this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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You're not going to argue equality away by bringing up the worst people you can think of associated with the movement. There is no substance to arguments based on ad hominem character attacks. I don't care how transphobic someone is, feminism is about equality for women. There is nothing misandrist about wanting to be equal to men in society. And here is a reality check for you, no one needs to be nice, or have a good public perception, to get human rights. Our rights are supposed to be something you get for being human.
The ‘worst people’ shape the image of the movement. The core of the argument still doesn’t change, no matter what you say. The ones defining feminism as ‘women who hate men’ aren’t misogynists alone; it’s the misandrists within the movement itself.
No the worst people of the movement are used be the people who don't like the movement to discredited the movement. An ad hominem argument will always be a substanceless ad hominem argument. The image of the movement isn't what's important, it's the substance of its arguments. Wanting equality with other people is not hatred of those people.
Again, this whole thread was about the image of the movement, and the culpability of misandrist feminists in painting an image of feminists as ‘women who hate men’. In this particular thread, the ‘image of the movement’ is literally the core topic of discussion.
I would recommend checking the meme again. It's about not letting men who hate women define feminism as women who hate men. This is a question about what feminism is, not its image or public perception. And misandrist feminists couldn't be more off-topic.
Misandrist feminists couldn’t be more on-topic if they tried, since it’s their actions that provide the vast majority of the fuel for feminism’s perception as a misandrist movement. They, as members of the movement, define it far more than external factors like ‘men who hate women’.
The actions of a minority of individuals in a movement do not define what the larger movement is. A movement is also not defined by the people who seek to misrepresent the movement to others. The actions of the majority of the people in the movement are what defines it. Arguments directed at individuals, especially those individuals that do not represent the larger movement, neither change what the movement is nor are they compelling.
I personally recommend the hierarchy of disagreement. Arguments that focus on the refutation of arguments will be more compelling than those directed at the people giving the arguments.
https://themindcollection.com/revisiting-grahams-hierarchy-of-disagreement/
In that case, maybe you should’ve replied to the post itself to argue that ‘men who hate women’ can’t possibly define the movement, rather than this long defense of feminism and how only the majority of the movement can define it (which isn’t entirely true either)
Individual people can certainly try to define a movement, but the voices of the majority of people in the movement are going to best represent what the movement actually is. Most sizable movements inevitably have some bad actors that do not represent the majority of people in the movement. If we judged every movement by its worst individuals we would never have any kind of social change at all.