"Feminism" isn't a bad word, you know.

[Amethyst Hunter]

Much like it seems to have become OK to use the word "liberal" like it's some sort of curse word...

A thread over on CS inspired this nitpick. While I agree that holding doors/giving up seats/etc. to others is just plain common courtesy and should be done for either gender, it really irks me when people blame a basic lack of manners on "those feminists". Uh, NO. Feminism has done way more good than harm. Women have the right to vote and to control (mostly; ideally it would be 100%) their own bodies. Children don't have to work in coal mines or such anymore. Those women who complain when someone holds a door for them aren't being feminist, they're just being obnoxious.

By and large the majority of feminists aren't the ballbusting hairy-legged man-hating baby-eating demons that media (and biased people) love to make them out to be. Those few that are advocating an "all men must die" attitude are far and few between, if they even exist at all (I'm inclined to doubt this, as I've never met or talked to any feminist who thinks that men should do so).

In short: Feminism is the radical notion that women are people too.

[CancelMyService]

Just like liberalism is the radical notion that having a level playing field and not being a selfish douchebag is a nifty idea.

I always wonder just why would someone be so against the concept of basic fairness that they would turn descriptors like that into curse words.

It makes a little part of me die every time I see a Democratic candidate react to being called "liberal" as if it was the worst slur possible. Such is the legacy of talk radio/fox news/right wing blog idiots.

[Amethyst Hunter]

You *know* if Jesus came back He'd get crucified all over again, even before He got a chance to say one word. Christ is as liberal as liberal gets.

[Sylvia727]

I read something about this somewhere...can't remember where, unfortunately, and it will be driving me crazy, but basically it said that the default should not be masculine, and equal should not be feminine. Both of these terms imply that women are less than men. Think about it...if you promote equality by promoting women, aren't you bringing women up?

I'm a feminist, and will be until "equalist" catches on, but I'd like to see equality brought to both sides of the table. Macho men bragging about their gender's inability to raise children or do housework are actually hurting men. Just look at the statistics for child custody after divorce. The mothers almost always get the bigger half.

I have doors held for me all the time, by both men and women. I've never thought of it as a gender thing. In fact, most of the time I hear the word chivraly is in regards to who pays for dinner.

EDIT: And if one wants to talk about the advancements made by feminists...well, Adam's first wife Lilith gave us the cowgirl position

[Seshat]

I'm feminist. And equalist. And so on and so forth.

I believe that every child should have as fair a chance as possible. If they want to be a Kenyan game keeper or a New York financier, then (barring disability or simple lack of the right personality traits) they bloody well should have the chance to be.

Sure, a kid raised in New York will have to overcome significant geographical and cultural change to become a Kenyan game keeper; and a kid raised among the Masai would have to overcome almost insurmountable cultural change to be a successful New York financier. But I believe that children should have the opportunity, as far as is reasonable.

(Digression: The Masai->Wall Street example does raise a really interesting point. I'll sleep on that one, since I think both the Masai and the New York elite have a right to raise their children to their own culture. But I also think the children should be able to swap places in adulthood if they really, really want to. That gets tough!)

Annnnnyway. Back to the point I was trying to make. Both feminism and a majority of the 'liberal agenda' are really just saying "let everyone have a fair go". I honestly don't understand how people object to that.

Well, okay. I can understand people who are saying "my kids should have a better chance than anyone else's". I just see those people as selfish. But other than that, I don't understand the objections.

[CancelMyService]

It's a controversial position to take, but I really believe the heart of conservative republicanism (at least the form popular since the Reagan years) is being a selfish asshole. I mean, traditional conservatism has some respectable views but really this Fox News Conservatism can be distilled to "fuck you, I got mine".

I can respect people with conservative views in terms of say, financial matters, but they've let their side be taken over by people who look down your nose if you don't have the right sex/color/orientation/religion/amount of money.

[Greenday]

It's the same as every other group in existence. Most people are moderate or towards the fence. And then you have some special people who are extremists and have big mouths. I mean, most girls I know think it's nice when I hold a door for them. But then again I also have a few girl friends who believe chivalry is completely gone and get pissed at me when I try to be a gentleman.

[Boozy]

It's a controversial position to take, but I really believe the heart of conservative republicanism (at least the form popular since the Reagan years) is being a selfish asshole.

