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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Friday, December 9, 2016

That "feminist crap"

Image description: Ryan Gosling with text:
"hey girl. let's smash the patriarchy.

Now that I've the world has decided I'm a feminist, let's just open the flood gates, and dispense with the pretense shall we? If I lose throngs of readers who think I'm politicizing writing, I'll just have to cry myself to sleep. Honestly, if you want to be an artist who doesn't concern themselves with the suffering of others, I'm okay if you get your wisdom and insight somewhere else.

If, for some reason, you are against feminism, let's keep a few things in mind before trolling a blog with an admin who hasn't even the slightest compunction about deleting comments.
  • I am not feminism. If you want to label me (I don't really label myself) I am a feminist ally. I do not speak for all of feminism or every feminist or any women. My job is more like a megaphone, and I'm good at it because there are men who only listen to other men. If you call on me to answer for that one time a feminist hurt your feelings because they were so hostile, congratulations! You are generalizing about an entire group based on an individual. You probably shouldn't do that.
  • Feminism is about equality. It simply starts from the knowledge that things between genders are not currently equal. If you suggest that feminism isn't about equality ("It's all about women!"), congratulations! You have failed to understand the context or history of the subject you are currently discussing. You will spend three hours on Wikipedia to argue about the physics of a fight in a Spiderman comic, but you don't even know the 101 basics of what you're talking about when it comes to feminism. Do you feel ignorant? You look ignorant.
  • If you are letting someone other than a feminist define what feminism is, congratulations! You are displaying one of the most emblematic issues within inequality: not allowing people to speak for themselves. Way to be part of the problem!
  • If you say that you might listen to feminists if they would just word things more nicely/ academically/ dispassionately. Congratulations! You have just advanced the tone argument which has been going on since civil rights and before. Don't worry though; if you don't care about injustice unless you hear about it in the "right way," but haven't sought out the places in which exactly what you want exists and has for centuries, you probably don't actually much care about justice and wouldn't make a very good ally anyway. Carry on.
  • If you are pointing out how men are sometimes oppressed by gender roles too as a counterpoint to feminism, congratulations! You have failed to pay attention to the actual aims of feminism. Feminism cares about gender inequality of men. (You probably would have known that if you'd either listened to a feminist or done some basic research.  Oopsie.) Feminism just gets frustrated when the only time these issues come up is to derail the conversation about women's inequality.
  • If you feel you are a victim of reverse sexism, congratulations! You have confused your hurt feelings with systematic economic, social, and political oppression on a global scale that affects nearly every aspect of human interaction. It's an easy mistake to make when you've only ever experienced one of them.
  • Yes, some forms of feminism do have a problem with marginalizing other equality movements. White feminism is particularly insidious as are TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) and SWERFs (sex worker exclusionary radical feminists). Around here, it will be intersectional, or it will be bullshit.
  • "Make me a sandwich" "You're probably ugly" "Must be that time of the month." Congratulations! You have mistaken genuine, bigotry and sexism for unoriginal, uninspired "ironic" sexist humor. We're not NOT laughing because we're humorless. We're not laughing because you're not funny. Try again.

2 comments:

  1. I think that feminism is a bit overrated. I think what we need is a basic righteousness; issues like equal right to education is more important and merging everything into a coined term doesn't weigh the real issues well. And feminism sounds too feminine.

    ReplyDelete