The objective here is to try to create a 'safe-space' to discuss feminism.
We all know that raising questions on this topic on popular atheist or skeptical sites does little more than incite a lot of heat and not a few insults or accusations of misogyny.
This is a shame for the simple reason that IF feminism is out of limits to skepticism, then the entire technique of skepticism can be called into question because nothing should be given special treatment.
I am not even coming at this from an anti-feminist angle.
I am not an MRA.
I am not anti-feminist.
The limited understanding of feminism that I have allows me to see that there are various strands of feminism.
And some of these are pretty close to the sort of equality driven humanist values that I personally hold.
Because of this I feel it is wrong to automatically assume to know a persons viewpoint on equality simply because they label themselves 'feminist'.
As an example I would ask people to read the following short blog post by Bridget Gaudette on the blog, 'Emily has books':
http://www.emilyhasbooks.com/label-reads-disposable/
The post describes how Gaudette, an independent thinker and fine writer who has been labelled a 'chill girl' for not toeing the 'correct' line, is disowned by a fellow atheist, simply for describing herself a feminist.
This strikes me as unfair.
A week or so ago the slymepit had a poll about feminism that used PZ Myers definition of feminism (plagiarized from Rebecca West):
Virtually everyone who answered the poll agreed with the idea that "women are people"."Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."
So?
Does this mean that the Slymepit is a site full of feminists*?
(*=PZ Myers defined)
My own opinion is that the slymepit is indeed full of individuals who think women are people.
In fact a sizeable portion of the regulars here ARE women from a variety of different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds.
What I would say is that certain forms of feminism are opposed by the majority of the slymepit - in particular the political radical feminism that is epitomised by the likes of the trans-hating radfemhub: http://radicalhub.com/radfem-101/
What I would like to do here is create a discussion whereby people - and hopefully this will include lurkers who are not registered slymepitters - can contribute knowledge about feminism.
You do not need to register to post on this site as a guest (and please understand that you can post anonymously if you feel it would be personally dangerous for you to make your RL identity known here)
Even if you hate the slymepit, treat it as an opportunity to convert one or two of us.
I want to know if there is something I am not getting.
Is there a type of feminism, distinct from basic humanism, that will survive the skeptical process?
Is the equity feminism-gender feminism dichotomy a real one? or is that division mainly an assumed one from the point of view of MRA anti-feminist groups?
My major question is the following:
Can skepticism be used to resolve the major question dividing feminism - the question of which is the correct feminism - 'sex-positive'; or (to use the preferred term) 'anti-pornography' feminism.
To me it seems that skepticism will never resolve this question because each position is based on different values.
Sex-positive feminism is based on the idea that people have control over the use of their own bodies, and the value of allowing this independent control supercedes the negative aspects - such as the fact that allowing sex work can result in a proportion of people being involved through coercion.
Anti-porn/sex-work feminists take the view that this cost is too high.
It is essentially a "Schrödingers sex traffic victim" argument. A customer can never be sure that the sex worker is not being coerced, therefore he/she must assume that the sex worker could be a coerced sex traffic victim and therefore prostitution should be illegal to prevent this (this is the basis of the 'Swedish Model' - the system in Sweden where paying for prostitution is illegal.) The same basic principle applies to other sex work such as pornography although the calls for making pornography illegal seem to have less public support.
OK tldr
Summary:
Can skepticism be applied to the various forms of feminist thought (gender, equity, sex-positive, anti-porn, separatist) to allow us to discard those forms that do not stand up to skeptical scrutiny and in so doing reveal a form of feminism that is independent of basic humanism.