What has happened to feminism?
A couple months ago I spotted this video and something about it struck me wrong.
I know it was supposed to be something to do with female empowerment, but it just didn't feel right. I couldn't put my finger on it.
I couldn't put my finger on it until the recent debate...or lack of debate...with registering women for the draft.
This article hit the spot.
In my lifetime, I have seen feminism turned into opposite: from a set of beliefs that promised women wouldn’t rule – – couldn’t rule – – with the violence and brutality of men into the notion that women should play the same combat roles as men, that women should be just as tough in the corporate boardroom and rule with more efficiency and less sentimentality in a system of worldwide immiseration and alienation.
Yes! You've put your finger on it.
Where is the "victory" in equality when you've debased yourself in the process? There was already something seriously wrong with the system, so becoming equal partners in that f*cked up system is no victory.
Which brings us to drafting women for war.
Yesterday the House committee voted to require women to register for the draft. Hurrah? Why is there no outrage?
Let me put it to you in another way.
What will be the impact on our society if we equalize men and women to the point that they are both drafted for military service, to fight, bleed, kill, and die for our country? What will be the societal impact of sending our daughters into harm’s way, along with our sons, having them return home with missing limbs, debilitating head injuries, and broken spirits?
It’s one thing for women who want to volunteer for such service, but it is another thing entirely to require all women to do the same. Yet this is exactly what feminism and its egalitarian fantasy demands. The desires of a few have become the rule for all.
It's an evil thing to send young men off to kill, be killed, and come back physically and emotionally broken individuals.
Now women can be forced against their will to experience the horrors of war, and join men being subjected to mass evil.
"Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children."
– Feminist presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton
It's equality, but it's certainly no victory. It's a HUGE defeat for women in general, and liberals are silent about this to their eternal shame.
Feminist activists in the mid-60s were also anti-war activists.
Mother's Day was originally an anti-war movement.
It was feminists that opposed WWI.
WTF happened to feminism? Where did it give up its goal of a better world?
Comments
Equality. Take the good with the bad.
We also don't see women scrambling to demand quotas in low paying or physically difficult jobs like garbage collecting, mining, logging, etc. Where's the demand for equality and parity where on the job deaths are concerned?
Yes it is. But if equality is not the goal, and equality is not the victory, and this is considered defeat, then we need to examine the other goals as well.
If one gets to cherry pick the good/superior things while benefitting from benign sexism, chivalry, and special consideration where the negatives are concerned, that's not equality, it is superiority being masked over and expecting everyone to call it equality. No thanks. I don't want any more of that hypocrisy.
If women don't want to be eligible for selective service, women can and should start and or join the push to end it entirely for everyone, not just some based on their exemption because of their genitals.
Equality for the sake of a higher goal is noble
Equality for the sake of equality is just stupid.
You might as well demand a right to slavery.
If feminism is only about equality and nothing more, then its just another identity politics group and I have no use for it.
I want a better world.
Women have in fact fought to get jobs in mining
There was an influx of women into underground mining in the late 70s-80s. Women had to sue to get hired, stay employed, and stop sexual harrassmant, which ranged from verbal hazing to discrimination on job assignments to guys drilling a hole to peek through the wall of the changing rooms. Few or no women remain the coal jobs (shrinking industry, last hired first fired), but you'll find quite a few in underground metal and nonmetallic mineral mines and in surface operations. Not 50%, but some.
Further thoughts (appended here at random):
One of the excuses for granting women fewer rights, traditionally, was that women didn't perform the citizenship duty of military service.
Either women ought to be subject to the draft or the draft abolished. That's equal treatment. There HAS been some howling about the prospective inclusion of women -- from the Right. In my opinion it should be abolished for everybody.
Yes, part of equality has been finding out that women can be just as selfish and predatory as men; and in social institutions developed primarily by and for selfish and predatory males, that's the type of woman -- and the type of man -- who is more likely to succeed.
