"One of the great insights of second wave feminisms was the recognition that "the personal is political" – a phrase first coined by Carol Hanisch in 1971. We meant by this that all our small, personal, day-to-day activities had political meaning, whether intended or not. Aspects of our lives that had previously been seen as purely "personal" -- housework, sex, relationships with sons and fathers, mothers, sisters and lovers – were shaped by, and influential upon, their broader social context. "The slogan…meant, for example, that when a woman is forced to have sex with her husband it is a political act because it reflects the power dynamics in the relationship: wives are property to which husbands have full access" (Rowland: 1984, p. 5). A feminist understanding of "politics" meant challenging the male definition of the political as something external (to do with governments, laws, banner-waving, and protest marches) towards an understanding of politics as central to our very beings, affecting our thoughts, emotions, and the apparently trivial everyday choices we make about how we live. Feminism meant treating what had been perceived as merely "personal" issues as political concerns."Then he follows up with some thoughts of his own:
"It's clear to me that ... aside from Communism ... feminist theory is influenced heavily by cooking techniques; like improvising your own recipe for tuna casserole. Their argumentation is fraught with lasagna-like mixtures of ideas and concepts that permit them to play bait-and-switch whenever they debate you. Like a salad bar, they can pick and add anything they want to their desired taste, You go personal ("You're full of shit!"); they go global ("That's misogynyistic!). You go global ("That's an obvious canard."); they go personal ("My but someone is threatened about his masculinity!"). ..That is great stuff. Really great stuff. I'll should check out that forum in the future and see what other treasures I can find. But for all you neophytes who are still learning what feminism is, how it works, and why it is bad, the material I've shared here is pure gold. It affords valuable insight, and you can put that insight to work right away as a set of eyeglasses that will bring feminist (and feminist-influenced) behavior into sharper focus.
"Every debate with them is like playing three-card monty with the guys on the street corner or trying to discern under which walnut shell the pea is. .Maybe this is the reason for it - they can switch between personal and political without considering themselves to be making any kind of change at all.
"If "the personal is political", how does that jibe with paying your bills on time or maintaining good personal hygiene, fixing a flat tire or grabbing a quick burger after class? Feminist thinking isn't intellectual at all. That's part of their overall pretense. Deep-down, they are anti-intellectual. So why are so many of them college professors?"
This war are in may indeed be a "war of ideas" on some level, but that is not how we play it. You may be aware that I have pretty much given up argument or debate, and learned to view this whole thing as a kind of street fight in which "winner takes all". After all, that is exactly how THEY play it, and will continue to play it, despite all pretensions to the contrary. And we'd be babes-in-the-woods to play it otherwise.
I call my strategy "post-argumentalism". Post-argumentalism does not eschew debate or argument, but simply acknowledges that such methods are not the mainstay of our operations, not the primary manner in which victory will be gained.
Here is a link to the original material on the Mancoat forum:
http://www.the-niceguy.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=53439
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