do you believe that the loudest voices in the feminist movement steer toward socialist ideas?

Question

it seems that educating people is a good way to make things happen, but trying to create laws that limit personal behavior (objectification by women of themselves in the media), or trying to have the same number of women as men in government organizations that less women than men care to be involved in in the first place. or saying that women should have to be paid the same as men by privately owned companies. and so on and so on. does this not reflect socialist ideas? do you believe that socialism is the way to go?

Answer 1

I have always thought of myself as a socialist (i.e. one who abhors massive and unfair differences between people's incomes) but I have no truck with political correctness because it is an anathema to liberty and since feminism is essentially linked to political correctness then it follows that I am automatically opposed to feminism too. So if feminism is steering towards socialism it is certainly not socialism as I understand it.

Answer 2

Priscilla has a good analogy there, with the white people being paid more than black, who would support that? It is not socialist in any way to be paid the same for the same amount/type of work. It's simply fair.
And it's simply fair that you hire a woman with more experience in a certain job than a man, rather than hire the man because he is a man. Too often that happens. The Good Ole Boys' Club is still around.
You can sit back and tell me that life's not fair, but some of these things can be controlled and made fair. I don't see what's socialist about that.

Answer 3

Well I have a big mouth and I believe in socialised medicine and schooling but I'm more like a comedy charactor or mascot :)

No what you are describing is not socialism. Socialism is any economic system organised in a way that the means of production (and usually distribution) in a society are controlled by that society directly or indirectly.

What you are describing would be using legal force for the control of behaviour like what the christian right and the neocons are trying to do to America.

Most feminists are not interested in that kind of thing. Though the basic idea of "same job, same performance, same pay" is clear justice.

Answer 4

I don't see a lot of people trying to outlaw the "objectification of women in the media." I see a lot of people criticizing it, and discouraging it, but I don't see a lot of potential laws against it being suggested. Unless you mean the minimum BMI for the modeling agency that we've seen enacted in Spanish speaking countries lately. I think that's a pretty good law. It keeps standards reasonable within the industry. I checked it out and it seems reasonable. It's still very lenient, you can still be quite skinny, just not dangerously so. And bare in mind, this only came into effect after a string of anorexia related deaths of South American models.

As for private companies, I don't believe in totally free, unrestricted capitalistic enterprise, and I don't think many people do. We haven't seen totally free capitalism since the early 20th century, when we had no minimum wage, poor working conditions, ridiculously long working hours, very few employment opportunities for minorities and women, no environmental regulations, etc. I don't think anyone wants to go back to that. Companies shouldn't be allowed to do whatever they want. Jobs are the foundation of our society. If we start allowing companies to do whatever they want and discriminate on any basis they want, things aren't going to bode well for us as a society. What if lots of major companies decided they were going to pay all black people significantly less than white employees. Would you support that?

However, that's a far cry from real "socialism." Too many people throw that word around without knowing what it means. Not many people are advocating for the complete annihilation of capitalism and free enterprise. I'd say social democracy is closer to what you seem to be thinking of. It's quite an important difference.

Answer 5

I believe that the loudest voices steer torwards entitlement in general. Forget about the textbookdefinition of feminism, or what feminism was about 20 years ago. What do todays feminists believe ? They believe women should get 50%+ of everything in a divorce + alimony child support the House, their lawyers bills payed by hubby etc, regardless of contribution, they believe they should have all those high powered jobs which shed off a lot of money and they believe that if some man neogtiates salary x, automatically all women with the same skills and experience should get said salary. And what do those feminists do with their high powered salaries, are they willing to support a family ? NO they are not, they want a man who earns as much or even more money.

So after scratching a tiny bit on the surface of modern feminism no matter what you label it, communism, modern feminism, poster feminism, socialism, in the end it all boils down to plain old greed, lust for money and entitelment.
Whatever feminism started at or what its original values are, the feminists have thrown it ALL away for $$ and they dont care where it comes from, the goverment the EX, they are too cheap to put their money where their mouth is at the end of the day.

Answer 6

While the vast majority of feminists support mixed-capitalism with just enough regulation to keep the citizens happy and healthy, more extreme "feminists" might drift farther to the left on this sort of thing. By the way, we include merit in equal-pay calculations; only when a woman is denied advancement for no concrete reason do we assume discrimination.

Answer 7

To the poster above me: You are so wrong in comparing Naziism to feminism. That's because the nazis were fascists (which is actually opposed to socialism) and they were very much anti-feminists.

Answer 8

NOOOOOOOOO BUT FEMIMIST ARE DEFINIITELY RIGHT