Trying to humanize and reform a corrupt institution from within is even harder if you're female, not easier. The institution is more apt to re-form and corrupt -- or eject -- you.
What happened to feminism? In part we had to shed the Victorian idea that women are inherently more virtuous, the "angel in the house," able to make mankind virtuous if only given enough power. (We made that mistake once before. Women got the vote and the country got -- among other things -- Prohibition.)
Feminism is a good thing but is only feminism. For the rest, we're all in it together.
Euterpe2
women in the coal mines
One day at our weekly Peace vigil, a woman came up to us and began talking with us. She was a petite and attractive woman in her early 60's, but what I first noticed about her was her hands. They were very strong hands. It turned out that in her youth, she had worked in the coal mines of West Va. and later was an advocate for women in the mines. She had written a book about these women and ended up giving me a copy of it. Her name was Marat Moore.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Little Known/Never Spoken
The history of women in the mines is a long one - if not here in the land of the free.
I've met many women who have done "man's work," all their lives. In smaller communities, where there is X amount to be done, and only X number of people to do it, gender distinctions and rules don't matter. Everybody does whatever needs doing. We don't generally hear of these women, because their communities are isolated and insulated. Some by choice, some by design.
The examples in the link above are from Victorian England - that time and place where many of our social mores supposedly came from - but it's easy to see that the social mores were only for a certain class. The slave class that provided for the elites knew absolutely no distinctions between the sexes. A worker was a worker, period.
If there's ever any doubt as to what the 1%ers ultimately have in mind for the rest of us, there's no finer example than Victorian England
Throwing this in because it's a song I heard years ago and it's haunted me ever since. It puts the story of Patience Kershaw (from the above link) to music. I never knew about these practices until I heard it.
Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons - For thou art crunchy and good with ketchup
The only solution that would represent a victory for
women, not as an abstract class, but as the actual group of actual human beings that are actually women, would be your second choice: To abolish the draft.
Winning the equal right to be dragooned into the military so as to serve the vanity and the bank accounts of the oligarchs is not a victory for women, it is only a loss for men.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Two wrongs don't make a right
The registration of men for the draft is wrong, and we can be thankful that there was no draft to give Bush and endless supply of men for his war in Iraq- the redeployment tempo put huge pressure on the US military and was one of the things that motivated some degree of restraint.
You're goddammed right I don't want women drafted or registered for the draft or anyone voting for registering them for the draft. It has nothing to do with feminism, or equality, it has to do with war. Let's start with not forcing women to join in our war preparations and move onto freeing our men as well. Going backwards is not going forwards.
The problem is, at this point
the system is so corrupt, and its wars so fucking far removed from actual defense of the nation, that *nobody* should be registered for selective service.
The point is that feminism was not supposed to be in service of a corrupt military-industrial complex. But dissent and changing direction have been outlawed by the oligarchy. Nothing can be allowed to change the neoliberal/neoconservative direction on war, taxes, social spending, fossil fuels, finance, labor, trade, and a dozen other issues. The so-called "Washington Consensus" has now spiralled wide, and the number of issues you're allowed to disagree on are shrinking rapidly.
Under these conditions, the old social justice movements are warping into a "Just give us a slice of this incredibly corrupt pie" movement. "Equality"--defined mainly as equality of *opportunity*, which is a weasel-way of maintaining the current money and power disparity--is replacing the qualitative changes reformers wanted to make.
Equality w/in an incredibly corrupt system is going to be just as evil as inequality. What color face do you want explaining on TV how we must expand the police state? What gender official do you want instigating coups against democratically-elected officials in foreign lands, replacing them with bully-boys that murder their own people?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
What happened to feminism?
It got turned into a wedge issue and talking point for the 3rd way.
Orwell was an optimist
Not to mention
There has been tons of subtle, and not so subtle blowback for our efforts.
Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons - For thou art crunchy and good with ketchup
Please. Pretty please. With sugar on top.
Tell me who made the acorn shitter in your personal picture. If it was you, please tell me the ingredients.
I absolutely love using nature in my habits and collections.
Many thanks in advance.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Unfortunately I don't know
One day awhile back I was looking for a picture of something - and what that something was I can't recall.
I was cruising through one of those google "images of..." things. You know the ones that have hundreds of images that have absolutely nothing to do with what you're looking for. That's where I saw it. I thought it was the cutest damned thing I'd seen in a long time. There was something evocative about it that touched my inner curmudgeon.
I've studied it with the thought of attempting to make one myself. It looks like it might be easy, if not using the exact materials shown (because I can't identify some of them). I'd say you'd have to start by finding some fairly large acorns. The "bowl" appears to be a walnut shell cut in half across the width. One thing I can't identify is the shoes. Might have to craft those by hand, but out of what is the question.
If you figure it out and make one, I'd love to see a pic!
Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons - For thou art crunchy and good with ketchup
The shoes
Look like nut hulls. What's that nut, from Greece, I think? Ship captain in a Bond film was always eating them? My brain is stuck, I can't think of the name of the damn nut!
The more people I meet, the more I love my cats.
I've been wondering where
the feminists went for a decade or more. There still are one or two out there, but most have opted for the cubicle instead, apparently. It seems to me if someone (or a bunch of someones) were messing with my "lady parts" and reproductive rights I would drag along one or two feminists to the streets with signs protesting such moves. Instead? Crickets.
Just earned a 3 mo. T.O. over on the site that shall remain nameless.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
People HAVE been fighting to preserve
reproductive freedoms. Including put their bodies on the line as clinic workers and escorts.
Street protests, agreed, have been few on this subject since the 70s; on the other hand, one might ask what street protests have accomplished since earlier than that.
For example, I was at the huge labor march in DC supporting the air traffic controllers union, 1981. Reagan went ahead and broke the union. I marched against both Iraq wars before they happened. We might as well have stayed in bed. Wisconsin and NC citizens have stepped up nobly and achieved no state government reform. OWS will be wiped from most memories with the Bonus Army and Poor People's Campaign unless there is more to come -- maybe even if there is. Street protests have limited use. I'm sorry to say it, and they did help end Vietnam, but now most such actions are slight hindrance to politics as usual.
Euterpe2
True. True. But the pushback
against the RW War on Who Owns Your Lady Parts and Repro Rights is damn near nonexistent. One reason, of course, is most of this War on Vagina has been conducted under the cloak of darkness, anti-vagina legislation pushed thru when nobody looking. That needs to end. Women need to speak loudly and proudly about their Repro Rights, and (their) men need to back them up. Repro Rights (Roe v. Wade) are at the core of Liberalism, imho, and should be defended to the last man, woman. Instead we watch silently as The Right chips away at them, virtually making Roe null and void.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Most women have been focused on basic survival lately
And that House bill isn't intended as justice; it's malicious. "They want equality? We'll show them!" Ha ha ha.
There are no social accommodations today for the extra functions women perform, and they have to deal with harassment, too. If the military is anything like the police, women won't get the backup other men get.
You should be proud of your TO over there
I just slunk away 3 months ago. Couldn't stand the vitriol. Left w whimper, not a bang. At least you did it w a bang. Congrats!
Don't believe everything you think.
Congrats on the TO
That is a battle scar to be proud of. Three months away from DailyHos is a gift that lasts a lifetime.
Discussing feminism today
Which sounds great. Really great.
...but that isn't what I hear today from feminists.
I don't hear much about education, voting, and least of all, war.
I hear pretty much one thing - lady parts.
While that is indeed an issue, it just isn't the same.
