I wouldn’t say that someone is misogynist who herself values masculine traits or behavior about feminine ones. It’s when the claim becomes that there is a single standard for human conduct that I begin to have a problem, since in my view that standard is essentially the one traditionally applied, with some reason, to men. As a relativist (“I don’t believe that there is a “better” or a “worse” behavior. “*) you reject the idea of a universal morality at all, so a fortiori you reject the version I criticize.

(But one problem with relativism that you may want to consider is that it implies that you cannot criticize the culture you live in. If morality is relative to the culture you live in, then what is moral in that culture is moral for you. Indeed, to the extent that your behavior and beliefs conflict with the prevailing cultural norms, you are simply wrong, both morally and factually. If you want to be a cultural critic, you can’t be a moral relativist.)

Finally, I’ve mentioned my reasons for believing that some behaviors e.g. status-seeking and promiscuity are in some sense “inherently masculine”, and likewise for feminine behavior e.g. nurturing. You’ve only denied the conclusion, not my arguments for it, while at the same time advancing no arguments in favor of your conclusion. So my conclusion still stands.

*Technically this statement does not entail that you’re a relativist, so I’ll just ask: are you? If not, the argument applies to those of your co-bloggers who are, which I suspect is a fair contingent, so I’d be interested in their response whether or not you can provide one.

Thanks for your comment. Although we have been conversing in a sarcastic tone before, I would like to set all sarcasm aside for my response.

First off, I like to think that my “brand” of feminism is my own. Just as the category “Christian” does not mean that all “Christians” share the same beliefs or practices, “Feminism” is likewise not a monolithic set of beliefs to which one subscribes, although it is, in my opinion, founded upon the belief that men and women are equally human. The diversity of feminists, feminist thought, and feminist “brands” must be acknowledged. So when you respond to me, I hope that you will respond to exactly what I have said and written, not to what you believe my “brand of feminism” would say. Likewise, I respond to your comments as an individual, and I would not go so far as to group you into an entity and then argue against what I conceive to be that entity’s beliefs.

I don’t recall making any statements about “femininity” versus “masculinity” or “men” versus “women” in any recent posts or comments, except to address yours. Personally, I find these categories to be problematic and as a rule of thumb carefully avoid them. My most recent posts have been about LGBTQ issues and representations of femininity, which I encourage you to read and explore. In your response, you are referring to what *you* believe my “brand” of feminism to be, and have subsequently applied that impression to my writing. It’s not a matter of which “Brenda” I am but a matter of acknowledging that I, as a “feminist”, do not necessarily subscribe to the gender categories in the way that you described.

As such, my remark that I must be “hypermasculine” was sarcastic and intended to highlight how you associate “natural masculinity” with “having a career” and being “accomplished”, even though I myself am quite naturally career-driven and accomplished. Indeed, if these are truly “masculine” qualities and I value them over “feminine” qualities, then I must be a misogynist as you correctly rationalized for privileging the “masculine” over the “feminine”.

I do not believe that “having a career” and being “accomplished” is an inherently masculine faculty. Nor do I believe that all societies across time have been patriarchally organized. I don’t believe that there is a “better” or a “worse” behavior. I would never assert that being “career-driven” is morally better than not; rather, I think people should have the freedom to express and explore their identities, regardless of whether their behavior, in their minds and in the eyes of society, is linked to gender expression.

And you highlight a very relevant problematic that feminism attempts to address in many ways. Women who are go-getters (like myself) are often considered to have “masculine” personality traits. This is why I think your last paragraph is especially rich and striking. The application of the category “masculine”, and the valuation of this trait as “better”, simply and only because it is considered “masculine”, is a misogynistic application of gender norms by society. And there, I think you would be in agreement with very many feminist authors and thinkers, so I encourage you to continue thinking about these issues and the meaning of gender categories, hierarchies, and sources of “power” in our culture.

I claimed that the interest in, roughly speaking, “having a career and being accomplished” was/is traditionally masculine cross-culturally, and I indicated why that might be the case. So I’m happy to allow that you’re more masculine with respect to your personality than most women are, just like I would say that a female bodybuilder is more masculine with respect to her body than most women are. But just as I don’t see why having a lot of muscles would necessarily be better than having a softer body, I don’t see why behaving in a masculine way is necessarily better than behaving in a feminine way. Perhaps you could explain that to me. (Seriously, I would appreciate it.)