It absolutely is. It is about taking care of your own and ignoring everyone else.

The problem is that I truly believe that most people are good people. So the trick was to convince them that the poor are at fault for their own situation, and that helping others is somehow a zero sum game; that by assisting the poor you are harming yourself.

[Saydrah]

*shame* I have been one of those people afraid to call myself a feminist for a long time. But I figured out this year (well 2007- in the last 12 month period) that whether I use the f-word for myself or not, I'm a feminist by the way I act and interact with the world.

The problems I have with feminism are that the feminist community is not very inclusive of people with differences beyond the "acceptable" ones. My sister has been a very active feminist- she started the first-ever chapter of NOW on her college campus and performed in the Vagina Monologues twice. She is an ex-stripper, former addict, and a wonderful mother, and her activism has certainly done the world good. But I found when trying to get to know the feminist community that there are a lot of hidden barriers to acceptance- for example, racial differences are fine, and being a lesbian is fine, but bisexual and polyamorous are kind of hard things to be in the feminist community. All bi girls are just doing it for attention, all poly women have low self esteem and think they can't keep a man if they don't let him sleep with other people. WTF? I also see very little inclusion of people of different ability levels in the feminist world. A few bloggers I like have written reams about feminism and disability, which basically boils down to that feminism excludes disability on a few fronts, a major one of which is reproductive rights.

That said, I have realized I don't need to be part of an exclusive feminist "clique" to be a feminist. I just need to look at my day to day life. Who is the breadwinner in the household? Me. Who does the dishes? Male roommate. Who cooks? My primary partner. None of the three of us in my household have any significant attachment to traditional gender roles, and I think that's really the primary benefit of feminist thought through the last century: This generation doesn't feel it NEEDS gender roles. Sure, we joke about how I make a lousy girl and how SO is my housewife, but the reality of day to day life is, had we set up our lives this way in the 50s or 60s, we'd have been incredibly strange and SO would have gotten flak from every man he met for doing women's work. He has friends who are not open minded and caring people who reject stereotypes- in fact, he has friends who are flat out bigoted jerks- and not one of them has ever said anything about the gender roles in our household. It goes unnoticed that when he is out of cash sometimes he asks me for some money, and that I come home and faux-faint from hunger and beg him to make some nummy spaghetti. Those things both would have been taboo not too long ago.

[Seshat]

As an active feminist: you're welcome, Saydrah.

I'm not a part of some "feminist communities", but I have personally run a community to support women in a particular non-traditional area. And I've been both lauded and quite unpopular in that community for doing so - the praise and the criticism occasionally even coming from the same people!

To me, the goal of feminism is to dismantle feminism. But only to dismantle it because it's no longer needed.

To dismantle it because homes are gender-neutral in much the way Saydrah described. To dismantle it because the glass ceiling is gone. To dismantle it because any female who can control a firehose and rescue people from a burning house can be a firefighter, and any male insane enough to want to look after a room of toddlers and capable of doing so can get work as a kindergarten teacher. To dismantle it because noone thinks twice about either the female firefighter or the male kindergarten teacher.

The fact that many people, both male and female, can suddenly look at themselves and their lives and go 'oh! I've been feminist all along!' means that we're achieving that goal. It's great!

But I wish the word itself didn't have the bad press it does. I wish people didn't keep asking feminists like myself to explain why we 'want' biased hiring practices and politically correct language. It gets repetitive and annoying explaining that we don't.

The one thing I wish society did have, is a better historic record of women's lives. I've met a lot of young women who have no idea that after world war II, women were kicked out of the workforce and back into their houses. Jobs for the boys, you know. Or that my grandmother's generation (their great-grandmother's generations, for some) rarely handled more money than was necessary for the grocery shopping. Paying the bills was the man's job. My grandmother didn't know how to do that - which made being divorced not just emotionally traumatic, but financially extremely difficult. She honestly didn't know how to do the financial side of maintaining a home.

Think about that when you look at the lonely 70 and 80 year old widows in your community. Even some of the ones as young as 50 or 60 may have lived like that all their lives, and only need to do 'the man's job' now their husbands have died.

[IDrinkaRum]

I didn't know my mother was a feminist! She's not the breadwinner in the family but she's the one in charge of paying all the bills and balancing the checkbook. Sure, my mom cooks, but really, the only thing my dad knows how to do is cook scrambled eggs, and even those he can mess up on. (I do love my dad so please don't hate me for making fun of his cooking skills).

