Attempting to discredit an argument, because of who said it and why they supposedly said it, is a text book ad hominem.
It’s especially painful, because you’re defending a corporation (run by a white male) with an abysmal record on women’s rights, who sell a product that has a track record of damaging young girls’ self image, from accusations of purplewashing. Purplewashing being a term, that as far as I know, was originally termed by female feminists. It’s a bit like if I quoted Emmeline Pankhurst, and you said the quote was nonsense because I don’t know what’s it’s like to be a woman.
But more generally, I suppose that’s the danger of a superficial understanding of identity politics. In practice it is often used to divide groups with a common cause, like how the far right have used TERF ideology in an attempt to divide the LGBTQ+ movement and pit feminists against the trans community, claiming trans women aren’t real women, because of (and I quote) “lived experiences”. (Luckily actual lesbians don’t often fall into this trap, because they know that this is nonsense because they know actual trans people and know they face similar struggles and live through similar experiences.)
And from a feminist perspective it perpetuates gender binaries and essentialism. The whole men are form Mars, women are from Venus nonsense. In the case of the Barbie movie, purplewashing is very similar to pinkwashing, greenwashing, bluewashing, etc. So you don’t need to actually be a woman to understand why purplewashing is problematic, just like you don’t need to be gay to understand why pinkwashing is problematic.
Well I don’t want to continue this longer than we have to as we’re mostly talking at each other by this point. So happy to “disagree” I guess.
But in the interests of trying to resolve this … some questions:
Could someone not have appreciated the message or core of the speech in the moment of watching the film without in anyway supporting or defending Mattel?
Is it not more likely that such a person would be more likely to be female than male?
If 2, then is any reductionism of the significance of the speech not more likely to come from a male however much of a point they have?
More broadly, given your application of “ad hominem” as a “logical fallacy”, how could any argument against patriarchy have ever been made by women, or any argument against a hegemony made by the oppressed, without falling foul of the ad hominem “fallacy”?
In the end, all I’ve been saying to you is “yes, but there can still be a kernel of truth in this that resonated with people but which didn’t resonate with you perhaps because of your different perspective”.
To reject that as a reality or valid or relevant human behaviour strikes me as an argument that’s somewhere between naive and insensitive, especially given that the purplewashing point is not in question at all.
Anyway, all the best and genuinely thanks for the chat … I believe neither of us got too heated and kept it civil!
Sorry, but nope.
Attempting to discredit an argument, because of who said it and why they supposedly said it, is a text book ad hominem.
It’s especially painful, because you’re defending a corporation (run by a white male) with an abysmal record on women’s rights, who sell a product that has a track record of damaging young girls’ self image, from accusations of purplewashing. Purplewashing being a term, that as far as I know, was originally termed by female feminists. It’s a bit like if I quoted Emmeline Pankhurst, and you said the quote was nonsense because I don’t know what’s it’s like to be a woman.
But more generally, I suppose that’s the danger of a superficial understanding of identity politics. In practice it is often used to divide groups with a common cause, like how the far right have used TERF ideology in an attempt to divide the LGBTQ+ movement and pit feminists against the trans community, claiming trans women aren’t real women, because of (and I quote) “lived experiences”. (Luckily actual lesbians don’t often fall into this trap, because they know that this is nonsense because they know actual trans people and know they face similar struggles and live through similar experiences.)
And from a feminist perspective it perpetuates gender binaries and essentialism. The whole men are form Mars, women are from Venus nonsense. In the case of the Barbie movie, purplewashing is very similar to pinkwashing, greenwashing, bluewashing, etc. So you don’t need to actually be a woman to understand why purplewashing is problematic, just like you don’t need to be gay to understand why pinkwashing is problematic.
But hey, what do I know. I’m just Ken.
Anyway, agree to disagree.
Well I don’t want to continue this longer than we have to as we’re mostly talking at each other by this point. So happy to “disagree” I guess.
But in the interests of trying to resolve this … some questions:
In the end, all I’ve been saying to you is “yes, but there can still be a kernel of truth in this that resonated with people but which didn’t resonate with you perhaps because of your different perspective”.
To reject that as a reality or valid or relevant human behaviour strikes me as an argument that’s somewhere between naive and insensitive, especially given that the purplewashing point is not in question at all.
Anyway, all the best and genuinely thanks for the chat … I believe neither of us got too heated and kept it civil!