In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

A peeve

Ren

Okay, so I am gonna begin my second week of blogging here with a huge peeve of mine.  Of course, since it is me saying this, and am going to qualify that no one out there in the whole wide world need share the same peeve, but I am writing about it anyway…

 This thing that vexes me so?  Universals.  “All” statements.  “All men love sports.”  “All women love babies.”  “There are no good women gamers”, “All jocks are jerks” so on, so forth, ad infinitum, amen. 

 Makes my head spin, y’all.  And sure, I often get accused of putting the individual before the collective, but in my head, what is any collective other than a group of individuals who share some like minded ways?  That doesn’t make them clones.  But when I am out and reading stuff and I see things like “no women with any self esteem actually like sex act X”, or “all men will enact what they see in porn”, or whatever universal statements happen to be out there, it makes me twitchy.  Very much so.  Because well, I am sorta of the mind that people are a pretty diverse bunch, and lumping them in with all statements and universal guidelines is a huge disservice to…well, a lot (not all, but a lot) of people.  It can lend itself to some nasty stereotyping and misinformation about various sections of humanity- often times already marginalized ones (women, people of color, gay people, disabled people, sex workers, trans people so on) and I think universal statements or assumptions sell the coolness that is human difference and uniqueness and individuality short. 

 All people, even those with similar ideas, genetics, so on, so forth, are different…and that is perhaps the one Universal I actually believe in.

19 thoughts on A peeve

  2. It seems like such an obvious truth, but it’s not. And people use it paradoxically–“Why do all feminists think all men are jerks?” Um…

  5. Drakyn::

    I love that line for its perfect irony. Apparently, people long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away still didn’t listen to themselves talk.

  6. Libdevil, I suppose that depends upon how you want to make fun of them.

    I won’t say that I dislike all universals. They make perfect sense to use in mathematics. But the problem with universals lies in definitions. “All men love sports.” You’ll then give an example of a man who doesn’t love sports, and the response is “Then he’s not a real man.” And the definition of man has just been changed.

  8. sorry to be so picky, but couldn’t Ren have come up with something a bit more provocative than “The thing that vexes me is ‘all’statements?” Duh!

  10. Amanda; A lot of them sure annoy me. But as you should note, I said no one is required to agree with me.

    OldLady: Well, perhaps you do not find it provocative, but I deal with a lot of all statements and thus found it worth mentioning. Also, I was really sick yesterday, so no A Game going on…I will try to come up with something more provocative later.

  11. …which reminds me of one of my pet peeves – when commenters talk about you instead of to you on your own post…

    …as well as the overuse of hyphens and ellipses…

  12. I literally just had this argument with a male friend of mine – he was convinced that feminists use one man or one woman as a reflection of an entire sex in their discourse, and I was like, um…no.

  13. I heartily agree. Even when making more wide-reaching statements, I try to use ‘generally’ or ‘often’, which I think makes a key difference. Assuming something about an individual simply because of group membership is absurd and completely unnecessary…not to mention insulting.
    Maybe it seems overly simple or obvious to some, but I’m glad that Ren pointed it out. I think, often, people don’t notice these things, regardless of their feelings towards same.
    I think it speaks to a bigger issue which is that people are frequently not particular or thoughtful about the language that they use.
    And that just annoys the [expletive] out of me.

  15. Eh, it’s not so much universals I dislike as much as the complete logic FAIL that people using universals typical use.

    For example…”All birthers believe something that is factually incorrect.” is fine in my book, but “All birthers are idiots” would be mostly true, but not absolutely true.

    In the case of the former we have the short cut of syllogism:

    1) All birthers believe that Obama was not born in the US
    2) The belief that Obama was not born in the US is factually incorrect
    3) All birthers believe something that is factually incorrect

    In the case of the later we have the short cut of the syllogism:

    1) All birthers believe that Obama was not born in the US
    2) The belief that Obama was not born in the US can only be held by idiots (FALSE, they could be delusional, brain washed, etc.)
    3) All birthers are idiots (FALSE)

    So its not so much the universal that I see as the problem as much as the logic…but logic is hard and assuming that you already know the answer is easy…that’s why we have stereotypes right?

  16. i think this is more than a ‘peeve’.

    peeves are little things that annoy you waaay more than they should, this is a justifiably infuriating flaw of logic.

  17. What about saying “a person who is functionally indistinguishable from an idiot”? That seems pretty accurate.

  18. As a woman gamer, I wanted to thank you for mentioning the stereotype “There are no good women gamers”.

  19. the problem with universals lies in definitions. “All men love sports.” You’ll then give an example of a man who doesn’t love sports, and the response is “Then he’s not a real man.” And the definition of man has just been changed.

    Ugh, hate this–neither my boyfriend nor my three closest male friends are into sports, and my mother (who wants me to be more interested in sports for some weird reason) always tells me that I need to find more “real boys” to hang with. Y’know, as opposed to boys who actually share my weird, geeky interests.

    (Nothing against people, male or female, who are into sports, by the way. Just not my thing.)

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