Jenny:
Claudiu, I find your arguments flimsy and spurious. It is hard for me to believe you actually believe you have a viable position in what you just wrote, but whatever. . . It is emphatically not "sexist" of me to cite U.S. federal law. And as a fellow moderator, I would expect you to hold people here accountable to the law governing speech.
It's true, it's not sexist of you to cite U.S. federal law. However, I made the leap, from the way you presented it, that you supported the law, and that's what I was referring to. Now I don't have to make the leap since you said you "absolutely agree with its existence as necessary". [EDIT: To be clear, if you had instead said something like, "I understand this law is sexist, and as a feminist I can't support this law as it is against my ideals of treating women and men as equals, but the law's the law", then I would have withdrawn my point.]
So, here is my argument again. We have two statements:
1) "Feminism is the radical notion that women should be treated as equals."
2) "I absolutely agree with [the existence of the law which says that "women are a protected class under the law" and that "men are not a protected class"] [...]"
Now clearly, such a law is completely against the notion that women should be treated as equals, as it is specifically written to treat women differently than men. It is a sexist law because sexism is "prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex or gender", and the law specifically discriminates based on sex or gender. You can argue that it is "necessary to level out the long history of disempowering women on the basis of their being women" but that's an argument from effect - from what the effect of the law should be - and not an argument based on what the law actually is, which is the systematic, institutionalized treatment of women differently from men. Do you agree?
So we have only two possibilities:
1) You are not a feminist, because feminism is the notion that women should be treated as equals, and you support a law that treats women differently than men.
2) You are a feminist, but feminism is *not* the notion that women should be treated as equals, because feminists support laws that treat women differently than men.
Which is it?
If you can't follow this argument and acknowledge it or reply meaningfully to it, then there's really no reason for us to continue discussing feminism.
Jenny:
Now listen here: I've wasted enough of my precious time and energy on this issue to spend any more on people who will never understand or put themselves in others' historical and cultural shoes. I was just on another thread here where a man was basically yelling at Megan and John, graphic designers offering free Web design presentations for this site, because in their presentation they said the current logo here was "too masculine" and unwelcoming of diversity. This member here who insulted them, a man, claimed that 99% of meditators are men and that this draw to meditation is hardwired biologically to sex; he said these two "just alienated 99%" of the membership by saying the logo was too masculine and that they wanted to welcome diversity. So, you see, don't you? I land on threads here, and there is all too often someone here spouting some unsupported nonsense like this and turning it into a reason to verbally attack someone. So if you choose to persist in thinking you and certain others here have no learning to do with regard to gender and other diversity, and that the culture has no part in the fact that so few women post here, then you have an entrenched sociopolitical and cultural pathology manifesting here indeed.
Yes, I just saw that thread, and it was a bit ridiculous, especially after someone looked up the stats and found that there are actually more woman meditators than men. Clearly it has something to do with the way the DhO itself is, and I am entirely open to discussing these things. I'm even open to discussing feminism, as you can see here by me discussing feminism with you. I am not sure why you think that I think that I have "no learning to do with regard to gender and other diversity", I'm just pointing out some contradictions inherent in feminism. Feminism is not the end-all be-all of gender and diversity. Being pro-feminist does not necessarily entail being pro-equality of the sexes. Not being a feminist doesn't necessarily entail being a sexist. To conflate these things is to invite a lot of discord into these conversations!
Jenny:
I want to add that I have wonderful friends here who are men and who do understand.
Okay, so it's not just me being a man that causes me to disagree with you, since other men do agree with you. Similarly, it's not just you being a woman that makes you a feminist, since there are many
women who are not feminists.