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I don't think your argument holds weight. Do feminist activists make themselves complicit in sexism? Does having a Black History Month encourage racism?

• cinquemb 13y ago
  The acts (sexist/racist/-ist) themselves, no. But one can say it is reinforcing the status quo of "Us vs Them" in the context of whatever -ism.
  • sp332 13y ago
    I think it's important to increase visibility of women in tech. There is no "us vs them" in this story! The "us vs them" would be "guy techies vs girl non-techies". As soon as a woman is "in tech", she stops reinforcing the status quo.
    • cinquemb 13y ago
      I think it is important that if a women/black man/[insert-group-here] person/anyone is excited to work on things in tech, that they realize that people will look upon them with whatever illogical stigmas they have, and move beyond that. Because there will be people in the t̶e̶c̶h̶ world that are able to see beyond the superficial things and connect with them as a person to work on things they love to do. At least that's how it has been for me. I can't imagine what it would be like if I stopped every time to take offense to someones irrational beliefs they had about me, and tried to form [insert-group here] to do something about it that has nothing to do with my interest with tinkering.
• fossuser 13y ago
  Well Morgan Freeman has publicly commented on that pretty explicitly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeixtYS-P3s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeixtYS-P3s
  • ebf 13y ago
    Black History Month may have not been the best example, but I think there is value in highlighting success of minorities in a field where there aren't as many minority models to look up to.
    • fossuser 13y ago
      I think the argument Freeman makes is that that sense of value is misguided and actually serves to perpetuate the problem.
  • eaurouge 13y ago
    What does that have to do with anything? Have you done a survey of all blacks, or even all black actors, to arrive at anything resembling a consensus? Why do you cite Morgan Freeman's opinion and not others?
    • fossuser 13y ago
      Well it's one opinion directly related to the parent comment's hypothetical question. No I do not have a double blind controlled study on the opinion of black history month, but I thought Freeman's comment was obviously relevant and interesting. I cited him and not others because this is the clip I had seen and remembered.
      • eaurouge 13y ago
        Well Morgan Freeman has publicly commented on that pretty explicitly That's just as silly as stating Lucy Liu's hypothetical opinion on the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (yes it does exist) [1]: "Well Lucy Liu has publicly commented on that pretty explicitly". Unless of course you think Morgan Freeman's opinions count more than Lucy Liu's. But I don't think you do, thankfully. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Pacific_American_Heritage_Month http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Pacific_American_Heritage...
        • fossuser 13y ago
• obstacle1 13y ago
  >Do feminist activists make themselves complicit in sexism I think that the existence of a movement called femi-nism is itself an example of systemic sexism. You can't gender the name of your ideology and then claim to fight for equality between genders. What feminists fight for is a furthering of women's rights vis-a-vis men, not equal rights for women and men. Completely different things. And yes, having a black history month is complicit in deepening racial divides in a society. Just as having a [insert-race-or-ethnicity-here] history month would also do. The question isn't "are movements like feminism inherently sexist", because they objectively are. The question is whether or not that sexism is justified.