Feminists have the uncomfortable position

[ismnotwasm]

Of feeling a lot of "I told you so"--if not saying it.

All the arguments, here and elsewhere about patriarchy, rape culture, what it means to walk through life as a female-who in many instances is not regarded as fully human, especially when it comes to women of color. From the dismissing of terms such as "yellow fever" to the animalistic portrayals of the black female body.

To the disingenuous defense of certain words when used against women (I'm not talking censorship, I'm talking meaning) in the context of a hostile culture.

Arguments about what pornagraphy and prostitution mean, in terms of outcome--putting aside all bullshit "morality" arguments--these are situations that objectify the female body, and subjugate it to restricted economic agency.

We had warnings--4Chan, MRA's, white supremacists assholes--all that seemingly rotten structure in the backwash of the internet suddenly now has integral structure.

Has the female body ever had independent agency? Our rights have been under fire my entire life. It should come as no surprise that there are those who want to keep those rights as a salable bargaining chip. All things female are for sale in our culture.

[NurseJackie]

1. Thank you! I honored to be the first to "DU-Rec" this wonderful post.

[niyad]

2. thank you!! heartfelt k and r

[herding cats]

3. Very true.

Great post!

K&R

[bettyellen]

4. So true and the impacts are ever evolving... when I read that AI has been found to have racist

Inclinations - based on who's been programming it the biased outcomes, I immediately realized it was likely sexist too. Those are the foundations developers are unthinkingly building "intelligence" on. It's like history written by the victors, except it's the future.

[Lucky Luciano]

48. Usually AI is based on statistical algorithms.

However, people can game the engines running the algos if they know what they are doing.

Google Bombing is an example of gaming an AI algo - the techniques Google uses to get and order search results are absolutely AI algos at work.

The famous "Santorum" "frothy" Google bomb is an example.


So if a bunch of KKK assholes become aggressively racist to the AI bots, they will learn accordingly. So the AI bots need to be able to learn when they are being gamed. Probably a tough algo, but some filters can be applied.

[bettyellen]

53. If the algorithms are based on outcomes influenced by racism

then that garbage comes out the other end- it's set perpetuating and it's likely not been noticed by programmers because they're not exactly a diverse bunch. Real world impacts that go beyond the inexplicable lack of diversity at firms that work in artificial intelligence. These programs are supposed to "think for people" but we weren't concerned enough about the garbage in aspect of it all:



https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/13/ai-programs-exhibit-racist-and-sexist-biases-research-reveals

[Lucky Luciano]

59. AI is still in its infancy.

There is A LOT of work to do.

Teaching an AI algo to recognize when it is being played is a hard problem. Probably some kind of unsupervised learning process based on data clustering is needed, but it is much easier said than done.

The fake news filtering problem is also hard, but probably an easier problem.

[bettyellen]

63. Well it's off to a scary start- much more diversity is needed and these companies

Because the people who have been programming them are a bit blind to what they've been doing.

[Lucky Luciano]

66. The programming is less likely to be the problem.

A more likely solution would be to feed the Algos a massive amount of literature based on feminist theory and African American studies to see if it can learn to detect those biases. That study would require a lot of funding and years to get any results using top data scientists. Google has deep pockets- pressuring them in this direction could work.

[bettyellen]

67. If programmers didn't realize their inputs reflect bigoted ideas then programmers lack of awareness

Is indeed a problem. they need a diverse workforce in order to stop making these sorts of mistakes.

[Lucky Luciano]

70. The programmers don't make the inputs.

The programmers are writing statistical procedures with large datasets. Natural language processing (NLP) is based on statistical analysis of words in documents to try to make a computer grasp the meaning of the content.

Here is a paper that used thes techniques 25 years ago. English and French versions of Canadian parliament proceedings were pushed through their algos to see if they can teach the computer how to translate English and French. It is a foundational paper. Google Translate is based on this ultimately (all the authors are now at Renaissance Technologies - it is that Robert Mercer yes)

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=972474

NLP has evolved a lot since then and can be used to work on the problems you suggest- more diversity is needed too, but analytics will solve the problem. We almost need to make the computers overcompensate for society's words that contain gender biases. This is a nontrivial problem.