True, but at its core
it boils down to the freedom to fornicate with a willing partner without fear or retribution from RW asshats that would burn you at the stake for even Thinking about s-e-x. Without Roe there is no Womens Movement. Or not one that led to everything else. Sexual freedom is at the heart of the womens movement - which is why the RW works to dismantle Roe. Dismantle Roe, they believe, and they dismantle the womens movement, then dismantle libealism. They're doing a damn fine job as we sit and watch.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
My MIL's generation (suffragettes) thought
the right to vote was at the center of feminism, although that term had not yet been invented.
Reproductive rights are right up there with voting, but it had to come first.
Being able to control one's body is basic to any freedom
When other people control your "lady parts," they control your whole life. It's slavery, except that they don't have to feed or house you or all your children. Ever heard of hostages to fortune? When other people control your "lady parts" they can make education and economic survival difficult or impossible. They can make voting a luxury you can't afford to put much of any energy into. Without the freedom to control your own body (while the controllers take no responsibility for the consequences), every day can be a battlefield. Responsibilities aren't any more equal today than pay is.
No, it's not the same as sitting back and having a nice safe theoretical discussion of big issues. But that luxury isn't available to everyone.
Uh-huh
I wish I had an actual number of all the living, breathings women in the world that stopped living and breathing this week because of America's "theoretical issue", as you put it, of dropping bombs all over the world.
I also wish I had a number for the millions of those women living in refugee camps, and watching their children starving, because of America's "theoretical issue", as you put it. I bet they have the "luxury" to discuss those issues. I wonder who they might consider to be the one who is not free?
Why is it somehow elitist to even consider larger topics? It reminds me how Markos called it "white privilege" to be upset about the government spying on everyone. Why should larger topics be the domain of an elite?
And you struggle every day because of you lady parts? Or do you struggle every day because you are working your ass off for little pay, like most of the rest of us?
Larger issues should NOT be the domain of the elite
But for many women it isn't "working your ass off for little pay like most of the rest of us." If things are difficult for you, imagine doing the same work and trying to make it on 2/3 or 3/4 of what you're paid now. On top of that, in families, women still spend considerably more time doing the work at home. Many are single parents and have to do it all. Life expectancy is dropping for poor women.
Equality, my ass! There is nowhere near equality today in pay or in responsibilities or in respect. Clearly not in respect! But the overloaded and overwhelmed are responsible for fixing everyone else's problems? I assume from your indignation that you've done something that has stopped all our military aggression?
To all the men who think this underclass still isn't working hard enough on the right issues, what are you doing to help make a positive contribution to those issues?
Again, life expectancy is dropping for poor women.
And why's that?
"Everyone" just needs to engage.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Since real feminism threatens the incomes
Upper class white women, only the phony version, which seeks to make killers of women, is acceptable.
Just as phony feminism trains us to question why women can't be cannon fodder (instead of leading us toward peace and reconciliation), capitalism trains us to question with hostility why some workers have good pay and benefits, instead of asking why don't all workers have them.
Capitalism turns everything it touches to filth and destruction.
“If there is no justice for the people, may there be no peace for the government.”
Capitalism? Oh, you'll find
Capitalism at the corner of Filth and Destruction. ty. You're welcome.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
“A feminist response to pop culture”
Bitch magazine from Portland, Oregon
This is a complex issue . . .
. . . so many facets, angles, needs, wants . . .
I enjoyed the video - as an old retired music/technology teacher . . . and I appreciate feisty chick stuff.
I am 58 and I have to say that feminism has been hijacked in my lifetime. Women joining the workforce became an avenue to pay lower wages to individuals in now two income families.
Remember the Enjoli Perfume commercials in the 80s? What a load of crap. I found myself commuting an hour each way to teach, working 10 hour days, and coming home to do housework and take care of the babies. And my husband is a great guy. It is just that so . . . you both work . . . but if you are teachers and are not rich . . . you cannot hire out all of those family domestic chores. It was exhausting.
