saying things better than I can

[helenic]

The comments expressing affirmation and solidarity on my previous entry are very much appreciated. Thankyou to the women who had the courage to post their own experiences of gendered harassment at risk of being told by others that those experiences are insignificant or other than you experienced them; it's a tough thing to do, and I'm grateful to everyone who's helped me demonstrate that incidents of this kind are not isolated, and do not exist in a vacuum.

Thankyou, too, to those men who have listened. I've been heartwarmed by some of the support and understanding you've showed - it's gone a long way to reassure me that I don't have to talk solely to my own gender if I want an ally, even if totally public fora are still unsafe. Your support doesn't fiix anything, of course, but before writing that post I was despairing of finding any male allies among my social circle other than cyrus_ii, and a handful of sympathetic ears is definitely better than one.

And even though the debate has been exhausting in places, thankyou to to those men who have been willing to listen and have your minds changed. I'm not expecting to convince anyone overnight. It's a slow reveal, and next time I bring this up, more groundwork will have been done, and that's valuable.

For the record, I had no intention when writing my previous post to make a commitment to chronicle every example of gendered discrimination I experience. As such I'd appreciate it if no-one holds me to one. This stuff is going on whether or not I notice it, or am offended by it, or post about it, and whether or not you believe me.

There are some fantastic bits of writing in the comments, several of which have got rather lost in the pages of debate. This comment by biascut is particularly worthy of attention:

Here's a question for the men on this thread:

Would it help if, instead of framing this as a discussion between women and men, we framed it as a discussion between experts and non-experts? Because that's what we are, when it comes to sexism and misogyny, for two reasons. Firstly, because the evidence for what we're talking about is the stuff of our daily lives. Secondly, because, this being libellum's friends' list, the overwhelming majority of women here are feminist-identified, and have spent years discussing and analysing this stuff.

I think many of the men here are getting defensive because they think this is something that we can debate, and they're being told that they're not allowed to. What you need to realise, guys, is that this is a discussion with different viewpoints allowed, but we've been having this debate for years, and basically, we're way ahead of you. You're on GCSE Feminism, and we've all got degrees in it and between three and thirty years' of professional experience. If you don't respect that, it comes off as patronising and superior – and, because of the dynamic of the discussion, as sexist, because you can't help sounding like you think you know better than us because you're men.

Let me give an example to show what I mean. Let's assume, because of the demographic that libellum tends to attract, that you're a programmer of ten years' experience, and I know nothing about programming. If you're trying to explain to me how it works, I'm not going to understand immediately, and I'm going to ask questions. If I phrase my questions as an attempt to catch you out, because I think I know more about programming, you're going to get pissed off. If I say, "But wait a minute! You've clearly contradicted yourself here! This can't possibly be true! Ha!" and look pleased with myself – you're going to roll your eyes, because honestly, you're just explaining the basics to me. You're explaining that two plus two equals four. OF COURSE you know how a stupidly basic bit of code works, because if you didn't none of the programs you've written which use far more complicated ideas would function. If I say dubiously, "Well, I guess you might be right about this bit, but I still think you're wrong about that" – ditto. I mean, you're laughing at me by now, aren't you? I just sound stupid. And you sure as hell don't want to bother trying to continue to educate such an obtuse and disrespectful student.

On the other hand, if I say, "Oh right, I see what you mean – but I still don't get that, so could you explain it again?", it's totally different. One assumes that you know what you're talking about, and the other is patronising as fuck, because it assumes that I must be twenty times cleverer than you to have spotted something that you haven't noticed in your ten years' of programming experience. Just occasionally, it is the case that someone can cast a fresh eye on a problem and solve it. But generally, experts are better at stuff than non-experts.

Think of it that way – it's not that this isn't up for debate, but the bits that are up for debate are the things that the people with ten years' experience disagree about, not the things that people at GCSE level disagree about. The things that the programmers are discussing when they're trying to resolve a particular technical difficulty, and it sounds like a foreign language to non-programmers. If you think that you can spot a logical flaw in my feminist philosophy that I haven't spotted and resolved to my satisfaction in ten years' experience of experiencing, studying and talking about sexism and patriarchy and misogyny and feminism and postfeminism, and you declare that triumphantly – it's really, really hard not to feel like you think you know better than me because you've got a cock.

libellum has explicitly said that her intention here is to educate you. Be grateful for this opportunity, because there are plenty of us who are totally over educating men who struggling with GCSE Feminism and yet think they know better than us, unless we're getting paid for it. You are not on an equal footing with me, not because you're men, but simply because I'm an expert and you're not, and the reverse would be true if we were talking about whatever your area of expertise is. You want to ask questions and learn, go ahead. Ultimately, you can decide you don't agree with me, and you'll have lost nothing and gained a more respectable intellectual basis for that disagreement. But don't disrespect mine or any other feminist woman's expertise and then complain because I'm not nice to you.

If anyone wants to highlight anything else as being Compulsory Reading for libellum's Friendslist, please let me know and, if I agree, I'll repost it here.

While I'm asking, a couple of people have expressed a vague interest in being better-educated when it comes to feminist theory, and honestly, I'm a bumbling amateur and have no idea where to start. If anyone has any favourite bookmarks which might be appropriate for beginners (particularly male ones) who are willing to learn, or suggestions for a basic Feminism 101 bibliography, could you post them in the comments? I'll appreciate the tips, if no-one else :)

Comments

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

What a useful comment - it's something I've struggled to express dozens of times (mostly debating Christianity rather than feminism).

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough, that's actually the context where I first formulated the thought: "You think you're the first person to ask, eg. how come bad things still happen in a world where God is good? You think I"m going to clasp my hands to my chest and the whole faith is going to collapse around me? You think that someone can be serious about their faith, and that never occurred to them?"

There are certain questions which come across as inherently disrespectful, because even if they aren't easy to answer, it would take an idiot not to ask them. Yet because they aren't easily answerable, and nobody can answer them satisfactorily, because they're questions to wrestle with, not to answer, the questioner thinks they've won something.

Mind, I sometimes think Rowan Williams takes it too far. ;)

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

There's Feminism 101 (http://finallyfeminism101.blogspot.com/), for pretty much this purpose :) (scuse if you already know about that - I lose track of who's linked to what)

have posted various at http://del.icio.us/vermilliona/privilege, you can look through and see if you think any are suitable if you have time? some below...

Chris Clarke - How Not TO Be an Asshole (a guide for men) (http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=16014)
"Feminists are sexist" (http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2003/09/feminists_are_sexist) (not exactly a privilege-check post, but ties into what biascut said)
Men Who Explain Things (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-solnit13apr13,0,526991.story)
Privilege Is Driving a Smooth Road And Not Even Knowing It (http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2005/12/02/privilege-is-driving-a-smooth-road-and-not-even-knowing-it/)

these about race, but transferable:
How To Suppress Discussions of Racism (http://coffeeandink.livejournal.com/607897.html)
Can White People Be Trusted? (http://community.livejournal.com/debunkingwhite/689054.html?style=mine)
on facing your bias, owning your prejudice, and allies (http://www.racialicious.com/2008/04/29/on-facing-your-bias-owning-your-prejudice-and-allies-part-1/)

Hope some of that is helpful - right, shouldn't really be on lj, so off...

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

sorry, Feminism 101 has moved! http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/

[emperor]

I think there may be a confusion here as to what the original post was for. Was it a place for feminists to talk about how feminism is still relevant today, or was it a place to convince non-feminists (or agnostic feminists) that they should become feminists?

I fear some may have assumed the latter; in which case biascut's comment will just have confused them.

[emperor]

Perhaps I should elaborate a little. If I had an LJ post about how Christianity interacted with workplace ethics, it would drive me up the wall for people to keep saying "but there is no God, what are you on about?" - my post wouldn't be the venue for such comments. If I was trying to persuade people that Christanity was important in workplace ethics, then I'd have to engage with those comments.

Engaging with them might just mean "Sorry, but here isn't the place for TGGD; lets assume God exists for this post, and maybe discuss that point another time?", but saying "Theologians have argued for years about the existence of God, and we're sure He exists. Do you not think we've not had these debates before? Shut up." isn't going to convince anyone.

Similarly, if I'm teaching a class about applications of a particular epidemiological model, I wouldn't really want to spend hours debating whether the underlying assumptions were right or not with one student. I'd have to close the debate down by saying "I hear what you're saying, but lots of scientists have used this model, and found it effective. Let's take that as read, so I can carry on the class on applications of this model, and I'll talk to you about your questions later". If instead I say "Look, I'm an expert, I've been doing epidemiology for years, have 25 Nature papers in the subject, you're just an undergrad. Stop making a fool of yourself", the student will never attend another lecture of mine again.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

"I was despairing of finding any male allies"

Sorry. Of course what you described is awful and sexist, and of course I sympathise. I didn't comment, since I didn't have anything to contribute. But after that comment-thread I can imagine that simple encouragement is an improvement over silence. Yes, sexism is still present, and still harmful, and I'm grateful to you for highlighting it.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Useful point of view from biascut! Some of the problem is that people confronted with new ideas try to use analogies as a starting point; that is to say, they try to view this new idea through the lens of prior experience. Which is, of course, somewhat limiting: among other things, the questions people ask can seem bizarre or irrelevant, and it's difficult to give non-condescending answers until you realise what is wrong.

The analogy I'll try out is pre-Newtonian Natural Philosophers confronted with the new idea of Gravity. It had never occurred to them that 'things falling down' was a process to be analysed - in much the same way that fish have no word for water and would be baffled if you told them there's a need to label it and think about it - and the new vocabulary of 'force' and 'mass' and 'weight' was difficult because they had no previous experience or repertoire of analogies to help them get a grasp on the essentials.

Predictably, the responses to Principia were bafflement, expressed as hostility and ridicule. Often Newton and his supporters found that their discussions weren't discussing or communicating anything at all - their listeners or opponents in debate were making no attempt at all to engage with the new ideas and responded with ad-hominem attacks and vacuous irrelevancy.

I would imagine that this sounds familiar to anyone who's ever tried to rebuke or re-educate a man - or woman - who has expressed a sexist point of view or made some overtly offensive remark arising in a skewed view of gender roles.

The 'history of science' analogy I'm using here contains a bitter observation from (I think) Niels Bohr: namely, that new ideas don't become accepted through persuasion and a change of view across the academic and professional community. Rather, a generation of established academics and opinion-formers retires and dies out, and is replaced by a cohort who grew up with the new approach or who were still young and receptive to new ideas when the old approach was discredited.

All the more impressive, then, that you are actually changing minds.

[xxxlibris.livejournal.com]

Just a place-holder to say that the idea of feminist education as a form of Kuhnian paradigm shifts is an interesting one - shall come back to this after dinner...

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

The F Word (http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/) is relatively basic - it's a blog rather than a primer, but it has a lot of fairly obvious examples of sexism.

As well as reading, I'd like to suggest something that male allies could do, and that's to call other men out when they're being That Guy. Because much as it sucks, a lot of the time privileged people are more likely to listen to other privileged people.

[maga-dogg.livejournal.com]

See, this approach kind of sums up the usual problem I find myself in when discussing feminism: how, as a man, I can argue with nonfeminist women, who have presumably also put up with bullshit all their lives but don't see it as a valid concern, and who have been carefully media-trained to equate 'feminist' with 'frothing overentitled matriarchalist'.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have that one if I'm talking to a person of colour who thinks that racism is massively over-hyped and people should just shut up about it. I mean, that's their truth, you know? Unless I'm were a situation where I have a clearly defined pedagogical responsibility, it's just not my place to contradict them. I don't agree, but - that's their truth.

[cokephreak.livejournal.com]

I thought that comment was *great*.

It explained their position and gave me a new way to think about mine.

[urban-antelope.livejournal.com]

I've been following all the discourse but haven't commented as it seemed redundant to say, ya, me too , but I'm glad you posted this and I'm glad for the response it's garnered. Just having this discussion creates opportunities to break down gender ignorance towards the lives of women.

Specifically your first post made me think of my skirt experience the other day and how so few men have ever faced an experience like that.

Thank you for posting luv.

[the-lady-lily.livejournal.com]

One thing that's really got me thinking in interesting ways lately is the term kyriarchy (http://myecdysis.blogspot.com/2008/04/accepting-kyriarchy-not-apologies.html) - don't know how mainstream that is, but it certainly feels like a useful term for me.

There are also a bunch of radical feminist theologians who I need to get into more, thanks to miriammoules, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza being one of them; Marcella Althaus-Reid and Brian Wren are the other two who come to mind.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Would it help if, instead of framing this as a discussion between women and men, we framed it as a discussion between experts and non-experts?

That works much better. Some of the things you mentioned were things I'd come across but not regarded as related to sex... some of them were things I've heard directed at both men and women, and so did not associate them with sexism.

In fact, generally, I read your post and went 'Oh, is that true? Well, I wouldn't know about that.'

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I was wondering; do you want all examples of day-to-day sexism to be posted back to your last post, or should they be put here, or on other posts related to it?

Your post got me thinking, and more have sprung into my brain.

Incidentally, on the issue of expecting the "but men are oppressed too" response, I don't know if you ever read polyamory, but a couple of weeks ago I made a post on there about unpleasant behaviour which I just KNEW was going to to have somebody whining "but men are oppressed too!", even though I was quite careful not to make it solely focused on male behaviour, and I didn't check sexism per se in the OP. The predictability of that response, even in a supposedly 'liberal' community containing the predictable sensitive, intelligent, educated men was actually more depressing than the response itself - which was pretty stupid (read more here if you're interested).

Not blowing my own trumpet here, btw - I was just reminded of it today when I saw how big your last post had got, and how many comments you got from people not seeing the problem.

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

That's a really good way of putting it and it works for other things too. Would you mind if I used it elsewhere?

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I'm going to expand it a bit and post it to my journal over the weekend. Not least because - eeek! some people seem to be taking the "expert" bit literally, which was not my intent at all! So if you could wait for that, that would be great.

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

I think you write fantastically well about this. Mind if I add you?

[lupe101.livejournal.com]

"Would it help if, instead of framing this as a discussion between women and men, we framed it as a discussion between experts and non-experts?"

no... but it would help if you would shut the fuck up and iron my shirt.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

With pleasure. As long as you're wearing it at the time.

[adjectivegail]

Thank you so much for the original post and for your part in keeping the resulting discussions civil (that goes to everyone else too!), I know it can be hard to talk about this and be scared someone's going to be dismissive of your experiences/feelings, and then it's kind of depressing when that fear is realised :-(

I loved biascut's comment, thank you for reproducing it here.

As a direct consequence of your post and the comments to it, I've wound up creating an LJ poll about experienced sexism in the hopes of gaining at least a little data, albeit unscientific, non-representative, non-generalisable, etc, etc, etc. Just wanted to give you and your flist a heads up in case you wanted to add to it.

[burritob.livejournal.com]

As an IT professional, if someone up-and-coming in the field (with a genuine desire to further their education) raised a thoroughly resolved point, I'd take the time to explain to them why that subject is done and dusted. Some of the commenters on your last post did; most, unfortunately, did not. "You'll understand when you're older", and "you couldn't possibly understand" both strike me as unhelpful, belittling, condescending replies. I don't believe I've uttered either myself (in the professional sphere), and I hope I can continue honestly saying that until the day I die.

Personally, I had - and have - no desire to wade into the "discussion" in the comments on your last post. It didn't seem possible, as a human with a penis, to do anything beyond utter "You go, girl!" without receiving condescension in reply. That's a pep squad, not a conversation.

I imagine that wasn't what was intended, and I wager I'll cop flack for saying as much, but as a moderate, somewhat-enlightened-but-still-inherently-sexist male, that's how it came across.

I agree with Denny that the substance of your post was a brilliant starting point for a valuable, on-going discussion, and I hope that you find some forum to continue recording such events as they transpire.

I am perfectly aware (intellectually, not viscerally) that sexism is still painfully common in the world today, and find it troubling that you socialise with enough men who believe otherwise to make a point of it. The circles we move in aren't so far removed from one another, which bothers me. Either many of the men you associate with are oblivious idiots, or my view of humanity is far too charitable. I acknowledge that, as a man, I would not be so frequently prompted to reconsider that as a woman would be.

I would very much appreciate the opportunity to discuss the subject with you at some point. though.

Thankyou for speaking up. Please don't stop.

[burritob.livejournal.com]

I agree with Denny that the substance of your post was a brilliant starting point for a valuable, on-going discussion, and I hope that you find some forum to continue recording such events as they transpire.

Find, or create. Either way, please do mention it here - I would like to follow it (if you're happy for me to do so), even though I'll be keeping my trap shut in future.

