Can you please not post in a throwaway/flamewar style to HN? What you bring up is no doubt one relevant aspect of a long career, but on HN we want comments that enhance curious conversation, not kill it.
This is only half right. The capitalists loved feminism. Biggest expense of many businesses is labor. Double the labor pool, labor cost plummets, & profits skyrocket, so of course the capitalists at the CIA appreciated Steinem, and vice versa.
Would add that Alan Greenspan made a similar remark about his consulting firm. How he hired as many women as he could, since he could get sharp ones at a considerable discount.
There's a Swedish song, which sees it like this "daghemmets utbygnadstakt regleras av konjunkturen, så tillmäts kvinnan sin plats i den ekonomiska strukturen, en billig arbetskraftsreserv till hands när fabrikerna visslarn, tillbakapressad av daghemsbrist, om lönsamhetens drivhjul plötsligt gnisslar" "The extension of day care is controlled by the economic demand, so woman is given her place in the economic structure, a cheap work-force reserve at hand when the factories want it; pushed back by too few daycares in case demand slows".
The interpretation isn't anti-feminist, and they see the game rather as a cynical game having little to do with what is in the interests of the women themselves.
I don't have an opinion on pro/anti feminism. I have a big opinion on paid mass manipulators -- especially ones being paid with public funds. It is outrageous --- that they steal our money, then have the gall to propagandize us with it. That they had her operate out of Europe also illustrates how they managed to work around Smith-Mundt at the time.
If propaganda is to be used, it should be to inform the public without deception as to the sender or the purpose, not used to push a political position with public money with deception about the sender or the purpose.
I didn't initially understand your comment, but you mean basically something like that the origin of feminism was in socialism and the CIA saw that it was going to be unavoidable or at least popular and wanting to avoid this leading to socialism becoming popular they decided to make a bastardized version that cuts off any socialist aspect and just turn the whole thing into the modern liberal feminism?
"While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying: “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”
Less cloak-and-dagger and more a young, energetic, global representative for American values and freedom"
was part of the Cold War-era soft power projection for the US since Communist countries were uplifting their women a lot more intentionally and structurally, especially compared to their historic baseline [0]. it looks pretty bad if your primary values are freedom but they don't apply super well to half of your entire population
there's also a further-left critique of Steinem [1] as being the public face and visage of pro-American, capitalist feminism, someone who took it from being the more Emma Goldman/Combahee River Collective rooted form - a kind of 'JFK' for the masses to substitute for the more revolutionary ideals of, say, Malcolm X or Dr. King, both of whom were very unpopular in their time and often derided as 'asking for too much' [2]
[0] meh, what's the point?
[1] was coming from a Marxist, and Marxists are going to Marxist.
[2] had nothing about feminism
You're trying to muddy the waters with your positioning. Women's rights are just that. Commingling the concept with economic theory, other civil rights movements, government propaganda, etc doesn't detract from the core concept of: should women be second class citizens in this world?
And another commenter talked about rights as being via the State, but in the end, rights are freedoms, and in the concept of the State it's a handshake agreement that the State will honor those freedoms.
Those same rights are also being challenged by religious doctrine (arguably the State in earlier times).
Imo the federal apparatus should be broken up and handed to states with a mandate to collaborate to avoid concentration of power
Is this generated by an LLM putting together random popular talking points without regard to whether they make sense together? What would it mean for the CIA to be handed to the states with a mandate to collaborate?
Comments
[flagged]
Can you please not post in a throwaway/flamewar style to HN? What you bring up is no doubt one relevant aspect of a long career, but on HN we want comments that enhance curious conversation, not kill it.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. They include:
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
"Eschew flamebait."
This is only half right. The capitalists loved feminism. Biggest expense of many businesses is labor. Double the labor pool, labor cost plummets, & profits skyrocket, so of course the capitalists at the CIA appreciated Steinem, and vice versa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem#CIA_ties_and_le...
Would add that Alan Greenspan made a similar remark about his consulting firm. How he hired as many women as he could, since he could get sharp ones at a considerable discount.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5432331
Yes, and people understood it as it happened.
There's a Swedish song, which sees it like this "daghemmets utbygnadstakt regleras av konjunkturen, så tillmäts kvinnan sin plats i den ekonomiska strukturen, en billig arbetskraftsreserv till hands när fabrikerna visslarn, tillbakapressad av daghemsbrist, om lönsamhetens drivhjul plötsligt gnisslar" "The extension of day care is controlled by the economic demand, so woman is given her place in the economic structure, a cheap work-force reserve at hand when the factories want it; pushed back by too few daycares in case demand slows".
The interpretation isn't anti-feminist, and they see the game rather as a cynical game having little to do with what is in the interests of the women themselves.
I don't have an opinion on pro/anti feminism. I have a big opinion on paid mass manipulators -- especially ones being paid with public funds. It is outrageous --- that they steal our money, then have the gall to propagandize us with it. That they had her operate out of Europe also illustrates how they managed to work around Smith-Mundt at the time.
Yes, I'm specifically talking about the song.
If propaganda is to be used, it should be to inform the public without deception as to the sender or the purpose, not used to push a political position with public money with deception about the sender or the purpose.
I didn't initially understand your comment, but you mean basically something like that the origin of feminism was in socialism and the CIA saw that it was going to be unavoidable or at least popular and wanting to avoid this leading to socialism becoming popular they decided to make a bastardized version that cuts off any socialist aspect and just turn the whole thing into the modern liberal feminism?
Women's rights are human rights. We all win when that happens (except for those that exploit and abuse them).
I've read this sentence multiple times, but it still does not make sense to me
Right wing talking points. They see feminism as a threat (which it is to them, but for the good overall).
it really isn't - it's well-documented: https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/feminist-was-spy
"While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying: “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”
Less cloak-and-dagger and more a young, energetic, global representative for American values and freedom"
was part of the Cold War-era soft power projection for the US since Communist countries were uplifting their women a lot more intentionally and structurally, especially compared to their historic baseline [0]. it looks pretty bad if your primary values are freedom but they don't apply super well to half of your entire population
there's also a further-left critique of Steinem [1] as being the public face and visage of pro-American, capitalist feminism, someone who took it from being the more Emma Goldman/Combahee River Collective rooted form - a kind of 'JFK' for the masses to substitute for the more revolutionary ideals of, say, Malcolm X or Dr. King, both of whom were very unpopular in their time and often derided as 'asking for too much' [2]
[0]https://kristenghodsee.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/om...
[1]https://publicseminar.org/2016/06/feminisms-of-the-left-poli...
[2]https://news.gallup.com/vault/246167/protests-seen-harming-c...
And another commenter talked about rights as being via the State, but in the end, rights are freedoms, and in the concept of the State it's a handshake agreement that the State will honor those freedoms.
Those same rights are also being challenged by religious doctrine (arguably the State in earlier times).
"was" doing some heavy lifting.
Nothing against Steinem specifically but seems pretty clear the elders tend to view their past with rose colored glasses
Imo the federal apparatus should be broken up and handed to states with a mandate to collaborate to avoid concentration of power
Is this generated by an LLM putting together random popular talking points without regard to whether they make sense together? What would it mean for the CIA to be handed to the states with a mandate to collaborate?
"CIA? What's that? Sounds like some populist gibberish that makes no sense." -- An American in 1900.
You had it all figured out in your other reply to me. Will leave it as an exercise to your clearly brilliant mind.