The Rise of 4th Wave Feminism

[Xemmy]

This isn't something you see a lot of here on Wrestlezone. And if I could hazard to guess, it's probably got a lot to do with the fact that we're primarily men on here.

For those new to the concept, 4th wave feminism is basically "Internet Feminism". It's associated with calling people out on misogyny and sexism, gender equality, and social justice. This has given birth to the term SJW- Social Justice Warrior. Feminism and SJWs go side by side a lot of the time, but SJWs are far broader, often looking to include any and all minorities. There are plenty of sub-groups and plenty of differing opinions on the movement. These all range out to the extremes of people believing Feminists are nothing more than censoring Nazis, to women posting the lovely hastag #KillAllMen.

I'm in a weird position, going back and forth. Tumblr is my little home away from home. I follow lesbains that really come off as having a preduice towards straight people, and are big on feminism, but have many legitimate complaints on why they feel oppressed and have built up this resentment. (I really love Legend of Korra, so naturally I ended up following 20 of them and discussing fanfiction)

And I follow libertarian-esque people that see the hypocrisy in the movement, and see things that they do, like doxxing, and get incredibly pissed about it. But often their passion sours into apathy and they get very "4chan" and start walking the fence between good person, and hoping to see the world end.

I feel like I'm the only one that sees an egalitarian middle ground sometimes. And I'm normally not a middle ground person.

I'd like you Zonians to come forth. Share your opinions. Who's wrong? Who's right? Who can go fuck themselves? And why the fuck is Xemmy still on Tumblr?

 

[Kodo Sawaki]

Good example of that is new "Ghostbusters" movie. When trailer got out they had so much negative backlash that director and Sony got out and straight up called all those haters mysoginists. Thats it, just because you dont like our trailer you hate all women everywhere. By the time movie came out most people were afraid to even criticize it. Because nobody wanted masses of SJWs to go out on them. Even one of my favorite youtube reviewers Jahns said that its pretty hard to give a grade to the movie because if he said that movie was bad they would say that he hates women, if he said that it was good they would say that he panders them. Over a godamn movie.

Feminism is a good idea. Women should fight for equality and to have equal opportunities in the world as men have. Sadly that idea got twisted so we now have bunch of extremist Feminazis who are not really different from male counterparts they hate so much. So in a way they reached that equality that they wanted, they became just as bad as other side.

 

[Poop Master Flex]

There's nothing wrong with a feminist movement when they're fighting for equal rights but I do see a big problem in how alot of feminist groups come off. Although I've met plenty who have legitimate gripes with prejudice happening to them I can't help but notice that many feminist groups aren't fighting for equality, they're fighting for superiority, they don't want to be on the same level as Men, they want to be on a higher level than men and to any feminist who thinks that I say fuck 'em (it may be a minority portion but its still a shit ton of them).

Now that I got that out of the way I got to say there's no real right or wrong side here, at least not anymore. I can't speak for too many other places but I can say I don't see the sexism nearly as much as I used to and when I do its just as likely to happen to the men as it happens to the women. Going through the places i worked i can't count how many time a guy lost out on a job so an under qualified, good looking girl can get it instead. Obviously there is still some prejudice out there but in regards to women it seems like they're treated on the same plain as a man in a general sense, I don't see some big flaw in the system or anything like that for females and the prejudice they do face is more of an isolated incident than anything. Things can always get better but there's no question the issue has massively improved.

 

[klunderbunker]

I have zero issue with any group of people being equal to others. What I have a problem with is how this movement operates. There are a lot of people who do things that can be interpreted as sexist/anti-feminine etc. with absolutely no intentional malice. Often times it's the only way they've been brought up and that kind of thinking is ingrained in their heads. That doesn't mean they're sexist but rather that they do sexist things. That's not the same thing.

The other issue I have is the way the "feminists" often (read as not always) treat these people. Basically they treat these people like complete garbage and act like they're the lowest form of life on the planet. Instead of understanding that they're saying something stupid (which it often is), the people who the feminists are trying to change are degraded even worse than those who feel they've been degraded in the first place. You don't have to yell, scream and treat people like evil idiots and then pat yourself on the back for doing something moral. It comes off as someone acting morally superior despite them having no real authority to do so.

