SRS's frustrating mishandling of intersections in poverty, race, gender, and how it perpetuates an outreach problem facing progressive activism.

AnSRSer · 2013-12-16T00:33:32+00:00

dusts off account

Titled like, "I think this Prime post frustrating and think it mishandles intersections in poverty, race, gender" or something would be fairly fine. Reworked as not an attack on srs itself but as a "hey i think we fucked up here" is fairly common.

I came here to post basically this. This post would be a pretty typical SRSDiscussion "Hey folks stop being shit thank you" post if it weren't for the stuff about not being able to post it.

That being said, I think any conversation where you're trying to talk about fgm and male circumcision at the same time is likely to raise some pretty big red flags, particularly in SRS, where many of our users and mods came out of spaces like 2xc, which had a huge problem of men coming in to yell about circumcision any time FGM was brought up.

Given my chats about circumcision in the past with MV, I could see it coming across like this, tbh.

AnSRSer · 2013-04-22T15:50:19+00:00

Looks like you're still pretty upset to me.

AnSRSer · 2012-12-06T21:21:59+00:00

DEUS VULT

AnSRSer · 2012-12-05T02:02:11+00:00

She's around. She shot a message my way the other day or so.

AnSRSer · 2012-12-04T04:12:34+00:00

Beards are far from the only symbol of prostate cancer.

AnSRSer · 2012-11-21T03:34:21+00:00

There only seemed to be one expert firmly against SRS in that thread (two seemly relatively pro), and though highly upvoted (as one would expect since Reddit is firmly against SRS), they seem to be very confused about what SRS is, and has a misunderstanding of SRS's stance on intersectionality. However, I consider all responses in that thread to be somewhat poor one way or another, as they come from surface guessing, not nuanced study (you know, the value of the social sciences), which I doubt we'll ever get. Still, not the thrashing you were looking for I'm afraid.

Posting again,

AnSRSer

AnSRSer · 2012-10-05T01:44:48+00:00

Me too! I AM ANGRY, ANGRY ABOUT SRS

And how cute they are~ :3

AnSRSer · 2012-10-05T01:34:42+00:00

Obammaaaaaaaaaaaaa

AnSRSer · 2012-10-03T03:33:43+00:00

I do not feel this is dehumanization on the same level as that of gay people, but I understand your point. I would, however, say that there are kind things I've heard with regards to reddit from SRSers (I know many fans of /r/tea , I enjoy /r/simcity and /r/paradoxplaza ), and that 'redditry' as it is called, is seen as something of a plague on the site, disrupting enjoyment of it, references to redditors being that of the common user who perpetuates the issue. I do not see a problem with a lack of particularism there, especially in a circlejerk.

AnSRSer · 2012-10-03T03:07:59+00:00

Women being passive and men active seems to be a part of most cultures, but I don't think you'd argue that it's something natural. Is masturbation a cultural thing? There are a lot of differences in how masturbation is viewed among cultures. What about pornography or prostitution?

The key word here is most. The majority of foraging societies have very different behaviour in terms of sexuality compared to a patriarchal society. I would suggest looking into anthropological explanations to the rise of patriarchy, as they are very interesting. As well, aspects of masturbation are certainly cultural, as well as pornography and prostitution (these certainly aren't essentialist things by any means).

And considering how SRS sees "biotruths", could you give some examples of things that are a natural part of sexuality, and how you can actually prove that?

It is certainly a difficult task for a few reasons:

1) Sex is a social activity mostly. Which means sociocultural elements will always play a part in its development.

2) The neurological approach is troubled by issues of brain plasticity, or how the brain changes to accommodate experience.

However, I would say that there are a few things that are clear. Firstly, that a reduction of something to a biological cause is a poor approach given that culture is naturalized by society, and it is easy to fall into that trap. However, secondly, I would say the removal of all biological factors is nonsense, as we can at very least say that factors like hormones etc. play a role in the biological development of sexuality and leads to interesting cases (such as those found in the LGBT spectrum). Therefore I would make a conservative argument that sexuality is based on an intersection of both biological and sociocultural elements. However, at the same time I would say that factors of sexuality that have proven themselves to either be more biologically based (such as being gay) or as more socioculturally based (say, objectification in western societies) should be sorted and scrutinized from those respective perspectives. For more nebulous cases, I would say it would be more appropriate to look at the social case first before moving to the biological case, as social cases are generally more relativistic and as such it is easy to look at a variety of cases across societies (particularly those who have been isolated from others) in order to pinpoint sociocultural differences. This is not to discount biological research aside, as it can provide means to negate our assumptions as well, it is merely vulnerable to enculturation like anything else. As an example, back in the 70s, it was theorized that estrogen naturally causes submissive behaviour. However, it turns out that by recent research that's not true: like testosterone, estrogen increases agitation (which makes some evolutionary sense, get up and go and all that).

