[FRIAM] Please change the damned thread

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OK. But abuse need not be intentional. And I'd argue that most abuse is systemic in this way, habituated patterns that may or may not become unhealthy over time. This would also be true of your breeder example. If there were a time when most people, especially most women, were expected to be breeders, it might well be good feminist policy to support women who happen to be breeders, because there's the expectation that would cover the overwhelming majority of women. However, things change. If we've entered a new period where its no longer true that most people, especially most women, are expected to be breeders, then the prior habituated, systemic pattern is now unintentionally coercive.

And that unintentional coercion has to be recognized before the political will to modify it will be found.

We see a similar pattern in the "defund the po-lice" rhetoric ... and in that Hedges article. Even if Hedges is hyperbolic, the (neoliberal, accidental) abuse must first be hypothesized and, if found true, identified, before it can be rectified.


On 12/8/20 1:51 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I'll give a different example.   
> 
> An ostensibly women's group where someone posts an article about how women are disproportionately hurt by not being able to work during the pandemic.  IIRC the article was from Science or Nature -- that could have been a coincidence, or some sort of appeal to authority, not sure.   The poster, a woman, did not remark on their own situation, in particular if she was a mother or if in her relationships she was in fact impacted negatively.  Just the article.  
> 
> It occurred to me there is an expectation in the U.S. that people who have children will get support from society and government (e.g. tax breaks), and in fact disproportionately from those that do not.  And that is not good feminist policy to set norms in such a way that women are favored if they take on the obligation of child care.   My view is that a woman who is treated fairly should receive similar support no matter whether she plans on having children or not.   Otherwise I think that a mom should take it up with her spouse and not with rest of the taxpaying public.   It was a risk they took when they decided to have children.  The pandemic exposed that risk.  Ooops.
> 
> So in this example, the norm or subtext of that group was to support that constituency of women, not women in principle.    Here, there's a subtext of concern for an person at health risk vs. subtext about a long running debate that not everyone may be familiar with.   There's subtext in most academic fields where methods with obscure names are assumed and conventional wisdom taken for granted.

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