My husband, I think, would like us to be a more traditional household. Yes, I am a SAHM and he goes to work every day. I do the majority of the raising of our daughter. I'm supposed to cook, clean, etc., etc. But I don't. I ask my husband to help with at least the dishes. (He does have the chores which are: take out the garbage, change the kitty litter & carry heavy objects down the stairs for me). He does help me every so often to "clean" the house (he sits at the dining room table & throws away the paperwork that finds its way onto our dining room table.

I knew some hardcore feminists who hated men. They scared me.

I believe in equality for the sexes. I want to be judged for a job promotion because of my work & my ability not because I'm a woman (and vice versa for men). I want my daughter to be able to grow up and be able to go out in the world and be all that she can be even though she's on the low end of the Autism Spectrum.

[Seshat]

I didn't know my mother was a feminist! She's not the breadwinner in the family but she's the one in charge of paying all the bills and balancing the checkbook.
<snip>
I believe in equality for the sexes. I want to be judged for a job promotion because of my work & my ability not because I'm a woman (and vice versa for men). I want my daughter to be able to grow up and be able to go out in the world and be all that she can be even though she's on the low end of the Autism Spectrum.

Looks like you're both feminist, then.

[myswtghst]

By and large the majority of feminists aren't the ballbusting hairy-legged man-hating baby-eating demons that media (and biased people) love to make them out to be. Those few that are advocating an "all men must die" attitude are far and few between, if they even exist at all (I'm inclined to doubt this, as I've never met or talked to any feminist who thinks that men should do so).

I think this is the key - the same as it is with people who dislike certain religions, in that there are certain very opinionated and very vocal members of the feminist "community" who make the vast majority of the group, who are usually sane and rational, look bad as people tend to stereotype and/or group them together.

To me, the goal of feminism is to dismantle feminism. But only to dismantle it because it's no longer needed.

I believe in equality for the sexes. I want to be judged for a job promotion because of my work & my ability not because I'm a woman (and vice versa for men).

The above 2 quotes pretty much sum up my views. I know that men and women are different, but this is much in the same way that different people are different. I think that we should all be treated as equals, and tend to consider myself much more "equalist" or even "humanist" than I've ever been feminist.

Oh, and I've got nothing against common courtesy/chivalry, no matter who it's coming from. I'm constantly holding doors, saying please/thank you, and just generally being polite, because I was raised well and honestly believe in treating people well, just for the sake of it.

[Seshat]

Oh, and I've got nothing against common courtesy/chivalry, no matter who it's coming from. I'm constantly holding doors, saying please/thank you, and just generally being polite, because I was raised well and honestly believe in treating people well, just for the sake of it.

In the CS thread that inspired this one, I posted my beliefs on door-opening. Which amount to 'whoever it's most convenient for opens the door and holds it for a reasonable number of people to pass through. If the line is long, every few people someone should take the door, so noone gets held up for too long holding it'. I went into more detail - stuff about disabled people, or people with heavy or awkward packages, and so on. But 'most convenient' really covers it.

I believe in courtesy, politeness and behaviour which signals that you accept that other people are people, not furniture. Not just 'for the sake of it', but because it makes everyone's day brighter, and makes everyone happier.

I believe that happiness breeds happiness - you've all seen the difference it makes, I'm sure. A single happy customer goes through a checkout line and brightens the checker's day. The now-happier checker may make a few other customer's days brighter - and they can go on to spread the cheer. Each encounter is only a small difference, but a series of them can make a whole shopping mall happier.

Until a gloom-spreader comes in. Gloom, impoliteness, and discourtesy breed as well. The CS site contains a lot of proofs of that.

(I'm not talking about legitimate grief, by the way. Grief typically shows itself for what it is, and is more likely to spread sympathy and concern than unhappiness.)

Anyway, I'd rather spread happiness than discourtesy and gloom, and if simple courtesy and politeness can generate happiness, why the hell not?

[Alfie]

Much like it seems to have become OK to use the word "liberal" like it's some sort of curse word...

I became very confused at this comment... And then remembered the cultural differences between us. In Australia, the conservative party is bizarrly called the Liberal party. They are much despised now, so I guess it is a curse word here. The leader of the party has a 7% approval rating, an all time low.