Might help also to describe what you think feminism is, since it’s one of those terms that is overloaded.
I once had a physical therapist tell me she wasn’t a feminist because she thought women couldn’t be as physically capable as men when serving as soldiers, and seemed to believe feminism requires treating women exactly like men.
I told her I was a feminist because I believe in equal rights for men and women, an idea she did not seem so opposed to.
Yes, in the sense that I believe men and women should have equal rights. I suspect people who say they aren’t feminists have a different definition of it.
I see feminism as a component of minimizing heirarchy and moving toward anarchy.
Instead of the liberal conception of rights, I would use equality of individual liberty and social solidarity regardless of gender or sex. Definitionally, I claim gender as performative and sex as related to procreative genitals. Maybe it’s all just worbs, that is, political words without meaning.
Those in favor of heirarchy use “equality of outcome” as a bludgeon. Humans do not need “equality of outcome”. We need autonomy to make choices about our lives. We need societies that take care of each other. Heirarchies such as patriarchy prevent making choices and taking care of each other.
As a bonus rant, the rube statement, “What is a woman?”, can be answered with, “Who is pink for?”. The provocateur wants to conflate gender and sex, but is too embarassed to come out and discuss genitals. A logical follow-up for the embarassed trap-setter could be, “Which genitals taste the best?”. The point being don’t entertain traps with anything but hostility.
I know posting is masturbatory, since I often fail to read replies. I’m sure your reply will be great and I will probably fail to read it. I’m still working on social solidarity.
Feminism as often defined:
the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way, or the set of activities intended to achieve this state. Is something I agree with support.
I wouldn’t call myself a feminist because I think the word is basically broken. Too many people use it in a different way than this definition. Too many people think that if you are a feminist you have to agree with other things or you are not a feminist. I would describe myself as a humanist; I think.
I don’t know if I like words being hijacked/appropriated by people with extreme views. The weird semantic shift for words like “feminist” (or “nazi” actually now that I think about it) points to a deficit in the education system in our countries.
I believe that men, women and all other genders that people are constructing these days - whether real or fabricated, zero fucks - should be treated equally in the eyes of the law, they should have equal pay, should be given the same opportunities and should be treated with equal respect. If that makes me a feminist, then cool.
I also believe that the reason the term gets a bad rap sometimes is because of the general stage humanity finds itself in. Consider this, for hundreds and hundreds of years men had the upper hand and only very recently did we start this process of equalizing women.
I imagine society like a car going down the road, when you lose control in a turn, the knee-jerk reaction is to steer the other direction and for a brief moment there you’re going way over to the other side before eventually correcting/ normalizing your course. Imho this is what happens with every new concept that gets introduced, there’s an overreach before normality ensues.
It’s even more pronounced with LGBTQ people. They were hidden, non existent in the eyes of society, and now we’re at the parade stage. My prediction is that soon there will be no need for it.
My definition of feminism: a struggle historically led by women to dismantle the structures of power that let cis men hold privileges over other gender expressions
With that in mind, yes, I’m a feminist. I don’t buy into the “no gender” thing, because in the way some people frame it, it erases the lived realities of gender oppression that still exist. The aim should be to dismantle gender hierarchies without ignoring how they operate here and now. Stripped of its anti-oppression context, no gender rhetoric can be co-opted into TERF narratives that reduce womanhood to biology and genitalia and deny gender diversity
Stretching it a bit, I also see animal liberation as part of this struggle, since these same power structures keep female non-human animals in the role of breeders and providers, much like they do with humans
No.
And I got banned from Lemmygrad for saying that,
but I’ll try iterating it again here hoping I won’t be this time around.
Reasons ordered from strongest to weakest.- Gender exclusiveness is in the name.
I don’t like any movement that has some form of exclusiviness in their name
other than nationality when they are indigenous to the land or ideology of the likeminded.
Any movement that has sex, age, sexual orientation,
but especially race in their name, immediately raises suspicions in me.
My country used to have a 50+ political party and while I don’t think the general public
thought of them as anything other than that ‘lovely little grandma and grandpa party’,
my first thoughts went to banning the party for age discrimination.The only thing I think that sets apart the feminist movement from other supremacist movements
is that I believe that humans have taken an evolutionary path that has resulted with fewer women
with dominant and mean personalities and
while I think current technology/economics would allow such thing to happen if
it were to run for several more generations, near future technology/economics won’t.And that makes this movement much less dangerous than
other supremacist movement that is far quicker to cheer on genocide.- Not agreeing with things feminists have said about themselves
Most of all, all the “If it weren’t for us…” statements.
I fail to see how it was not inventions that changed society as a whole in most cases.
Household chores used to be a full time job.
Paper, ink and education was something only the rich could afford,
so forget about voting, including for men.
War has gotten more and more mechanic and even robotic,
so the draft has gotten rare as well.
Bank accounts stopped being a rich people only thing as well.Other statement like “the Feminist movement is about equality between women and men.”
to which I say
“Sure sure, and the Trump movement is about equality between Trumps and non-Trumps. That’s why we needed more Trumps in leadership positions.”- I consider there to be an imbalance demographic imbalance between the sexes,
and I consider this to be an issue on the relationship market,
and myself as a (perpless) victim of it, so it hits me personally.
