HiPhish wrote:I would much rather risk that some edgy teenager might come into the discussion than having normal people be afraid of speaking their mind our of fear from being blacklisted.
I basically don't want politics anywhere near my vidya, everyone can have their own opinions and live their life their own way as long as everyone is given an equal starting point and as long as I don't have to hear about it when reading reviews about things in my hobby I'm fine with it. /rant
There's an awful lot of coverage on this MP mod even though its well off completion or playability but at least it means there's more and more of a spotlight on OpenMW!
HiPhish wrote:I would much rather risk that some edgy teenager might come into the discussion than having normal people be afraid of speaking their mind our of fear from being blacklisted.
I don't think people need to worry about speaking their mind, here. AFAIK, we don't have a zero-tolerance policy. If you end up saying something inappropriate, you will be warned, and you're always free to ask for clarification on what is or isn't appropriate for this forum. Unless you post something illegal, I doubt you need to worry about being banned without warning.
HiPhish wrote:And if you say you are looking at both sides equally, they why call yourself a feminist in the first place?
Egalitarianism automatically encompasses feminism, but feminism does not necessarily encompass egalitarianism. In other words, if you are an egalitarian, you are automatically a feminist as well, because egalitarians believe in gender equality. It's therefore unnecessary to specify that you are a feminist in addition to being an egalitarian, just as it's unnecessary to specify that you are a primate in addition to being a human; if you are the former, you are also the latter, so it goes without saying.
Of course, it's possible to be a feminist but not an egalitarian, just as it's possible to be a primate but not a human. You could, for example, believe in gender equality but not racial equality, socioeconomic equality, etc. Therefore a racist feminist would be a feminist but not an egalitarian.
The problem I see with these terms is that the people most vocally describing themselves as feminists are total nutters or people trying to exploit money out of said nutters, and the people most vocally describing themselves as egalitarian are often sexist males who've read too much into the 'radical feminists are making everything terrible' narrative, but want to claim they're still fighting for both sides. In both groups, the vast majority are sane people who want the same thing - people to stop being dicks to each other - and because the standard goals for both of these groups are the same, the sane people don't tend to get into debates about which term is the better one. Therefore they don't write anything saying their term is best, therefore outside observers only see the nutters' definition.
The way I see it, it's most helpful to explain to people that radical/3rd-wave feminism isn't actually feminism, and that they should defend the term's actual meaning instead of fleeing from it and labelling themselves egalitarian, otherwise we could end up with the great work of people who gave a lot to make the world better under the banner of feminism being associated solely with whackjobs instead. Plenty of symbols have been ruined through history by allowing Bad People™ - for example, most people would associate a swastika with the Nazi regime instead of its prior meaning, and in many countries, if a house flies the flag of that country, the owner can be safely assumed to be racist. I had a third, more relevant, example too, but forgot it while writing...
Whenever people are having a discussion about whether a thing is good or bad, they need to at least agree on what that thing is. Normally, if someone identifies as a feminist, they'd define it as something like "someone who believes that women and men deserve equal rights and equal opportunities", which is something that nearly anyone can agree with. When someone attacks feminism, they're usually working from a different definition -- that of a particular cultural movement like third-wave feminism in "the west" during the late 20th and early 21st century, or even more particularly the stereotypical "Tumblr feminist". Each of these definitions can be correct depending on context, but that's a nuance that tends to get lost in the kind of knee-jerk sound-byte arguments on the internet.
Identity politics are counterproductive. If somebody makes a claim that you find false, it's more useful to refute the claim instead of going after the tribe that the claimant belongs to. Worry more about what's true and right than about winning points for your team.