When Texas cut 5 billion from the education budget in 2011, schools cut back and my flavor classes were no longer offered. At first I tried and tried to find another job . . . but any possible job would require an even longer commute. And we were already homeschooling one child for dyslexia, and eventually the other. While I was working I hired someone to help with housecleaning.
Even though we would have less income I started thinking "is this worth it?" . . . . to be exhausted all the time . . . not have time for your family . . . what if I grow my own food instead of buying everything? . . . what if I sew our clothes?
Right at the time I was making this transition I read an article in the New York Times that I still love . . . "The Earth is Full" by Thomas Friedman . . . http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/08friedman.html
We need to work less. One wage earner per family or two working half time. We need to resurrect "homemakers." They can be male, female, or preferably both.
I was raised in the upper Midwest Norwegian Lutheran culture, on a organic dairy farm. In my family aunts and uncles worked together as farmers or whatever. They worked as a team with mutual respect. Twenty years ago I moved to Texas and . . . holy crap! Big time sexist shit here. And the majority of marriages suck - because they are trying to live up to the religious fundamentalist paradigm.
I don't know that I am replying to your premise very well. It seems like mutual respect and all working together for the common good is what we need.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Exactly. Those '60s communes?
They're coming back. Some of us buying and living in High Rises, RV Parks, instead of small farms, but communes coming back.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
The thing that bothered me
about feminism was that the concept sounded a little sexist in an ironic sense, and like something that could be taken to an uncomfortable extreme. The reason it sounded ironically sexist to me was likely that when I was learning about feminism, it came off as less equality of the sexes, and more as increase the role of women in society (which shouldn't have had to be done in the first place, but we're a species that takes quite a long time to get around to being rational about social issues). The uncomfortable extreme is something that I've been seeing feminism slowly become ever since high school.
Feminism today seems to be less about women's rights or equality of the sexes, and more about transitioning into a belief that women, and women alone, should be in charge of everything, while men should be subservient. Now, I'm not certain if this is a newer phenomena within feminism, or if it is one that has always existed as long as feminists, but it is something I've been seeing a lot lately. Honestly, I'm seeing this ugly form of "feminism" far more frequently than I see what I assume is traditional feminism.
Personally, I'm an egalitarian. I think people are all equal, and should be treated as such. If you think the same, then you too, are an egalitarian, no matter what you decide to label yourself.
Choice and control of one's own body
So women want to fornicate without consequences. Why not? Men do it? [I know, some men.] But one of the basic issues of birth control and/or abortion is that women are so often left alone with the consequences. And that's just not fair.
Added to that is the fact the society in general has very little respect for single mothers. They are maligned and sneered at, even though they are the one that didn't just walk away.
Then on top of that, these women are blamed if something goes wrong with their child. "You're the mother. It is your fault."
But women who have abortions don't have to put up with any of that garbage. And women who successfully use birth control, as well. They get more dignity, more respect, and more money out of the world.
I was married for four years when I conceived my daughter and I still had to raise her by myself. And if you don't fully understand the phrase "It's a mother fucking world," just ask any single mother.
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
On top of that, there's still a lot of rape (1 in 4 women)
and the woman not only loses control of her body in the rape, she NEEDS to be able to control the reproductive consequences.
Using feminism as a tool for domination
isn't about freedom, dignity, or the opportunity to fully develop your inner self. It's the old domination game. That game is apparently addictive. People have a hard time turning loose of it.
Any person, male or female, who uses genitalia as an excuse to dominate others is neither liberated or enlightened.
And the fact that I have a female body does not mean that Hillary can tell me how to vote.
ETA:
Sorry for the detour into Hillary but women telling me how to vote because I am a woman always pisses me off.
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
What has happened to feminism?
It has a reserved place in hell where all the boys are.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
First, there should be no draft...ever.
If a woman or a man wants to serve in the military, then go for it.
