I've got my ranty panties on.

[badseed1980]

Feminist rant time. Yes, feminist. I am a feminist. I am not some Andrea Dworkin-type nutjob. I am someone who believes that women SHOULD be the equals of men in our society, and that there is still a ways to go before this is the case.

Yes, there are women out there who call themselves feminists, and who seem to think that feminism means ranting against men in general, and who are as dismissive and hateful of men as any male chauvinist pig is of women. Just because they use the word "feminist" does not mean I will stop using it.

I've heard people say, "I believe in equal rights for women, but 'feminism' is a sexist word and women shouldn't use it because it means they think women are better than men," or similar things. These people claim that the above-mentioned nutjobs have so co-opted the word "feminism" that they find themselves tuning out whenever they hear the word, for fear of hearing nutjobbery and anti-male raving. They say that people won't listen to women who call themselves feminists, because they're afraid that this is all they'll hear.

Sorry, buddy. That doesn't change my mind. Anyone who tunes out when they hear the word feminist is someone who will tune out when it comes to serious discussion of sexism inherent in our society today. These are the people who consciously or subconsciously think, "Jeez, women run some Fortune 500 companies, they're on the Forbes List, they've got the vote, they work outside the home, and I'm not some slack-jawed yokel who beats his barefoot-and-pregnant-in-the-kitchen wife. Sexism is NOT MY PROBLEM." These people aren't going to listen any more closely if I refrain from calling myself a feminist, and they aren't going to take me any more seriously.

I'm a feminist, people. Deal with it. I don't want to cut your balls off. I don't want to take over the world. I just want to stand on an equal footing with men.

Comments

[dee-cee.livejournal.com]

I've been working up a rant to this for awhile now. Recently I was teased about being a feminist...and I wondered if I mocked them for their beliefs (in this case pagan), if I could tell them not to be so "Serious" or "sensitive" about it.

[mama-hogswatch.livejournal.com]

I used to avoid using the term feminist because I did not want to be perceived as hating men.

But if feminist means that one wants women to be treated as equals to men, then yeah, I sure as hell am one.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

When I look back at the first women to call themselves
"feminists," I don't see man-haters. I see women who had more guts than most people, and the determination to actually stand up and make things happen for the sake of women everywhere. That, to me, is not a bad thing to identify with.

[mings-kitten.livejournal.com]

Something I hugely agree with! I thank my stars that my husband is actually enlightened and views me as an equal as well as treats me like an equal, and I thank the fact that he'll be teaching my son that women and men are equal.

...if I have had enough sleep I'd be saying more stuff but it would at the end of it just say "I agree with you" so yeah, I agree with you. :)

[miss-lisa-ma.livejournal.com]

Amen from the choir. (Aside: I suspect that Andrea Dworkin wasn't even everything her detractors said she was. I think Rush Limbaugh et. al. have done more damage to the word "feminist" than any rad-fems ever did, but hey, that's me. Any opportunity I have to screw Rush is a good day!)


When sexism and misogyny permeate so damn much of our contemporary lives, when public discussions about rape center on what women did or didn't do to prevent it rather than what rapists did, when girls feel tremendous pressure to be twice as good as the boys in school but oh, yeah, they have to have shiny hair and perfect skin and can't be above a size 4, when women still earn less on average than men with equal education and skills AFTER adjusting for child-birthing and rearing...and so on and so on...why WOULDN'T any self-respecting woman be some flavor or other of feminist??

Wear that feminist label with pride. Right on.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

I think Rush Limbaugh et. al. have done more damage to the word "feminist" than any rad-fems ever did

Like nine-deuce?

[miss-lisa-ma.livejournal.com]

Oops. Forgot about her. She and Rush can ride in the same bus.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

But she's evidently a feminist.

[nepenthedreams]

Actually she's pretty bad - I read her.
But I agree - few people have read her but many people have heard Rush Limbaugh speak.

[oakdragon.livejournal.com]

What damage Limbaugh has done, people like Ann Coulter. I tried to listen to one of her books, just for the sake of balance, but I couldn't do it. When she started her rant against feminists, it raised up such ire in me that I had to turn off the player.

