator for professional performance, maybe that's incorrect, and it's irrelevant to the point I was making because (2) We're operating at the heuristic level here, same applies to e.g. race: while biologically complex, it's not as if anyone actually goes "hurr durr, race doesn't really exist so it can't be taken as a factor in Patriarchal Oppression™."

I've seen around the boards some of you pledging your loyalty to "intersectionality," and I honestly wonder if you even can provide a functional definition of the concept? Open call guys. Because, to me it seems just a circumspect way of constructing individuality in feminist terminology thus seizing linguistic territory. The observation that different people experience the world differently is shockingly platitudinal. I mean... duh. Again: this obsessive persistence on tieing inherently valuable not entirely useless perspectives to identity labels.

I don't agree with many of the slippery tenets of mainstream feminism, but I do agree that they have a point when they suggest that the legal justice system (as it currently exists) does not fully protect us from gendered violence.

Cheers to the days when French was the only language I knew gendering nouns.

My point, more precisely put, is that I take issue with the assertion that women are fully protected by the legal system in its current form. This actually has been stated in prior posts!
Not mine though, even if you attribute to me some random quote.

(An aside: a recent study actually found that women citing abuse as a reason for divorce don't actually have a significant advantage in obtaining sole custody of their children. Whether you want to dispute the veracity of their claims of domestic violence is up to you, I suppose).
If your contention is that the legal system doesn't adequately protect women, this study provides absolutely no warrant:
(1) The veracity of the IPA claims is indeed up for debate: 17% of the participants positively lied, the others span a continuum from unsubstantiated to less dubious.
(2) The mediators were not aware of the existence of abuse in all cases.
(3) "Women’s testimonies alone, for example, were not considered enough evidence for their concerns to be taken seriously. The presence of physical evidence appeared to play an important role in mothers being taken seriously...when mediators requested evidence (e.g., police reports), women were unable to provide documentation." Yes, that's a direct quote, and yes, I'm rolling my eyes. "Women whose abuse was marked by more controlling or emotional abuse than physical abuse were less likely to have evidence and, therefore, were more likely to have their allegations dismissed by the mediators." Sad, but arguably a sane practice.
(4) 69% of the women received sole custody arrangements. 21% received joint arrangements, thus "indicating that courts do not choose custody arrangements based solely on mothers’ requests and concerns." Outrageous.
(5) Among the two(!) women who did not receive custody rights, one explains that the mediator did not understand how she protected her child from the abusive father: she protected her child by leaving him alone in the house with the abusive father because the father had a gun. Yeah, I'm sorry, I also find that slightly odd, but I'm not up to snuff on systems theory. Is there a loop I don't spot here?
(6) Related to 5, of the two fathers who won custody, one actually didn't want it but was awarded custody because the mother was deemed unfit to parent the child.​
Remind me again what bias is?

The sad thing is, intellectually dishonest papers like these are being perpetuated by identity politics as supportive of their case and people are buying into it, because obviously not everyone is going to have time or interest in reading through feminist soft core porn masquerading as "science."

While this lopsided distribution is not definitive proof that a court populated by male justices is inherently misogynistic,
How charitable of you....

it is safe to say that women and men are fundamentally different and that a 50/50 gender ratio would be preferable, no?
...and no, it's absolutely not. Firstly because that's a very sexist statement, and secondly because a 50/50 outcome (=equity=totalitarianism) is not indicative of "justice" at all. See Haidt on statistics. The two claims aren't even compatible: if it is indeed true that men and women are "fundamentally different," then you should specifically expect to see their unequal representation in various professions.
 
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And as irony would have it, between Emily and Kavanaugh, the only one we decisively know to be at odds with the law is the former.

Please don’t let this derail the discussion, but didn’t Kavanaugh commit perjury, repeatedly? Refer to his statements on the yearbook, his drinking habits, and his cultural lexicon (hilariously, “boof”). And I can see why that deserved greater opprobrium than Emily’s illegal protest: he was confirmed to one of the most consequential jobs in America, dedicated to upholding the law, for life.

sidenote: anyone else interested in a dedicated sociology thread and a politics thread?
 
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...and no, it's absolutely not. Firstly because that's a very sexist statement, and secondly because a 50/50 outcome (=equity=totalitarianism) is not indicative of "justice" at all. See Haidt on statistics. The two claims aren't even compatible: if it is indeed true that men and women are "fundamentally different," then you should specifically expect to see their unequal representation in various professions.

Oops oops I wrote "fundamentally different" as an misleading stand-in for "have fundamentally different perspectives". Obviously that tweak doesn't negate any of what you said above, and there's much more to pick apart in that small modification. Perhaps another time -- I am feeble.

As for the rest -- :inluv: and if there were a white flag emoji I would include it here.
 
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sidenote: anyone else interested in a dedicated sociology thread and a politics thread?

Yes!
tenor.gif
 
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Taken from her Instagram story last week. Her lips look so ridiculous.

p5qmQB7.png
why do people will naturally big lips feel the need to overline them into oblivion? I have relatively big lips for a white girl and I understand that using bright/dark colours and super shiny glosses or completely decimating the natural outline of my lips with a lipliner only exaggerates them in proportion to my face. in short, it’s not a good look. I don’t have anything against big lips and they can look totally great if natural or with the right makeup, but insta models recklessly drawing on a new pair like close up cameras don’t exist is gonna be the death of me.
 
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why do people will naturally big lips feel the need to overline them into oblivion? I have relatively big lips for a white girl and I understand that using bright/dark colours and super shiny glosses or completely decimating the natural outline of my lips with a lipliner only exaggerates them in proportion to my face. in short, it’s not a good look. I don’t have anything against big lips and they can look totally great if natural or with the right makeup, but insta models recklessly drawing on a new pair like close up cameras don’t exist is gonna be the death of me.
in this case, em (not only overlined her already large lips), but most likely got them slightly injected. notice how her top lip is curving upward and the bottom looks swollen? that's from filler. also had to add this for giggles
5920776-63665278.jpg
 
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