The Christian Vanguard

I returned to my friends podcast to talk about my experience on feminism. Listen to it here .

I had to read and give an assessment of Peggy McIntosh's essay on White and Male privilege for my Feminist Philosophy class. Peggy McIntosh writes about the parallel between white and male privilege. She defines privilege as “unearned assets” to which she is designed to be oblivious to. What these assets are exactly, she doesn’t exactly say, but she does give some personal examples of white privilege from her own life, carefully qualifying them as “not a scholarly analysis” and “not intended to be generalizable.” From this list she says there’s some similar male privilege, like being dominant in school teachings. She expresses her frustration at men for not seeing and denying this privilege. Given this, she takes a meritocracy to not exist in the US. She makes a helpful distinction in these privileges by saying that they aren’t unjust to have, and that everyone ought to have them. But distinct from that are certain privileges that are mutually exclusive to the rights and just...

I had to read Audrey Lorde's speech "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" for my Feminist Philosophy class, and then give an assessment.  Audrey Lorde is calling fellow feminist to give more attention to poor and colored minorities, as well as other minorities. To ignore such perspectives is to be part of the racist patriarchy, which is antithetical to feminism. She cites one paper in the conference she was attending, saying it was too limited in scope by not acknowledging her point of view, it presumes she had nothing to say. Shes goes on to emphasize that differences are good, and can be strengths, so they shouldn’t be ignored, and so she shouldn’t be ignored either. It is these differences that will defeat the racist patriarchy. She brings up an interesting point that if the women who attend such conferences are really concerned about the plight of women in the racist patriarchy, then they would be hypocrites to ignore poor and colo...

Here is a brief review I wrote on Amazon for this resentful little book.

Adam Omelianchuck has a paper in Vol. 13, No. 1 of Philosophia Christi that discusses the ontological subordination of men and women. He argues that men and women are not ontologically equal. The basis for this, he argues, is on the function of men and women. Being familiar with natural law, this is comfortable ground for me. The function of women is to be a helper, and the function for man is to be a leader. There is a difference in role, and there is a hierarchy of subordination, but what he seems to draw out is that this entails there is an ontological inequality between men and women.  He presents a Hierarchy's Less Valuable Function Principle, which states,  Necessarily, given the two functions, F1 serving as a means to and end and F2 having authority to direct the end, if any person having F1 is, in virtue of having F1, essentially subordinate to a person having F2, then F1 is a less valuable function than F2.   Now, men and women have these functions...

What does it mean to objectify women? Ever since that ridiculous video of a gorgeous woman walking down the streets of New York, this has been a more pressing question, in my mind at least. The tone delivered with the phrase, "objectification of women" is usually negative, with a prescription to not do so usually following. So, what is this thing I'm not supposed to do?

There have been some pretty stupid things said about feminism, from feminists. It's impressive, really. On the other hand, there have also been some pretty smart things said about feminism, from feminists. It's a bit polarizing, so I want to know, am I feminist?

Some feminists object to the use of the word "man" to expression mankind (maybe they too object to my use of the word "mankind". Maybe they prefer "humankind" or "personkind." I take it for granted we all know what I'm talking about when I say mankind, including the feminists, whom necessarily know what I'm communicating in order to object to it.) because it shows that men have some kind of superiority over women, or at least it is not gender neutral.

In the 1960's or so, we had the civil rights movement. This was the movement that secured civil rights to certain people, particularly black people. In the present day, some try to label the LGBT movement for the applicability of marriage to same-sex couples a civil rights fight as well. In the treatment of animals, those who want to secure certain rights to animals also try to fall under this category, but more commonly under the words "humane", to indicate fair treatment. In these three categories, we call them these names, civil rights fighters, humanitarians, and whatever else. But what we don't see is someone who fights for the rights of minorities a "minority-ist", a "black-ism" or even a "animaltarian." However, there are many people today who, purporting to defend equal rights for females, call themselves "feminist." Why is this unlike the others? Why don't these people pick up "civil rights act...