Considering the year on year decrease in women who identify with the movement, its fairly clear anyone who would describe said movement as "reasonable" would no doubt hold the traits inherent in the movement that so many find despicable.
The closest thing I can find to your interpretation is that women of color are less probable to adopt the term "feminist" because they are less probable to feel the movement has done enough for them.
I do not know who has convinced you of an alternative definition of the word, but feminism means "believing in equal treatment / equal opportunity / etc".
And plenty more for the willing student; however an ideology that considers "men are on average taller and stronger than women" to be a controversial statement might understandably place some difficulty on those in need of finding these things.
And funnily enough the definition of a group has nothing to do with how it behaves; or are you suddenly going to proudly identify as a mens rights activist? I suppose its just as well that naming North Korea a democratic peoples republic magically fixed the place overnight as well.
You can find footage of people defending literally any controversial take you might have. Doesn't mean there are enough subscribers to consider their position.
Highlighting one extreme statement in a huge ideological umbrella framework does not indict the entire ideology, as your original sentence claimed.
Is that controversial statement a common one in that ideology? An official one? Do many groups from that ideology subscribe to it?
You keep using the phrase "feminism", a memeplex that's as massive and diverse as any social movement, political ideology, or religion. But it's easy to oversimplify and be reductive towards such a memeplex, which includes members as diverse as Susan B. Anthony and Gloria Steinem, Zoe Quinn and Ariel Levy, Andrew Dworkin and Malala Yousafzai. You have to understand when dealing with a hugely variegated ideology it's unhelpful to speak in absolutes.
No but the groups behaviour however does; behaviour illustrated in just one example I have given. And I never claimed one example was what it took to make the situation, I stated the situation and gave an example when pressed for evidence.
The "memeplex" offers no such nuance to any of those that they oppose; and for all the claimed diversity within the movement the resultant behaviour remains the same.
> The "memeplex" offers no such nuance to any of those that they oppose; and for all the claimed diversity within the movement the resultant behaviour remains the same.
On the contrary, memeplex indicates quantity, size. A massive ideology with a thousand schools of thought inside. J.K. Rowling and Charlotte Clymer both identify as feminists. So do both Naomi Wu and Sarah Jeong. Such an umbrella term of ideologies contains myriads of sub-ideologies, many of them often in direct competition and contradiction with each other. To judge such an umbrella based on a single facet is to equate all of Islam to Salafi jihadism, or all of Christianity to Joel Osteen. It would seem that I am not the one operating without nuance, in this discussion.
> behaviour illustrated in just one example I have given.
A single statement from a single video? Perhaps that's the measure by how you judge all ideologies, but most do not subscribe to that heuristic.
> I stated the situation and gave an example when pressed for evidence.
And thus it is up to you to further prove that such evidence is indicative of the ideology, broadly.
You can feel whatever you want about what it indicates, none opposed the worst aspects of their group, most supported them when pressed, most subscribe to a number of malicious beliefs and behaviours; you are welcome to show evidence where they dont. And again they offer no such nuance to those they disagree with so combined with the above none shall be offered in return.
The groups public behaviour indicates the ideology just fine; and when a group becomes publicly malicious enough on a large enough scale the onus is on the defence (eg its a given the nazis were evil; someone defending them doesn't get to come in and just hysterically scream "show me the evidence" because its public knowledge).
There's no feelings involved, only hard facts and cold logic. Comprehensive evidence has not been demonstrated on the other side; only irrational emotion. Argument from outrage is fallacious and has no bearing on reasoned debate. Allegations of public maliciousness must be demonstrated; attempts to claim such exists a priori without actual demonstration is an attempt to engage in the big lie. You have undercut your own position, sir.
You have presented no hard facts or logic. As stated, the groups public behaviour is consistent and malicious enough to be common knowledge. If you can't follow that logic then how can you hope to have an opinion on what is or isn't fact and logic. Or is this another attempt to redefine words for malicious use? Something far from uncommon within said group.
We have seen it over and over again in universities, in the corporate world. We have seen it in their numerous attempts to stifle free speech and to abolish right to fair trial. We have seen it in their uniform hypocrisy (were gendered insults still considered bad or is that mansplaining?)