If politicians want a draft, then the first rule they need to make is to take ALL income, class and other excuses off the table. If some people have flat feet, I am sure they can sit and peel potatoes (whatever). Equality: Everyone is to serve on the front lines for at least a portion of their service. Let the ones who made the draft decision own children come home maimed or in a body bag. Remember the short story by Shirley Jackson, The Lottery.
Basically, what this committee has said along with the rest of society is if you as a woman want equality become a man with the same stereotypical attribute of being capable of being turned into a killing machine or other "manly" qualities when what they actually want is robots.
The quote from HRC is bullshit, btw. Anyone who advocates for or promotes war as much as she does does not care about women as casualties.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Absolutely not.
It's not a draft decision, it's a daft decision.
Cut military expansion. While you're at it, cut the defense budget.
Practice the small sum gain of protecting those who live within this nation. I say small sum gain because that's what it is. Sum will make smaller amounts for the gain of the many.
When we, as a nation, understand that this nation is not a sole identity, when we accept that all humans are equal, then the draft will be unheard of. There will be no need for body bags.
Yup. Just dreaming here.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
I almost came back to erase parts of my comment.
I have been angry since I read about the first vote that was taken on drafting women. It is not so much about the women part as it is about the draft part. However, I do think the women part is purely punitive.
While I agree with you about cutting the defense budget and stopping the stupid wars (they are all stupid), it just isn't going to happen any time soon, so if the idiots want a draft, their children need to be a part of it...unlike Vietnam. Maybe GWB can go finish his enlistment time.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
It is definitely punitive and malicious
How about we give women real equality in positive factors before we even think about stupid negatives like expanding the draft to them? Limiting women's freedom further? Damn uppity women - we'll show them equality (but only in negatives)! How about we seriously campaign to reduce all the (largely socially condoned) violence many women live with?
Real equality (pay, power, respect...) that acknowledges and supports all of women's additional services to society? Like the small matter of bearing and nurturing the next generation? Like most of the unpaid care-giving of vulnerable members of society?
No, they'd rather sneer at women. And then blame the victims for their own victimization. It's always the fault of the less powerful, you know.
Exactly!
In regards to the violence against women, isn't it interesting that drafting women would put them in more danger of being raped and/or harassed without or with minimal protection from the military or the law?
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
No disagreement there
But I was looking for an applicable quote and found this one.
Feminism? Dead on arrival and a fallacy /nt
https://www.euronews.com/
Feminism isn't about saving the world
It is about women having the same opportunities and the same feelings of security and privilege that men enjoy. If registering for the draft gets us further down the road with that then fine. There will be no draft until they get rid of contractors.
Don't let optics change the true narrative, which is NOT that feminism equates with anti-war sentiment.
My personhood makes me anti-war. My experience makes me a feminist. Do not dare to tell me that as a feminist I must be anti-war.
If this is the punishment as some say then I have no doubt it will backfire so let then try. When they try to throw a entire movement to the wolves like that they usually end up facing a large, very angry pack.
It depends on who you ask.
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://t0.gstatic.com/images%3Fq%3D...
I'm not incredibly comfortable w/your comment, because it erases a whole hell of a lot of late-60s, 70s, and 80s feminism. Which has all been flushed down the memory hole, and replaced with a feminism that fits your definition. You can't simply repeat that definition as a way of proving that it's right.
When I came up as a feminist, most feminists critiqued patriarchy, and a lot of them included in that critique attacks on racism, capitalism and the culture of war, all of which they saw as connected to patriarchy. Whether they were right or wrong, they existed, they considered themselves feminists, and a LOT of people agreed with them. I even knew a lot of feminists who felt that hierarchy itself was patriarchal and should be discarded.
I don't agree w/all these points of view, but I'll be damned if I simply forget they existed.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Hillary Clinton is a feminist
Hillary Clinton is a feminist role model for millions of little girls around the world who now know they they too now have the opportunity to grow up and become a greedy, corrupt megalomaniacal warmonger. No longer will they have to play with Barbies, but will play with non gender specific toys like My Little Drone Strike, Rainbow Brite's Military Coup, and Easy Bake Hedge Fund Manager.
