Feminist ludditism

From Feminists Outraged At Adobe For Demoing Photoshop On A Woman: There were no protests when Adobe demonstrated software on a man. by Mollie Hemingway.

This week, Apple unveiled updated iPhones, a bigger iPad, an upgraded Apple TV and some fun accessories. As part of the iPad Pro demonstration, Adobe’s mobile design director Eric Snowden showed off his new Adobe Fix. The app enables mobile photo retouching and its face detection features are impressive, to say the least.

See Hemingway's post for links to the impressive demonstration.

And, well, feminists are … outraged.

See, the person operating the software is a member of the male sex and the person whose face is being photoshopped is a woman. I’m sure you see the problem. Oh you don’t? Here, let these outraged people explain it to you:

Yeah, make that woman smile, Apple pic.twitter.com/WlsNpHa9qC

— Damon Beres (@dlberes) September 9, 2015

Stop telling women to smile Apple

— Femsplain (@femsplain) September 9, 2015

Watching a man photoshop a woman to make her smile more is kind of a cruel joke.

— Lauren Hockenson (@lhockenson) September 9, 2015

I recall there being similar outrage and snarky commentary when Apple came out with the iPad.

Hemingway's point is that the feminist twitter mob is being selective and hypocritical as they were completely unmoved by a similar exercise in 2010 when Adobe introduced its corresponding tool, Puppet Warp but demonstrated its use on a male model. This is just a storm in a teacup that will disappear shortly and not worthy of attention on its own.

What struck me is that this is the third or fourth similar instance in just a couple of months where feminist twitter mobs have gone after Science. At the beginning of the summer there was the absurdity of criticizing Matt Taylor for the style of his Hawaiian shirt at the press conference where he announced the landing of a space probe on a comet.

Then there was the Tim Hunt controversy over (deliberately) misreported comments at a conference in South Korea about women in science (summarized here: The Timothy Hunt Witch Hunt by Jonathan Foreman.)

Now this. If you are paying attention it comes across as a deep hatred of science and scientific accomplishment among the feminist twitter mob. A primitive Ludditism as it were. This sometimes seems to almost be a wilful rejection of an objectively determinable world.

No matter that all the evidence indicates that in the US and other OECD countries, women earn exactly the same for the same level of work as men (taking into account education attainment, fields, hours worked per year, etc.) No matter that the crime of rape is at an all time low and still declining and is less frequent on campus than off. No matter that women are hired on a preferential basis in STEM fields.

All these are facts that are well documented. While they are not well received in some feminist circles, they are as firmly established as any scientific finding is in the social sciences. And yet there is the firm and loudly shouted conviction that women are discriminated against in pay, are discriminated against in hiring in science fields and are in increasing peril of sexual violence on campuses.

How to explain such a profound disconnect from reality? And not just from reality. From other feminists as well. There appears to be a huge agenda gap between what might be called classic feminists (equal rights for all) versus those self-identified feminists shouting on the streets today or making up the rampaging twitter mobs.

For all of us who are Second-Wave feminists (equal rights for all), which is most everyone in the OECD, the arguments and behaviors of third-wave feminists seem to place all the accomplishments today in peril, or at least to sully the brand perception of feminism.

My guess is that we are headed to some sort of denouement in the next five years. It will not be between misogynists and women. It will be between mainstream second-wave feminists (virtually everyone) and that small number of third-wave feminists out of gender studies courses where I suspect most of this anti-intellectualism, anti-scientism is brewing (where how you feel trumps the data.) I also suspect that the clash will not come about over feminist policy issues but likely around the Luiditism inherent in the third-wavers.

People might disagree to some degree about which policies to pursue to stamp out the last vestiges of discrimination but they are much more unified behind the fixed belief in the value and progress of science. Appear to be working against science and science progress is one of the faster ways to undermine your political ideology. And third-wave feminists from Gender Studies programs seem firmly in the Luddite camp. Talk about the wrong side of history.

UPDATE: Well not quite five years. Came across this interview, Against Our Will Author on What Today’s Rape Activists Don’t Get by Katie Van Syckle. I said that the denouement would not "be between misogynists and women. It will be between mainstream second-wave feminists (virtually everyone) and that small number of third-wave feminists." Here is second-wave feminist icon, Susan Brownmiller on the third-wave purveyors of the campus rape epidemic meme:

In the 1970s we had an extraordinary movement against sexual assault in this country and changed the laws. They [the campus activists] don't seem to know that. They think they are the first people to discover rape, and the problem of consent, and they are not.

They have been tremendously influenced by the idea that "You can drink as much as you want because you are the equal of a guy," and it is not true. They don't accept the fact there are predators out there, and that all women have to take special precautions. They think they can drink as much as men, which is crazy because they can't drink as much as men. I find the position "Don't blame us, we're survivors" to be appalling.

Also, they [college women] are not the chief targets of rapists. Young women and all women in housing projects and ghettos are still in far greater danger than college girls.