I mean, could she have been in the position she is if it weren't for the feminists who fought for equality?

[nepenthedreams]

Amenity-men-men.

Exactly.

And we have a long way to go, considering how some health insurance covers viagra but not birth control, and how women who are pumping at work actually have to hide everything they are doing or risk ridicule (one of my friends got "mooed" at as she walked by with her pump to the ladies' room), and so forth.

We've also come a long way, but we have a ways to go.

[oakdragon.livejournal.com]

The last two companies I've worked for have had Lactation Rooms set aside.

[nepenthedreams]

Yes, and my company does too.
But it's not a law that they must, and many women do have to pump in bathrooms, or their car - and regardless of where they go, women feel that they have to hide it, going to great lengths to conceal a basic human function that actually should be lauded if a woman is doing it for her child.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

MOOED at? OK, that I could take from a friend or family member if meant in good fun, but from a co-worker? Fuck that. I'd have oinked back at them.

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed. Worse to me are those folks who say, "You've got the vote, there's women running companies, there's PC this and that about women, so women are in power now" as a justification to stop caring about equality. (Women in power? Really? When did the population shift in Congress to an equal amount of women? When did our President get a sex change? I could keep going.)

Worse also is the refusal to police other guys when they say and do crap that's sexist or invasive of a woman's boundaries. Guys, if you see it and you know it's wrong, take your dude aside and say, "Hey, that's not cool." Yes, she can defend herself, but a guy that's disrespecting her boundaries also isn't going to respect her defending herself. It also takes another guy to help him realize that other people don't like it, too.

THIS

[vicki-sine.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Yup. Right there with you.

[she-of-emeralds.livejournal.com]

Couldn't agree more, but did something in particular set this off?

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

It was a topic of discussion on a particularly fluff-riddled "Wiccan" forum.

I've got my ranty panties on.

[mzwyndi.livejournal.com]

I am a feminist, but I abandoned "equal" for "equitable" and "equivalent" long ago.

Re: I've got my ranty panties on.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

I suppose there can easily be confusion between "on an equal level" and "equal as in exactly the same."

[autumnquest.livejournal.com]

You have pretty much expressed my own feelings on feminism and where I have gone and come to with that termand the "movement" through the years. I'm not what people would think of as a Feminazi, but I believe in our equality in the world.

I also believe that equality involves realizing what we are and are not able to do physically and understanding and accepting that there are physical differences between men and women most times as well as differences in how our brains work with problem-solving and dealing with life in general, which brings about strengths and weaknesses in both genders.

Balance....dyanamic balance, as with most things.

Great post.

[etainwilson.livejournal.com]

...well I want to take over the world but it has nothing to do with a male/female dynamic. I blame it on being born in the Year of the Rat.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

it makes me sad that it has to be such a radical notion that men and women should be on equal footing, instead of by default being so...

some of those radical feminists forget men can be feminists as well...

it's also sad that people use obvious biological differences to make a division... despite the fact that even within same gender parameters, there are major differences...

sigh

#

[disownedheidi.livejournal.com]

Hear you roar!!! :)

A feminist

[drwex]

...is someone who believes in the radical notion that women are people, too.

I am old enough to remember the very moment when I became a feminist. A young (probably college-age, but at that time older than I) woman came to the door of our house campaigning for signatures for the ERA. I was young, stupid, and very naive. The concept that such rights would be denied to women, or that women would be unequally treated, was completely foreign to me but boy did she lay an earful on me!

I have, therefore, been pleased to call myself a 'feminist' for something approaching 35 years.

Re: A feminist

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Somehow, it's generally OK to the kind of people I'm ranting about for MEN to call themselves feminists. The worst they get is an eye roll (or at least, that's what I've seen). They don't get accused of being sexist rabid freaks. Funny, that.

Re: A feminist

[drwex]

But I am a sexy rabid freak.

It's just that most people don't know it :)

Re: A feminist

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

LOL!