[bettyellen]

72. Okay, someone is choosing what the AI works with- who would that be?

Because the ones who are doing it are failing. Can you understand that much?

[Lucky Luciano]

73. Bingo.

That is where we agree. So we need the deep pockets at google to work on this. It is nontrivial because the biases are a persistent societal ill that you might say that the statistics of machine learning are proving exist since the AI has the biases. Hard to do without deep pockets - not a bad idea to seriously push the idea on google and Facebook. You can argue the business proposition of doing it too because they will get many results in the process that can probably also be applied to their main business model of chasing you all over the Internet with their fuckng ads.

[bettyellen]

74. Well they wouldn't be making these mistakes if they had a diverse crew in the first place-

Let's hope that's a lesson they learn from this. Even if it's only because yeah, they're missing out in their marketing big time.

[IronLionZion]

7. Dude

[BumRushDaShow]

8. Got a live one here!

[sheshe2]

10. Oh my!

[BumRushDaShow]

12. MiRT is running slow today apparently.

[Decoy of Fenris]

13. Or the jury. I'm assuming someone flagged this guy. n/t

[BumRushDaShow]

18. I alerted.

not sure about anyone else.

[Decoy of Fenris]

23. Gotcha.

I couldn't send one, myself. Glad someone did. Still, this is beyond the pale.

[TeapotInATempest]

25. So did I

[IronLionZion]

28. Alerted

[Decoy of Fenris]

33. The larger question is why it took that long, I think.

Fifteen minutes is a fair haul for an active DU jury. Even allowing time for consideration of the post, that should have been hidden fairly rapidly. Unless people voted to let it stand, and MIRT got them afterwards.

[IronLionZion]

40. Fewer people online this time of day

I doubt anyone had any hesitation on which way to vote

[Decoy of Fenris]

43. Fair enough.

I work the graveyard shift, so this is like midnight to me. I always assume there's more people online than there probably are in reality.

[ismnotwasm]

20. They'll get em.

Pretty typical MRA crap.

[BumRushDaShow]

30. The delay speaks volumes unfortunately.

Edit: Finally gone.

[BainsBane]

32. Loser, all the way

[sheshe2]

21. I alerted.

[niyad]

79. oh dear, it looks like I missed all the fun!!

[sheshe2]

81. Yeah....

Something to the tune of...women like ism that whine don't know how good we got it here...and we should be sold as slaves to Arabia and see how bad it really is... More but that was the gist. Poor baby doesn't like women much.

Some one said it was a returnee~

[niyad]

83. and I bet we can guess a couple that it might have been. they are like fungus, they

just don't go away!

[sheshe2]

84. Mirt seems to know them well.

They posted a bunch of filthy pics to me awhile back on their typical hit and run.

[JHan]

39. I always miss the cray cray

By the time I reach the cray gets hidden. Seems like it was extra special cray cray with batshit sauce.

[BumRushDaShow]

42. I always keep it around for those curious

Turbojet (1 post)

5. I'm starting to think maybe we should sell women like you as slaves to the Arabs or something

Otherwise, what else are you good for? All you do is whine like an annoying child.

If you're too immature and sheltered to appreciate all the rights and benefits you already have in this country, go elsewhere and see how other women around the world live, before you whine about what an oppressed little victim of patriarchy you are.

And it made it through a couple more posts before the pizza man came!

Sick fucker.

[ehrnst]

54. Thank you for preserving this as evidence of what we too often deal with here towards women (nt)

[mcar]

56. A little SHART for our afternoon viewing

Seemed like a swell guy.

[JHan]

58. He made his last stand. He tried to insult a woman online.

and we're just not grateful enough.

[Lotusflower70]

76. Omfg!

That's absolutely disgusting. And yet that argument gets played out over and over again. Oh women have no problems in the United States, go live in Saudi Arabia. I am very appreciative and grateful that my parents sacrificed to come to the United States. But I also know we can do so much better than we are. When women fighting for reproductive rights in 2017 and we are told our bodies are not our own and old, rich white guys get to decide for us. Fuck that! We deserve better. The future generations deserve better. When rape victims are vilified and blamed for their own rapes, beaten or murdered by a partner, we have to fight against the sickening toxicity of blame and shame. No it's maggots like that guy that make me want to keep fighting. Press on!