If someone is doing/saying something sexist, consider how they're coming off. If it seems that they just don't know any better, don't yell and treat them like the scum of the earth. Talk to them reasonably and odds are you'll get through to them. Not everything is some big plan to hold women down. A lot of the time it's just that someone hasn't been shown another way of looking at things. If you treat them like some horrible person, do you really think you're making things better or changing the way they look at the world? Or are you making them think that maybe their stupid way of looking at things is right because this is the reaction they're getting?

 

[HBK-aholic]

I would not call the people who do not want social equality for both sexes feminists. If you want women to be above men, or given preferential treatment, you are not a feminist, and I really wish people would stop using the term. I am a feminist, a very strong one. I believe I'm just as equal, though different, to men. I am sick of saying I'm a feminist, and people translating that to man-hating.

I'm also so fed up of seeing these annoying 'SJWs' who twist any issue into a feminism one; seeing sexism where there is none in the name of feminism. Stop. When so many people hear 'feminists' crying over non-sexist issues, eventually people get fed up of hearing it. So when there is ACTUAL issues affecting real women every day, people don't want to hear it.

 

[enviousdominous]

In everything, there are lines in the sand. We tend to forget that, because sometimes we like to imagine that we live in a fantasy world where privileges are an absolute right even if they steamroll the rights of other individuals.

The Ghostbusters movie was brought up. On one hand you have those who mocked the movie because -- for what they were willing to express -- they felt that it wasn't faithful enough to the franchise that brought us Ray Stantz being blown by a ghost. Those individuals were most certainly not being misogynistic, they were just being a bunch of stupid pricks. You didn't see me flooding YouTube with hate filled videos because of the *ugh* OldBoy remake. On the other hand you had people (men mostly) who literally live only to have their senses constantly bombarded with jack-off material. For them, the depiction of strong women with the capability of denying their charms was a direct affront to the sanctity that is dick-culture so they took to YouTube and Twitter to drown out any intelligent criticism with the most abominable kind of dehumanizing messages and media imaginable.

When combating either type of piece of shit in this fun game that we play called "Who can make a bigger ass out of themselves on the internet?", you still have to be mindful of the fact that you're talking to a person and they'll likely not humor your points if you're disrespectful. Though; you'll likely catch all kinds of depraved disrespect for even engaging them as an adversary. Talk them down, don't be condescending or take a passive aggressive tone. Just talk them down, listen to them, accept that at the very least you may have planted a seed in their minds that will grow into a paradigm shift.

Things are becoming even more polarizing with the presidential election. I had someone on Twitter accuse Donald Trump's father of being a member of the KKK (which is bullshit, source). I called them on their bullshit, so (as you can likely predict) I became a KKK sympathizer and every other nasty thing that they could think of. The idea being; because I crossed that invisible line in the sand, they had every right to cross every line that I -- as a self-respecting sentient being -- may have had.

This negative trait in the human psyche has probably existed for all of the existence of humanity, though I think it's exploding exponentially now that people have this fun method of idea proliferation called social media. If I was some reclusive wallflower using cognitive dissonance to reinforce a bullshit belief that I ignore the world because I'm better than it, I'd probably have no shame about forcing my manifesto on the subject in the newsfeeds of anyone foolish enough to acknowledge me online. So now, we have people who are amateur-at-best writers managing to find followings of gullible dip-shits to start a movement that -- at its core -- is really just one pathetic jack-off having a slow day at work.

Here's something that helps keep me in check; I rely on the people that follow me through social media to have a high opinion of me. I'm followed on Twitter by an animation director who's a really nice guy in that he has been my source to media that I thought was long lost to time, and I'd probably alienate his friendship if I went on a long expletive ridden rant on either side of the feminism vs chauvinism debate. My parents are my friends on Facebook. Wrestlezone is the only place where I let loose, and even then the worst of us is practically a beacon of wisdom when compared to the rest of the internet.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

I'm all for feminism, always have been. One of my big problems, however, is that there are too many women who call themselves feminists when what they really want is a double standard where men are held to one thing and women are held to another. You see the same thing when it comes to some civil rights organizations and representatives in which they basically advocate preferential treatment for African Americans It's getting to the point where if you even criticize something a woman is doing, you get labeled as a misogynist pig. For instance, if you think some of Amy Schumer's comedy crosses the line into downright pornographic territory, find it more off putting than funny and actually voice that opinion, then prepare for all kinds of hate to be rained down upon you from feminists, pseudo-feminists and even men who're so concerned with political correctness that they label all criticism as hate speech. I think she's hilarious, but you get my point.