Chip in and she'll send you proof!
I came to the Feminism party very late
My daughter enlightened me after all these years of me saying "humanist".
Because in the 90s there was this First Lady who I felt shat on all lower to middle class working women. I had been a stay at home mom, I felt a bit trapped as it wasn't by choice but because my first child is autistic. I had some HARD work to do... at home. And then this First Lady starts cracking wise about "staying at home and baking cookies".
The divide began.
Feminism was now about pantsuits and the term "bitch" was now a badge.
I'm not a BITCH. I don't want to be a bitch. I'm not a bitch to other women. Being a bitch is not powerful, it's bullying.
Then it wasn't about being paid equal pay for equal work- it was now about getting top dollar while screwing over everyone else who have helped you up. Ever work for a woman who has an axe to grind, with something to prove?
I didn't feel supported by the feminists in the 90s. It was a mean girl gang.
I prefer my daughter's view on feminism. It's about being the best person you can be - not about you can become if allowed.
Don't even get me started about how women don't take the "hard jobs"... that's just fucking insane. I know women who work 3 pt jobs and still go home fix meals and lunches while helping their three kids with school work and while taking online courses. I see single dads, too. But it's more common for single moms with several jobs still living in dire need.
I have a daughter and this entire nation does nothing but prey on her. Damn straight we have work to do... we still haven't taken the right to be able to just walk home from our job without being preyed upon simply because you a pretty young woman. Edit: or preyed upon because you're not pretty. Or not pretty enough or whatever the dumb fuck standards are at the moment.
I often wonder if any of these catcalling predators have daughters.
Let's talk about equality when others can no longer decide what my "options" are after being attacked.
.
"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison
There is a feminism party?
Which party would that be?
maybe the whole wimmins 4 HRC is a talking point... Created by men, pushed by men and used, by men, to shut down any opposition to the continuation of the status quo
Could be
Btw I am a woman and I came of age in the Betty Friedan era... When strong women spoke for themselves and didn't need Robbie mook or David Brock to speak for us.
Orwell was an optimist
i learned about
feminism from my mother, growing up. she never called it feminism; she was a professional (MBA) working in a male-dominated profession from the early 80s on. i've seen her really upset about the way she'd been treated by people at work, usually her boss or some sort of management, because she's got a great mind for numbers and sometimes they didn't want to hear those numbers.
i never saw her in tears though. what i heard was "so and so is a fucking asshole". no wilting lilly, mom.. she fought her way to a few high-end jobs in athletic programs at some large universities. she likes sports as well as numbers.
what i never saw her do was complain about how much she was victimized.
when i see made-up statistics about how one in four women are rape victims, or hear people wanting to legislate "respect for women", or the highly overwrought pseudo-psychological language of "intersectional feminism", i'm lost. tumblr, youtube, and other social media feminism has ejected itself from reality, turning their brand of feminism into a word salad of professional victimhood. blather on about your white-upper-middle-class oppression and monetize it, asap. it's a caricature of oppression carefully threaded into feminist values, and it's a fucking lie.
so, what happened to feminism? social media happened to feminism. a bunch of professional victims created a vast framework around actual history and that's what we're asked to submit to. oh, and if we don't, we hate women. and are nazi misogynist scumbag fucks.
everyone needs to work towards equality between the sexes, between the races, between nationalities.. but people that buy into the cult-like version of feminism so overblown in the media are the reason lots of us don't take people seriously when they start talking about the patriarchy on camera in their BMW.
GIANT ALL-CAPS SIG
Simply . . . the patriarchal society is fucked . . .
. . . not that we leave the patriarchal society to become a matriarchal society . . . we should be neither . . .
That's what we need to save the planet.
Work together for the common good.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo