posted on March 01, 2019 10:44 AM by
u/FederalInvite
0
u/freerange_hamster13 pointsat 1551471220.000000
I always get a little touchy about the ol’ “feminists make fun of men
with bad clothes and hygiene, which is ableist; checkmate feminists!”
line of reasoning. It feels oversimplified to an extreme degree.
Sure, some women are just mean. But others—particularly those dating
in Silicon Valley— are pushing back against a dynamic where men are
allowed to lack all personal hygiene while simultaneously
demanding the flawless performance of conventional beauty from their
partners and employees. It’s a blatant double standard, totally
disconnected from any kind of mental or physical condition. (Surely, if
you’re too unwell to shower, you’re also too unwell to notice that your
date isn’t wearing makeup.)
Yeah, there isn't any mention of nerds at all in there. Equating "feminism is often insufficiently intersectional when it comes to those who aren't neutrotypical" with "feminists are bullies who hate nerds" is kind of ridiculous.
> worst person you know
I would say out of all the well-known rationalists, TUOC is definitely the least bad, and appears to be a genuinely kind person?
>user reports:
>1: defending rationalist anti-feminist rhetoric
This is the shit I come back from a three day offline holiday for: I wrote an act and a half of a good motherfuckin' screenplay you idiots, and this is the shit you care about? Fight it out amongst yourselves.
Although, I mean, to be honest I agree with the report, but...
She said “A woman says “as a visibly disabled autistic person, I’m desexualized and treated like a genderless unperson. and, no, I don’t experience street harassment and I’m not hit on.”“, so she’s erasing ND women do get sexually harassed and assaulted by NT men.
In context:
> Some people say “#yesallwomen experience street harassment and fear of men!” A woman says “as a visibly disabled autistic person, I’m desexualized and treated like a genderless unperson. and, no, I don’t experience street harassment and I’m not hit on.”
UOC is *pointing out* that the experience of certain ND people gets erased by mainstream feminist discourse, with an actual example of an actual ND persons experience. I'm not sure how you are getting erasure out of that, , the fact that most women do experience harrassment seems to be taken as obvious.
There will always be a women out there who don’t experience sexual harassment and abuse, but her framing of it is disgusting, and not dependent on disability or lack thereof.
Well the fact that I’m a woman with ASD and ADHD who was sexually harassed since grade school, posts like this made me really, really pissed off, and I think it’s clear she’s implying women like myself don’t experience this shit in order to bash feminists.
There's ableism in feminist spaces, sure, as there is everywhere. I don't approve of cruelly mocking men simply for awkwardness or poor fashion sense.
But her entire post frames "feminists" and "disabled people" as two separate groups, and the problems she criticizes as coming from implicitly abled feminists. This is not true, and some of the responses she criticizes (like Captain Awkward's unfair response to the dude with anxiety issues) come from women who have severe anxiety, depression, and other mental issues. That doesn't make them right, necessarily. The inconvenient truth is that a lot of us who are neuroatypical or otherwise disabled need people to pick up on social signals *all the more* because violations of boundaries hurt us more, and because some of us are less able to bluntly communicate our boundaries. Sometimes people have competing needs. And there's a bare minimum of boundary-respecting (and communicating) that anyone has to do to live in a fair society.
I'm also kinda side-eyeing this, which TUOC did not source:
>An autistic woman talks about how her disability gives her some strengths in her field and a perspective on it that isn’t represented in sexism in STEM conversations. She argues that listening to autistic women in tech might make us better at fixing the gender gap. A bunch of people explain to her that she is femmephobic and has internalized misogyny and just wants to say “I’ve got mine, so screw you”.
I've *no idea* what this incident is. I can see it going down like TUOC said and being an unfair thing to that autistic woman. I can also see how someone talking about this subject might *very easily* end up being femmephobic and saying, essentially, "there is sexism because women are too feminine and aren't enough like me."
Yep, which of course is false. And I don't know about ND women in particular, but *disabled* women are even likelier to be targeted for harassment and abuse than abled women (due to less ability to avoid it and less perceived credibility when seeking justice for it).
Also, sexual harassment and assault can *cause* neuroatypicality (trauma, PTSD, triggers, severe anxiety, etc.). What makes TUOC's post almost hilariously obtuse is that many of the comments TUOC doesn't like were made in (or because of) discussions of sexual harassment & assault & "Schrodinger's Rapist". Discussions in which survivors talked about their own mental issues. It's really obvious that many of them, including many of those who said things TUOC complains of, weren't neurotypical! But she erases that.
