That's why I again say it's better to be an individualist. None of that crap comes along with it.
Why is this so hard to explain this to people, even to Libertarian Feminists? It seems straight forward, but I have some clues.
I have a friend who is a Libertarian who is Canadian. I've mentioned him before as being a social psychologist, but he's also a Feminist. It gets really hard to discuss feminism because, ironically, I'm dealing with an in-group/out-group wall inside his own head. He's more sympathetic to and less critical of Feminists, because he's already taken on this identity, and is less sympathetic and less critical of the critics of Feminism. As for his Libertarianism, that comes mostly from Milton Friedman and no other source.
The only "big gun" I have to defend my position, because he has the knowledge of and access to all scientific papers that are in his favor, is that sociologists think in terms of social constructs and are very prone to dismiss biological causes that might explain what it is they observe. In other words, everything looks like a social construct when you are trained to look at things in terms of social constructs, even when you observe things that clearly are not social constructs. This opens the door wide open for all sorts of vial confirmation bias.
When you take a gender biased word like "Feminism" and you say "Hey, that word is gender biased", they always tell you that its justified because we live in a "patriarchy" and Feminism apposes patriarchy, because patriarchy is a social system that oppresses women to the benefit of men. So then you tell them that patriarchy is an abstract construct that we can't test for, they then pull out all there statistics about who gets the worst deal, and they always paint a picture of women being the victim of society.
But then you point out things like mother bias in child custody, greater numbers of male suicide and male disposablility and you ask, "If men have it so bad, how can this society legitimately be called patriarchal?"
"Oh, but you see," the feminists will say, "patriarchy hurts men, too. You should join us, become a male Feminist and fight patriarchy with us!" But then you point out how they just told you that patriarchy benefits men at the expense of women, and that they have made a contradiction since they now say that "patriarchy hurts men, too".
When the conversation comes to this point, they always bring you the trump card "Well, you are just a white male who hasn't experienced what women have experienced, so you just don't get it". That usually ends the conversation right there.
However, if you continue to dispute feminist claims, they then resort to more ad hominem, calling you names like "rape apologist", "victim blamer" and "bigot". Just like with Creationists, Statists and Religious apologists, they resort to insults when they have nothing left.
However, this guy is my friend and a fellow Libertarian. What can I do to reach him and pull him away from postmodernism?