It really doesn’t matter if you reject my evolutionary explanation, although I see no reason why you should. Even if you just say that “masculine” and “feminine” are aspects of “traditional gender roles” (presumably “culturally imposed”, right?), you know the traits that the terms refer to. So my question is why say that the traits “assigned” in the past to men are better than the ones “assigned” in the past to women? Because that strikes me as more than a little misogynistic.

But while we’re talking about gender assignment, Tristan seems to think that having a career and being accomplished is a masculine interest. I must be hypermasculine, then!

Tristan also purports to know my “brand” of feminism just from my previous 56-word statement. Let’s just say the argument that ensued was about Tristan’s angst about the breakdown of traditional gender roles, not about my factual contribution to Nick’s post.

Another thing to bring up is that Bonnie assumes there are an equal number of females (or black people) that WANT to direct movies. I’m not saying there aren’t, but you certainly aren’t bringing ANY (none, zip, absolutely nothing) evidence (read: data) to show that there are an equal number of men and women (and black people) who desire to be directors. (I only put black people in parentheses because it was also a secondary example in her paragraph, I promise I’m not racist XD)

As anyone versed in any kind of statistics can tell you, the low number of female directors can be a sign of two things. The first thing is that there is some sort of bias against women. The other completely legitimate conclusion is that the number of women who win Oscars is representative of the number of women, compared to men, who direct. I’m not saying either is right or wrong, but many feminists refuse to acknowledge the second possibility, as if it would be preposterous to think that maybe MOST women do not want to have a career, etc.

Again, I don’t think most women blah blah blah, because I don’t have a good statistical study to look at.

Brenda also refuses to acknowledge that even if males and females can act exactly the same, as some human standard, that perhaps that is not the best way to approach things. She begs the question when she says, “if both men and women could be both feminine and masculine, this society, as well as individual males and females, would be far better off.”

I’m not exactly here to argue against this claim, but just to point out that in the end, Brenda is just saying “if both men and women could be both feminine and masculine, this society, as well as individual males and females, would be far better off because it would be better if both men and women could be both feminine and masculine”

You can’t deny that differences between women and men “exist in nature”, even if you only consider physiology. And I see no reason to think that these are the only differences: there are good evolutionary reasons that males and females (of all species) have different interests and behave differently. In a Darwinian (i.e. non-moral) sense, some behaviors that are good for males are bad for females; for example, behaving promiscuously as opposed to nurturing one’s offspring.

This is an explanation for the behavior that we see today and that we have always seen–it gives an explanation where “culturally imposed” gives none. It also shows that there is some behavior that is distinctly feminine and some that is distinctly masculine, although of course most behavior is neither. Given that men and women have different interests and will behave differently, why equate masculine behavior with human behavior? Why try to expunge feminine behavior (as you still want to do in your post)?

This is an artificial distinction that does not exist in nature; it is culturally imposed.

These traits should be neither male nor female; they should be human.

So, if both men and women were free to express all sides of their personalities, and not be straitjacketed into some narrow cultural definition of what is “male” and what is “female,” we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. There wouldn’t be any male or female standards; there would be human standards, nothing more, nothing less.

If both men and women could be both feminine and masculine, this society, as well as individual males and females, would be far better off.

This is one of the two biggest problems I have with your brand of feminism (after the idea that women lack agency). You measure a woman’s success by how much she acts like a man: she should be bold, confident, speak her mind, be independent, argue, compete, fight, strive, win. You say that as it is there is a “double standard”: women and men are evaluated differently. But in your hurry to eliminate the “double standard”, you’ve gotten rid of the female standard and simply further “reified” the male one. Your answer to the question of how a human being should behave is that he *or she* should act like a man should; the implication, at bottom, is that women are essentially defective human beings to the extent that they are different from men. That femininity is immoral, that femininity should be punished, that the world will be a better place when femininity is gone. You call this feminism?

The alternative is to recognize that men and women are different, and that what men should do is different from what women should do. In this way one could value women as women instead of criticizing them for not being men.