[sheshe2]

82. I saved it as well!

[niyad]

85. hmmmm, that sounds so damned familiar. obviously one of our socks.

since we know you are lurking here, you sick and twisted piece of filth, I know what I would LIKE to suggest that you do. but there are decent people present.

may you receive everything you deserve.

[ismnotwasm]

11. Oh my.

Touchy aren't we?

[ismnotwasm]

22. Poor baby.

Do you need your mother?

[johnp3907]

31. Pleas get the help you need.

[johnp3907]

24. You sound so scared.

[jumptheshadow]

19. Message deleted by DU the Administrators

[johnp3907]

15. Bye.

[TeapotInATempest]

16. Nice. You signed up today

Just to post this? Did 4chan send you?

[BlancheSplanchnik]

29. Look at this whiney guy!

Yeeeesh

[BumRushDaShow]

6. K&R

[ismnotwasm]

9. I've been thinking of Andrea Dworkin

Who suffered so much in her life, and more lately has been dismissed as "anti-male". Particularly her speech about rape. She sounds so exhausted here--she had been fighting for so long. I think I finally have a glimpse of how exhausted she actually was. My rights are not for sale. Reframing them is not acceptable.

I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce
During Which There Is No Rape
1983

I have thought a great deal about how a feminist, like myself, addresses an audience primarily of political men who say that they are antisexist. And I thought a lot about whether there should be a qualitative difference in the kind of speech I address to you. And then I found myself incapable of pretending that I really believe that that qualitative difference exists. I have watched the men's movement for many years. I am close with some of the people who participate in it. I can't come here as a friend even though I might very much want to. What I would like to do is to scream: and in that scream I would have the screams of the raped, and the sobs of the battered; and even worse, in the center of that scream I would have the deafening sound of women's silence, that silence into which we are born because we are women and in which most of us die.

And if there would be a plea or a question or a human address in that scream, it would be this: why are you so slow? Why are you so slow to understand the simplest things; not the complicated ideological things. You understand those. The simple things. The cliches. Simply that women are human to precisely the degree and quality that you are.

And also: that we do not have time. We women. We don't have forever. Some of us don't have another week or another day to take time for you to discuss whatever it is that will enable you to go out into those streets and do something. We are very close to death. All women are. And we are very close to rape and we are very close to beating. And we are inside a system of humiliation from which there is no escape for us. We use statistics not to try to quantify the injuries, but to convince the world that those injuries even exist. Those statistics are not abstractions. It is easy to say, "Ah, the statistics, somebody writes them up one way and somebody writes them up another way." That's true. But I hear about the rapes one by one by one by one by one, which is also how they happen. Those statistics are not abstract to me. Every three minutes a woman is being raped. Every eighteen seconds a woman is being beaten. There is nothing abstract about it. It is happening right now as I am speaking.

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIIE.html

[niyad]

80. thank you for posting this. again, this one needs to be its own OP

[snooper2]

14. 4chan means women have it worse now than 20, 30, 40 years ago?

not following

[ismnotwasm]

26. No, I'm just musing over the fact

That we still do not have full autonomy. 4chan and gamergaters, are symptoms of the societal diseases of sexism and racism

[TeapotInATempest]

38. Exactly, these are symptoms

Combine them with a stubborn refusal to accept women's and POC's lived experiences of sexism and racism as valid and the stage becomes set for an erosion of the gains that have been made in the last 40 years.

For example, I'm old enough to remember that 20 years ago the birth control pill was not nearly as controversial as it is now in some quarters. Pharmacists simply sold them in the '90s without whining about their so-called "consciences". Now, apparently, they "kill babies".

[Warpy]

36. No, many of us have had it better

with access to jobs paying wages we can live on instead of dead end work that treats us all like we're just trying to get out of the house and earn money for a new hat or something because our Lord and Master pays for everything else.

I'm glad to say that a lot of younger men have grown up and are shouldering their responsibility within the home. Unfortunately, the same men we had to deal with 50 years ago are still out there and places like 4chan is where they congregate to buddy up and tell each other that the enslavement of half the human race is only common sense.

4 chan reminds us how fragile our gains are and that we still have major battles to fight.

[TNLib]

52. 4chan is a nothing but a hub of male dorks

With neurological and mental health disorders.