[taimatsu]

Something that has opened my eyes a bit is reading some books which deal with issues of feminism decades or centuries ago - specifically, Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique', published in 1963, and Elaine Showalter's 'A Literature of Their Own' published 1977. The first deals with the nameless Problems experienced by housewives in the US in the late fifties and early sixties, and the second deals with women's writing and published authorship from the 1840s through to the 1970s.

Friedan's book is a seminal work of feminism, and Showalter's of feminist literary criticism/gynocriticism. Reading both is a window on what things were like in these areas *before* the advances which have been made in the decades since their publication - and advances most certainly have been made. But what is also clear is that many of the problems and frustrations faced by women in the 50s and 60s, and by women in the late 1800s even, are still familiar now. Problems to do with marriage and motherhood, who holds the baby, what are women supposed to do with their lives, can or may a woman combine a career and a family, problems wherein women are judged on whether they meet a standard of womanhood rather than a standard of quality in their work, problems wherein women's work is substandard or wrong because it is not exactly like men's version of the work, all these came up over and over again historically and they come up over and over again now.

Right now I'm finding it depressing. Fortunately usually I find it interesting and motivating. This is clearly not a 101 approach, but I find it interesting and I thought you would too.

[vardebedian.livejournal.com]

Would it help if, instead of framing this as a discussion between women and men, we framed it as a discussion between experts and non-experts?

How does this approach overcome the problem of objectivity? I believe I understand the point that since some women have studied and thought about feminism all their lives, and lived with the experience of being women, they know more about feminism than men who perforce have not and can not. But - to draw an analogy with a field I'm more familiar with - in a way it sounds like the Labour Party declaring that they're going to be the arbiters in future political debates with Conservatives because they know more about politics. (Sure, the analogy isn't fair or perfect, it's the closest I've got.) Some women know more about feminism; but they also have a vested interest in the outcome of any discussion about feminism; so in the event that there is a legitimate controversy between what some women think the outcome of their feminist theory should be, and what some men think it should be, I see a problem with accepting the female POV a priori on grounds of greater expertise.

(Doubtless this is one of the solved problems that anyone with a passing knowledge of feminism would know. But I really don't know it.)

[biascut.livejournal.com]

[women] also have a vested interest in the outcome of any discussion about feminism

And men don't have a vested interested in derailing any discussion of feminism?

libellum actually linked several times to a blog post called something like "objectivity does not exist". Have a look through the previous post if you are interested in educating yourself, and you'll find it.

[angoel.livejournal.com]

I think many of the men here are getting defensive because they think this is something that we can debate, and they're being told that they're not allowed to.

I think that there is a degree of defensiveness because the way that people understand things is to reframe the issues in terms of their own experiences - to try to give the matter context. And the attempts of the men to do this, to meet people half way and understand the experiences discussed, are being shot down.

If I say dubiously, "Well, I guess you might be right about this bit, but I still think you're wrong about that" – ditto. I mean, you're laughing at me by now, aren't you? I just sound stupid. And you sure as hell don't want to bother trying to continue to educate such an obtuse and disrespectful student. On the other hand, if I say, "Oh right, I see what you mean – but I still don't get that, so could you explain it again?", it's totally different.

Speaking as someone who does train people on a daily basis (admittedly financial mathematics rather than programming), I'm pretty happy with either expression of understanding. It shows that they're listening and what area I need to discuss next.

This, admittedly, has the advantage of being face-to-face where there are considerably more social cues showing that the person concerned is engaging. On an internet forum one needs to be considerably more careful about that sort of thing. Both in making sure what you say is sensible and in assuming that the person on the other side is being reasonable.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

But that's training people. When you've got people in front of you and it's your job to get knowledge into them, you have to find ways of working around those strategies of resistance. If I were teaching a class of bored and pissed of fifteen-year-olds, of course it would be my job to find ways of over-coming their reluctance to learn or to respect me.

But this is LJ, and I personally consider my time valuable. If I'm going to spend an hour writing a long, thought-out response to someone, I want to be certain they're going to bother reading it.

i was probably one of the spikier people yesterday, because I've had so many conversations like that and I am careful about where I put my energies. Part of me being spiky in discussions like this is that the people who keep responding to spikiness do eventually start to look like the people who will read a long, drawn-out answer. And it often works out that way: I started off pretty irritated with cokephreak yesterday, but by the end of the night, I respected him a lot more and thought we'd had a really good conversation and we'd both got something out of it. That made it worthwhile.

