Feminists: tell me what you believe?
This is an invitation to anyone who labels herself a feminist to tell me specifically what that means to you. As readers know, I often discuss how I don’t like, believe in, or approve of feminism.
But there are a number of women in the Disaffected audience, and who I “know” on social media, who identify themselves as feminists. And many of them are interesting people with engaging things to say (I don’t mean that to sound condescending, honest).
This tells me that “feminism” is one of those words with 1,000 bespoke-personal-to-me definitions. Thus, I ask you to tell me what it means to you specifically.
I’ll start out by disclosing what it means to me, and what conclusions I’ve come to.
To me, when I use the word “feminism,” I am not talking about:
1. Equal legal rights for women
2. Equal access to education, sports, and the job market
I endorse those things above, it’s just that I don’t believe “feminism” is the right word for them, or even necessary to use when supporting those political positions.
To me, feminism seems to boil down to these deep, but usually non-articulated, beliefs:
1. That the natural state of the world is permanent female subjugation to men
2. That men have an essential, in-born, desire to exploit, rape, or suppress women
3. That it’s sane and sensible to describe any Western country as a “patriarchy”
I realize that you may disagree with my definition. I offer it in honesty because I want you to understand why I think as I do.
How much of this “feminist” versus “antifeminist” fight is a distracted battle over terminology? Put another way: Are you and I using “feminism” to mean such different things that we mistakenly believe that we disagree, when we actually don’t disagree?
So, please tell me in the comments what feminism is to you. Please be as specific as you can. Don’t just use high-level catch-all words. Specify. Use concrete, real-world words and scenarios, please. I promise to give the same to you as I always try to.
Thanks to everyone who answered the question.
Comments are closed now. They had a good run, I suppose.
I’m 70, so my definition of feminism goes way back, to the days of “lord and master” laws, which meant that a husband could use a couple’s money for his own ends, leaving his wife vulnerable to and responsible for his financial failures; to the days of raped women—I kid you not when I say I’ve known more than a dozen women who were raped by strangers—being unbelieved, or considered “odd” by police; to the days when gay widows had no say over the life they lived together and had all their mutual belongings taken by errant blood relatives who had rejected them decades before. In short, to the days when actual legal inequalities existed. So I do not relate to the term these days; in fact, I’m quite hostile to the kitchen sink feminism being demanded by young women. (It’s just amazing to me how many instigators of academic bigotry and marketing absurdity are, almost to a person, white women who like to cry and who look like the women in my youth who were members of the Junior League and other “uplift” organizations.) So, to hell with the word—and the women who espouse it today yet sit by as women’s sports is destroyed, Muslim marauders rape and slaughter innocent women, and as adherents choose woke progressivism and political power over personal empowerment. Screw them. But let me offer a picture of *my* meaning: a female character portrayed by Katharine Hepburn* (whose mother was an early supporter of women suffrage) in the 1940s who either slapped a man hard for making unwanted advances or fell happily, without ambivalence, into his arms.
* Unfortunately, Hepburn herself was treated quite shabbily by the guilt-ridden Spencer Tracy, so maybe my image exists only in old movies.