There's also this militant "you're either with us or against us" mentality among many so called feminists in which there's no degree of middle ground. To them, you're either a feminist or your sexist and the irony is that they're as closed minded as the people they oppose, they're just on the other side of the argument.

 

[Dowdsy McDowds]

I'm also so fed up of seeing these annoying 'SJWs' who twist any issue into a feminism one; seeing sexism where there is none in the name of feminism. Stop. When so many people hear 'feminists' crying over non-sexist issues, eventually people get fed up of hearing it. So when there is ACTUAL issues affecting real women every day, people don't want to hear it.

Not just restricted to feminism but I think you've touched on an interesting point here that is a bit of a 'cry-wolf' scenario - people loudly getting worked up about little things that divert from a core message.

Take for example the article that gained a bit of virality about air conditioning in offices being set to temperatures that favoured males. Did this reflect that all males who controlled the air conditioning in their offices held micro-aggressive attitudes to women? Perhaps revenge for the silly girls with their skirts and heels and nice perfumes getting jobs that weren't secretarial? Or was it a social quirk that no-one had really given much thought to because in the grand scheme of things, office temperatures are not a good way to judge how inclusive a society is?

There are idiots on both side of the debate but there's plenty of funny stuff in there too if you pay attention. My current favourite, and this mainly applies to the SJWs more than those in the feminist debate, is the conflict between certain kinds of labelling and ascription of someone's social standing being completely backward thinking and immoral, to then being a stick to beat down someone you're in a debate with.

 

[MrMojoRisin]

I'm all for feminism, always have been. One of my big problems, however, is that there are too many women who call themselves feminists when what they really want is a double standard where men are held to one thing and women are held to another. You see the same thing when it comes to some civil rights organizations and representatives in which they basically advocate preferential treatment for African Americans It's getting to the point where if you even criticize something a woman is doing, you get labeled as a misogynist pig. For instance, if you think some of Amy Schumer's comedy crosses the line into downright pornographic territory, find it more off putting than funny and actually voice that opinion, then prepare for all kinds of hate to be rained down upon you from feminists, pseudo-feminists and even men who're so concerned with political correctness that they label all criticism as hate speech. I think she's hilarious, but you get my point.

There's also this militant "you're either with us or against us" mentality among many so called feminists in which there's no degree of middle ground. To them, you're either a feminist or your sexist and the irony is that they're as closed minded as the people they oppose, they're just on the other side of the argument.

I get what you're saying, but let me ask this:

Does the hypothetical guy who vocalizes how he finds Amy Schumer's comedy pornographic and line crossing, devote the same energy to male comedians who have the exact same style of comedy?

If the statement "I find comedians like Bob Saget, Gilbert Gottfried, Amy Shumer, ect. offensive because they're style of comedy is borderline pornographic and crosses a line" is made, does that get the same feminist backlash that simply calling out Amy Schumer gets?

I don't believe it does one bit, and I tend to find that in many of these SJW, 'Feminazi' or whatever you want to call them cases, it's less a case of people saying that you can't criticize a woman for something, and more of a 'why are you singling out the woman to criticize' thing.

Just gotta be fair, consistent, and truly without bias. That's all. The hypothetical guy who finds Schumer offensive here, should also find similar male comedians equally offensive. If he doesn't, then maybe there is a little misogynist in him that he needs to work out. Because then all he's saying is that it really isn't the actual comedy he finds offensive, just that he doesn't like those words coming out of a woman's mouth.

 

[Serious Mozzarella]

I think slapping a label on it is wrong. I think you guys are describing a pretty decent minority of people who are only loud on the internet, because they're not socially adjusted enough to be loud in real life. I think this endless battle between the "SJWs" and internet feminists vs. everyone else is a phenomenon that only exists in internet culture.

Putting a label on individual people, especially people who have found niches in their corners of the internet, and equating it with legitimate women's rights movements, just devalues all the strides women have made in the past 100 years, all because some morons said stupid things on the internet. It's fine to laugh at them, but don't think this is, in anyway, related to "feminism."

All of that being said, there is a whole lot of arguments to be made in favor of the existence of male privilege, and the "patriarchy" in general. But that's a more nuanced discussion, and most likely not what this thread is about.