[zebbiejohnson.livejournal.com]

I've just come here from aetric (sally)s journal because I was interested.

I am female, and in my 26 years of experience the society I live in discriminates to some extent by gender to both men and women. Women usually get mild positive discriminations, and men can still get fairly serious negative ones (eg; it seems a lot more socially acceptable to negatively discuss "men" as a whole than to make identical comments about "women").

Therefore I strongly dispute that men have no experience of sexual discrimination and are therefore 'like GCSE students compared to someone with a degree', to paraphrase the above. The specifics of what each gender recieves may indeed vary, but it doesn't mean that what men experience a) doesn't exist or b) isn't valid...

[obandsoller.livejournal.com]

I basically agree with your points, and I find biascut's expert/non-expert metaphor rather patronising to say the least.

But I think on balance things discrimination is skewed much more against women. Men may face discrimination, but if they think the discrimination that they face is the equal to what women face (and I think a number of men do seem to argue as if they believe this) then I think the conclusions they'll draw are likely to be dodgy.

[samoth.livejournal.com]

but before writing that post I was despairing of finding any male allies among my social circle other than cyrus_ii, and a handful of sympathetic ears is definitely better than one.

I've come to this set of posts rather late, having been swamped with work recently. I don't know if I see you often enough in person to count entirely as your social circle (although I hope that will change), but I'd just like to say that I completely support what you're trying to do here, and think it's a worthwhile and *brave* thing to do, considering it seems to have involved some painful debate for you.

On your previous post you say you have discussions with people who don't believe that sexism is a problem for most women today, which is a sentiment that just makes me guffaw with disbelief when people express it - in some ways the thing that's surprised me the most is how many people did seem to try and justify that position. Even if they want to debate the extent and nature of it, arguing that it's not an issue seems bizarre to me.

Having grown up in the family environment that I have (a pair of fairly politically activist, lesbian feminists as parents), then I guess I've spent much more of my life having the concepts of things like pervasive male privilege made painfully obvious to me than most of my male friends have, and I'm still very conscious of a) benefiting from it no matter what I do, and b) that while I can empathise with the kind of experiences you describe, I'm never going to experience exactly the same things.

I've always found it a subject area that's extremely hard to discuss with male friends, it mostly makes people look at me funny, and your posts have made it obvious how much harder it is when you and other women speak out. I also find it a touchy subject area discussing it with women - on the one hand being very conscious of not wanting to come across in the kind of patronising way you and others have been describing even when trying to express support, and on the other of the astonishingly negative reaction you encounter from some women who seem desperately keen to distance themselves from the kind of ludicrous caricature monster that the media seems to have convinced some people that 'feminism' is.

I guess all I'm trying to say in this rather rambling reply is that I'm impressed by your strength of character in tackling this here, and I wanted to express my support, even rather late on in the discussion

[parallelgirl.livejournal.com]

Hey :)

ms_katonic linked to your last post, and it's wonderful and has made me think a lot, so I'm going to add you as I don't want to miss future posts!

[load-of-flannel.livejournal.com]

Experts non experts?

No thats useless.

One it automatically places one side of the argument on a lower basis because of nothing more than their sex. Which is Gender discrimination against men. However that seems to be acceptable... odd huh.

Two. It assumes that sexism only applies to fermales and only they can 'expertly' understand it. That in itself is extremely sexist... see the problem.

Three. It suggests that anyone on the other side of the argument is male, which is not the case, there are several women on the otherside mostly being shouted down as well.

Four. It assumes all women naturally have a greater degree of understanding and empathy with the issue of feminism than men do which is not the case.

Five. It may be the experience of 'some' or even 'many' women to experience sexism in their daily lives. However this does not allow you to discount the large group of women who do not experience this sexism either because of the community they inhabit or because of their personal attitude. Their views are presumably at least as Expert.

[load-of-flannel.livejournal.com]

While Im thinking about it, it was also precisely this kind of 'claiming' of feminism and PC 'sisterhood' conceptualisation which pissed off Germaine Greer as I remember.