That can't cope with real life and real women so they congregate in their cyber circle jerk.

They're not reflective in anyway of mentally healthy modern males.

[Egnever]

78. Best description of 4chan I have seen in a while

[sheshe2]

34. Thank you for this ism.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

35. Our government is fixing to legislate economic and/physical murder

Against us.

And still, the word "feminism" is stigmatized.


Great post, thank you ismnotwasm

[BigmanPigman]

41. I remember a Seinfeld episode

where Elaine yells, "I hate men but that doesn't mean I am gay!" Sometimes I feel like I can not even say I am a feminist due to the negative feedback I get.

[Squinch]

60. I shout that I'm a feminist TO the ones giving me the negative feedback.

Because they are, by definition, dumbasses.

[boston bean]

37. You know I know!! Years of fighting them. Many

post at JPR now.

But they are well organized and post everywhere!! We were not making it up or falling on fainting couches clutching our pearls. It was all very real.

[ismnotwasm]

50. The election of Someone like Donald Trump

Is a sad proof of the underpinnings of sexism and racism throughout our culture. Even the people who didn't vote, couldn't be bothered to see the very real danger he represented

[Ligyron]

62. I am consistently amazed that a majority of women voted for Trump.

There's a good part of the problem right there.

[Initech]

44. I think what the Free Speech Brigade doesn't realize...

Is that both sides have a right to speak their mind. I've always cringed when Limbaugh attacks "feminazis" or when Trump attacks the "fake news" media. It's called the 1st amendment, guys. And it applies to - I don't know - EVERYBODY!!!! You can't silence the opposition no matter how hard you try. This isn't V For Vendetta.

[BumRushDaShow]

47. IMHO there's a difference between "speech"

and enacting and/or supporting policies that oppress. What we are seeing is a push to chip away at the legislation that provided more equality in order to return policies that negatively impact women and POC.

It's a cyclical thing where the perpetrators of the oppression declare themselves "victims" and then push (often successfully) to return things back to where they are at the top of some hierarchy of control.

[ismnotwasm]

51. I got in a fun argument on Twitter

Regarding Ann Coulter. I said something about her speaking "if she could refrain from hate speech"-I worded it poorly, I was thinking of her whipping up enough frenzy to cause actual violence. Anyway. The RW either a)defended hate speech or b) denied that it exists. They called me a lot of names of course but what I felt was bemusement. One guy trying to corner me I guess-- equated a parody classic painting of a angel holding up the head of Donald Trump to President Obama with his head in a noose. He was trying to say hate speech was all subjective, with zero clues poor little racist.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

46. K & R!!!!

[brer cat]

49. Thank you, ism.

Very well put.

[mcar]

55. Well said!

[japple]

57. And what we do with our own bodies is sacred. I chose not to have children and have been

questioned about that, like it was something unnatural...like I was wasting my potential or my "value" because I wasn't making babies.

[Squinch]

61. Wonderful, ism, as always. I wish there were some kind of "superrec"

[Ligyron]

64. Well stated.

However, I have somehow missed the "animalistic portrayals of the black female body."

Can't be everywhere I guess...

[betsuni]

65. K&R

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

68. Love it. Thanks for posting. :) n/t

[Starry Messenger]

69. I would love to know what life is like not having to worry every day how you could be damaged.

[NastyRiffraff]

71. Another big K&R

Thank you,ism

[tavalon]

75. A great deal of my rage right now is

watching this play out and not being able to shout from the rooftops, "I told you! You stupid fuckers!"

[Lotusflower70]

77. And yet

Our concerns are dismissed or treated as insignificant. A woman wants to own her sexuality, she gets called names. A woman wants to be successful in business and decides not to have children. She is judged harshly and treated as though she is selfish. Rape and domestic violence victims have to fight for justice. Women are still fighting the battle for reproductive rights. Serious issues are in need of solutions and yet we are still treated as though we are cloked in victimhood. That all we do is complain. But those methods are attempts to silence us. I will not be silenced. I refuse. There are divides in the feminist movement. I am proud to be a feminist regardless of the misperceptions and ignorance. It's not only for me that I am active, it is for those around me and beyond me as well as future generations. I want to leave them something better. Something they can build on.