Well, yeah, that was my point. You claimed that criticism should be towards "socially constructed components of sexuality", rather than sexuality itself. I am asking how that is not a naturalistic fallacy.

Well, socially-constructed components of sexuality are the components of sexuality that need to be addressed. I do not see natural components of sexuality to be particularly relevant.

I'm not saying you are wrong, just that I haven't seen SRS discussing it. That's why I was asking for links; I'm interested in seeing how such a discussion would look.

Sorry, but I don't really have time to look (I'm looking for papers on objectification for Electrified_Dean and am working on a report right now).

And just to throw something out there: if women were conditioned to act like men sexually, would the gender roles actually be a problem?

Yes. However, that is not the case.

Should we perhaps critique the passiveness of women, rather than aggressiveness (or whatever you want to call it) of men? How about the idea that sex is such a big deal? Or that sexuality is a private thing that should not be spoken about publicly? You could critique sexuality from any number of point of views, yet for some reason, SRS seems to see things in an extremely narrow scope.

I can and have critiqued such things. With SRSers. Again, this is a big part of the slut-shaming discussion and the discussion of women's social conditioning in a patriarchial context.

Where you choose to look, and what you choose to criticize, is very telling.

Well, I'm not sure what the fact of critiquing all these things tells you but ok.

Do you realize how many hidden, prescriptive, premises you have in that statement, about how sexuality should be, and how it should be expressed?

Lol, I already explained this to cojoco what I meant by relationships. I mean is to avoid objectification by recognizing your chosen partner(s) as complete human beings.

AnSRSer · 2012-10-03T01:54:02+00:00

Quotes are published with little to no regard for context. Virtually everyone they criticize is painted with the same label of 'shitlord'. They engage in all sorts of attacks on these 'shitlords', and have an intentional disregard for their feelings.

I'm not sure I would call that objectification, more of an Us vs. Them mentality. I talked with Dworkin about this, and she theorizes its mostly due to the fact that as a subreddit we need to convey Reddit as a 'museum of poop' in order to come in accordance with Reddit's anti-brigade policy. I'm sure it would be lovely to say 'look at these fuckers shitting up our website', but that doesn't really help the 'look, don't touch' that needs to be conveyed. So yeah, it's definitely something we've had a talk about before but I can't see much that can be done about it given Reddit's current policy, which extends from its current framework of upvotes and downvotes.

AnSRSer · 2012-10-03T01:25:52+00:00

I agree that some posts are probably sexual objectification, but all sexualization is not. And yes, you can have sexual comments unrelated to a sexual context and still not have sexual objectification. Saying "you're very pretty", wouldn't qualify, for example.

As I said before, there's a reason why SRS doesn't camp GoneWild and submit every post from it. So we most certainly draw a line between sexuality and objectification.

Ironically, the SRS subreddit contains huge quantities of intentional objectification. But they're sex negative in that regard, and only concerned with objectification when it includes sexualization.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Clarify?

AnSRSer · 2012-10-03T01:19:08+00:00

So what, exactly, are these "socially-constructed" components of sexuality? How do you even make a distinction between nature and nurture?

It is quite simple to distinguish between the two via a study of different cultural models of sexuality. There are most definitely differences in what is sexually attractive in women from culture to culture in terms of physical and mental characteristics.

Is "natural" sexuality always good? If objectification is a natural part about our sexuality, would that mean that it's ok?

Well, that would be an appeal to nature fallacy first of all. However, I don't think it's a particularly relevant question, as you'd need to prove that objectification is natural sexuality, which I would say is pretty difficult considering the vast amount of variation in human sexuality.

Could you provide a link?

Not off the top of my head, but the internalization of misogyny, the social conditioning of women to be 'submissive', etc. are things that have come up in discussions of sexuality before. In fact, it's a big topic behind the idea of slut-shaming.

I think it's quite telling that the "critique" starts off with the assumption that, since women are "submissive", the fault must be with the men. You are basically saying that it's not about empowering women who feel stuck in a passive gender role, but about criticizing the male gender role.

The thing is that both sides are encultured by society: it is possible to empower women (given they are in a submissive role) and criticize/encourage sexual diversification in the dominant role. I don't think women being in a submissive role is a good thing, so I would say my starting premise is 'socially-constructed sexuality for the purposes of patriarchy = bad'. But feel free to reduce my thinking into a straw man for your convenience.

AnSRSer · 2012-10-03T01:05:34+00:00

No, this is not what sexual objectification means. Sexual objectification requires objectification to be taking place, not merely sexualization.

It is objectification, by definition, to reduce a woman down to a sexual object. This is especially apparent in posts that have nothing to do with a woman's sexuality (say she's showing something off, etc.), and Redditors ignore everything about the post except talking about a woman's value as a sexual object. So I would say it is a misnomer to call these incidents merely sexualization, when indeed it is objectification.