Basically she's using "neurotypical feminist" to mean "those bitchy popular girls." She thinks neuroatypicality is the property of her sub-culture, which is dominated by entitled white male nerds and the women who like them. Anyone who makes them feel bad and makes social demands on them is a bitchy popular girl, excuse me, neurotypical.
I think neuroatypical started out to just mean the autism spectrum (and possibly other innate differences), but it has expanded to include acquired mental disabilities.
ETA that TUOC certainly seems to be using it in the expanded sense, since she implies crippling social anxiety (which has multiple potential causes & is linked to trauma) is a neuroatypicality by citing the socially anxious as among the "non-NT" people erased/harmed by "neurotypical feminism."
The fact she’s saying that disabled women, especially ND women, don’t get sexually harassed or assaulted by NT men in the third paragraph is false and harmful.
Other than what FederalInvite started here in these sub threads, the
fact TheUnitOfCaring is implying disabled women, especially ND women, do
not get sexually harassed or abused by NT men is both false and
harmful.
ETA: I am an ND woman and experienced sexual harassment since a young
age, so I am rather touchy about this subject matter and horrified that
there’s well meaning people on Tumblr who care about Social Justice took
her rant on Neurotypical Feminism seriously.
I agree with her point in the op:
\> Making fun of men for dressing badly, struggling with hygiene and being socially awkward is okay, even though disabled women who struggle with the same things keep on saying “when you joke that way about disabled men, I feel unsafe.”
For myself that is why I've stopped the behavior she describes (making fun of men in a way that's ableist) because non-NT women and men explained how it made them feel.
The other post is basically her blaming her sexual hangups on feminism by straw manning feminism.
This:
> An advice columnist tells a man with crippling social anxiety that an anxiety disorder is nowhere near as bad as being a woman, so “get a fucking grip and do not come to feminist blogs for comfort about this issue.”
is the same message as her Scott Aaronson post. [In fact later in the Scott Aaronson thread the same misrepresentation of Captain Awkward come up and she reblog it agreeingly.](https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/106625038116/that-scott-aaronson-thing)
This:
> Making fun of men for dressing badly, struggling with hygiene and being socially awkward is okay, even though disabled women who struggle with the same things keep on saying “when you joke that way about disabled men, I feel unsafe.”
is the same reasoning Scott use in Untitled to attack feminists as ableist, misandric, and secretly anti-Semitic.
And this:
> An autistic woman talks about how her disability gives her some strengths in her field and a perspective on it that isn’t represented in sexism in STEM conversations. She argues that listening to autistic women in tech might make us better at fixing the gender gap. A bunch of people explain to her that she is femmephobic and has internalized misogyny and just wants to say “I’ve got mine, so screw you”.
is defending Damore-style scientific-sexist bullshit about men being biologically better at STEM because of being more systematizing and less empathizing.
Along with “A woman says “as a visibly disabled autistic person, I’m desexualized and treated like a genderless unperson. and, no, I don’t experience street harassment and I’m not hit on.”“.
ND women do get sexually harassed and assaulted by men, and I’m still furious so many people who care about Social Justice just reblogged it without much thought much less reading what she’s really saying.
I always get a little touchy about the ol’ “feminists make fun of men with bad clothes and hygiene, which is ableist; checkmate feminists!” line of reasoning. It feels oversimplified to an extreme degree.
Sure, some women are just mean. But others—particularly those dating in Silicon Valley— are pushing back against a dynamic where men are allowed to lack all personal hygiene while simultaneously demanding the flawless performance of conventional beauty from their partners and employees. It’s a blatant double standard, totally disconnected from any kind of mental or physical condition. (Surely, if you’re too unwell to shower, you’re also too unwell to notice that your date isn’t wearing makeup.)
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Other than what FederalInvite started here in these sub threads, the fact TheUnitOfCaring is implying disabled women, especially ND women, do not get sexually harassed or abused by NT men is both false and harmful.
ETA: I am an ND woman and experienced sexual harassment since a young age, so I am rather touchy about this subject matter and horrified that there’s well meaning people on Tumblr who care about Social Justice took her rant on Neurotypical Feminism seriously.
[deleted]
It’s not really surprising that Kelsey jumped on the Scott Aaranson thing back in 2014.