We have seen it in the trope of sex predators using the identity as a social shield for themselves.
Stating reality I'm afraid to tell you isn't twisting to fit a narrative, but again, subscribers to an ideology who find "men are on average taller and stronger than women" to be a controversial statement will no doubt struggle with this as well.
Could you spell out how the link you shared says anything about "year on year decrease" or anything about the movement being viewed as "despicable". Especially in the context of your very reference saying that the results depend significantly on how the question is phrased?
Ask yourself if you or other people would be more comfortable identifying as feminists publicly now as opposed to 5/10 years ago; that'll give you answer 1.
As for answer 2, I've shown what basic searches can come up with. "why im not a feminst" might give you what you're looking for.
Not OP, but Answer 1: Yes, it's anecdotal but you definitely see the trend.
Answer 2: So I did the Google search as you requested, and read about the book [1]. I hadn't heard of it but it looks interesting, thanks for recommending. From what I can tell, it's central claim is that feminism has an image problem due to it being co-opted by the US right-wing which she calls "choice feminism", and the remedy is a need to return to a leftist concept of what she calls "radical feminism". Is that what you're saying?
A full on reading into one particular book is probably going above and beyond (though I cant immediately see anything about right wing co-option on a skim read of that particular one; the general criticism at the moment seems to centre on the radical lefts takeover).
The search for me at least brings a number of articles which highlight common criticisms of the movement such as rampant sexism, advocacy for abolition of basic rights (free speech, right to fair trial etc), general hypocrisy and bad faith action (see the Cathy Newman vs Jordan Peterson interview for a great example of this)
Oh, so for an incognito search with clear cookies in my locale (bay area), all you get for 1-5 pages or so with the search term you provided is the book and reviews and articles discussing it (with and without quotes): https://google.com/search?q=%22why+i+am+not+a+feminist%22
Perhaps when you search with your normal Google account it's skewing to different results. This particular book and the articles discussing it are critiquing modern feminist movements as too conservative, from what you perhaps would call a "radical left" perspective. I find it interesting that this is the exact opposite of "the general criticism at the moment seems to centre on the radical lefts takeover"!
I personally feel my incognito Google search captures the current zeitgeist better than your search, that people are fed up with conservatives and want a "radical, fearless call for revolution" as Google's auto-summary of my search put it. That said, ultimately it's all "bubbles" all the way down, as there's no such thing as a so-called "algorithm" (ranking formula, etc) free from ideology, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On Amazon it's described by Jacobin (a leftwing magazine in the US popular with Bernie supporters etc): “A searing critique… a necessary contribution to the effort to push contemporary social justice movements further to the left and to weave an understanding of class politics into modern identity-based movements in order to build a radical politics of solidarity.”
All the other summaries on Amazon are similar, i.e. the very top description (New Yorker): "The point of 'Why I Am Not a Feminist' isn’t really that Crispin is not a feminist; it’s that she has no interest in being a part of a club that has opened its doors and lost sight of its politics—a club that would, if she weren’t so busy disavowing it, invite Kellyanne Conway in"
Having never read the book or even heard of the author until you introduced it to me I don't care one way or the other, but it's clear from a reading of these descriptions that her book is a critique from the left.
In defence of the OP, I've also heard that less women are identifying as feminists because they feel the movement has lost its way somewhat. It seems like there's some debate if that's true or just wrong things that people repeat. I've never seen numbers one way or another - and your link doesn't present numbers either, it talks about gender equality not whether more or less women identify as feminist.
> feminism means "believing in equal treatment / equal opportunity / etc
While this might be what feminists like to tell themselves, that is untrue. Feminism is (and can only ever be) the movement asserting women's rights in society. It is unlikely to (and doesn't) advocate for the abolition of advantages women enjoy, like the tax disparity, criminal sentencing disparity or child custody disparity. It is also increasingly uninterested in the male perspective, further reducing its utility.
MRAs, while too androcentric as well, are a younger movement. Like the first wave of feminism, it's focusing on today's disparities. Also like feminism, it has its elements of disdain for the other perspective. And finally, like feminism, men's rights can never be anything but a narrowly focused movement ensuring men aren't treated less than women.