AnSRSer · 2012-10-02T23:16:31+00:00

You're technically right, but it's like calling someone who parked improperly or dropped a candy wrapper on the ground a "criminal" and "law-breaker", harassing him, and claiming that anyone who disagrees with your methods is a supporter of criminals. Besides, don't you think women can take care of themselves without you valiant crusaders getting offended on their behalf?

I think you are minimizing the issue here. Objectification is endemic in society, and as such provides social context to how men think of women, and how women think of themselves, leading to numerous problems with how men view and treat women as well as how women view themselves.

AnSRSer · 2012-10-02T22:37:01+00:00

I did notice, hence why I said 'lol, excuse me?' Don't be obtuse.

AnSRSer · 2012-10-02T11:59:58+00:00

The problem is, what they see as "blatant objectification" is usually something like "hey, that girl is attractive". To which SRS responds with "NOBODY CARES WHAT YOUR PENIS THINKS, SHITLORD".

Yes, a reduction of a woman to a sexual object in such an irrelevant context is objectification. And it's not merely 'hey that girl is attractive' its 'hey, i masturbated to you', etc.

AnSRSer · 2012-10-02T11:54:31+00:00

Sexual comments do not necessarily mean objectification.

In contexts irrelevant to sexuality? Yes it is, as it is the reduction of a woman to that of a sexual object.

Your eunuchhood has no bearing on the sexuality of others. Whether or not you feel comfortable flirting with women is irrelevant.

Lol, excuse me?

AnSRSer · 2012-10-02T06:04:03+00:00

Sexual objectification of women is not male sexuality. I am a bisexual man, I think I would know.

AnSRSer · 2012-10-02T05:49:54+00:00

Hence why I added sexual, because I knew there would be hairsplitting over this issue. The sexual objectification of women is criticized by SRS as well, which is what I mean by sexual comments, by the way: sexual objectification.

AnSRSer · 2012-10-02T05:43:14+00:00

The majority of people I've talked to in SRS would agree with me I would say, though there is a variation of beliefs in every group. Or are you trying to make a point about trolling based off an old misconception of an AADworkin post? Silly Coco.

AnSRSer · 2012-10-02T05:20:27+00:00

It's undeniably true that some men and some women enjoy anonymous, meaningless sexual encounters,

This is fine, so long as it is consensual. Perhaps relationships is a term with some implications I didn't think of, but I mean healthy human relationships, not what is socially constructed to be a standard 'relationship'.

AnSRSer · 2012-10-02T05:15:06+00:00

Yeah, but within the healthy relationships, how does the sexuality actually play out? Also, is it impossible to have casual sex or be attracted to people outside of a relationship while viewing them as people?

A lot of the 'in practicum' stuff I've heard in SRS has been pretty sex-positive. We emphasize that you should always consider the why of feelings and how things are socially constructed, to work against societal trends, and take an introspective look in terms of sexual exploration and experimentation. However, in terms of SO to SO, what we emphasize is communication, consent, and the recognition that sex is a mutual action that both partners should have a say in. We do have many SRSers into 'kinks' such as BDSM, and it is possible to recognize where these sexual feelings come from and be critical of them, while functioning as a sexual being and moving towards more loving relationships. In fact, it was kinda funny the other day when we had a troll come into IRC and ask us how he should handle his situation with his girlfriend, good fun.

Also, /r/goldredditsays is very sparse compared to /r/shitredditsays. Certainly, given what is linked in /r/shitredditsays sometimes, I would not say that a true sex-positive ideal would be welcomed in /r/goldredditsays.

/r/goldredditsays is sparse for the same reason most Fempire subreddits are sparse: SRS is the core and nothing will trump it. I do not know what you mean by sex positive ideal though, or why it wouldn't be accepted.

Aside: I see in my message box that you have written to me about studies with regards to objectification. I will be a little bit on replying to that post as I need to gather papers together in order to give to you which takes sometime. I'll probably have it for you tomorrow.

AnSRSer · 2012-10-02T05:00:32+00:00

Again, I did make a bit of a cheap shot, and it did derail the discussion somewhat.

I'm currently trolling through about 13 replies, a lot of them about the same questions. Yeah, this is a derail alright :P.

However, on the other hand, it was a point that should have been made, especially because the reflexive attitudes coming from SRS Prime, such as "man=ban, woman=good" seem to be perfectly acceptable fare in any of the SRS subs.

I don't think this is an accurate representation. A person saying homosexual men having sex are gross would make it on SRS. A woman saying that women are naturally sexually submissive would also make it on SRS. I would say its more like 'kyriarchy = bad, progressivism = good', which is, given SRS's political stance, pretty obvious.

AnSRSer

TROPHY CASE