I also consider this to be something that dropped power into women’s hands
and I don’t think leaders of the feminist movement would want to happily give up on that
This is the more controversial one that gets me banned.
Due to new technology, demographics skew towards more men
of adult age, so not counting the elderly or children.
For every ethnic group that would mean advantages for that group,
but when the demographic group is about the sexes,
the less there are of you, the more power you have.If I were the only male, I’d be king of the world,
heterosexual women at my feet, protected and wanted by even the most powerful presidents.
I could exploit it to the fullest and powerful women could and would block other
women from ever coming near to me, physically or through manipulation.This shortage gives women the power to exploit men.
And since it’s a semi-permanent power, there’s little anyone can do to mitigate the issue,
apart from society inventing new technologies that will balance or skew the scale to the other side,
which could happen in ten years or so.“The universe doesn’t entitle you to a girlfriend”
Then I would say that that IS a true statement,
but then I also am not entitled to an income,
a car, a house, food, water, electricity and other basic necessities,
but I do think that I am entitled to live in a society
that prioritizes to have these necessities in abundance supply.I don’t like these kind of statements that turn the political into the personal.
It’s similar to the “You’re on your own kid. Just get a job. Improve yourself” statements when someone loses their income and house.“Women are not stock. They are human beings. Stop comparing our bodies to objects.”
I say that employees and employers are also human beings.
There’s a demand and supply of that too and yet again
I’d like to say that I’m entitled to live in a society
where unemployment is down to 0%,
so employers with jobs would be in full supply.
And if I’m the only male on the planet,
I would have no qualms saying that there’s a shortage of supply in men.
There’s an abundance of supply of men right now.
Just because women want relationships, and thus there being a demand for men,
does not mean that I think men or women are objects or livestock.“It’s not the quantity of women that’s the issue, it’s the quality of men”
I find that hard to believe since both men and women are each other’s counterparts,
made from the same DNA cloth who evolved by procreating with each other.
So an insult to one sex in terms of quality can only be an insult to the other.
Unless you want to go the uhm… “other route”
you know the “What do you mean Karen when you say that there’s more low-quality men these days?”
But I’ll be disagreeing with racists on such statements or conclusions on such statements as well.Quantity however is something that used to be balanced by nature,
where boys and men died more often from the plague, cholera and other diseases.
Most of us don’t live in that kind of society anymore.
We have tamed the animal kingdom down to the virus and bacteria
and now men are in a significant abundance.- Issue #3 makes me doubt the authenticity of people supporting feminism.
I’ve seen the fat acceptance or body positivity movement implode almost overnight the moment Ozempic got popular.
Apparently, people weren’t all that positive about their bodies the moment they could easily lose weight.
And I’m expecting to see the same with feminism once technologies that boost up the number of adult women becomes popular.…And that’s the reason why the feminist movement have TERFs.
I do believe gender is a social construct that’s becoming outdated. And that we shouldn’t have nor woman nor men, at all.
Make of that what you want.
The gender binary is becoming outdated, but gender expression is an important part of personal identity. Gender isn’t going away, the limiting cage of the pink/blue divide is.
I believe in equal rights and opportunities for all, be they man, woman, in between or none of the above.
But saying (and perhaps believing) one is a feminist and actually acting like one are often two different pairs of shoes. We all are confronted with so much discrimination, with so much bias, with so much misogyny, it takes active labour to actually behave like a feminist, because no matter how you think about yourself, at some point and to some degree, all that shit we get confronted with every day will rub off on us, and we have to understand that and constantly check ourselves so that it does not influence us in our thought patterns. Constant mental garbage collection, if you want.
That is true for all kinds of discrimination, no matter what it is based on.
If feminism is defined as equal rights for all things that are not gender relevant I agree. But there are a lot of really good exception, where it makes sense that we acknowledge differences. Like pregnancy, physical differences and so on. In short everything that can be equal should be.
I think people get too hung up on labels sometimes, but that said… If you’re a feminist, then so am I. I don’t think your PT’s understanding was correct.
It means if you think women should have the same rights as men. I am a feminist.
As a CIS male I consider myself a feminist because I recognize that women continue to face systemic challenges that demand more than just abstract ideals of equality. To me, feminism goes beyond egalitarianism. It’s not just about treating everyone the same, it’s about recognizing the different challenges people face and working to change the systems that create and sustain those imbalances.
I was raised by my mom and 3 sisters, and that gave me a front-row seat to the everyday injustices women face. Everything from subtle slights to overt discrimination to being victim of abuse. It wasn’t theory for me, it was lived experience, just one degree removed. I’ve seen the strength and resilience of the women in my life, and I’ve also seen what they’ve had to push through simply because of their gender.
Now, as a father with a daughter, I feel an even deeper responsibility to be part of the shift. I don’t just want her to grow up in a world that pays lip service to “equality”. I want her to live in one where she’s safe, respected, and empowered. That means doing more than being “not sexist.” It means actively pushing back against the structures and behaviors (the patriarchy) that holds women back.
I have zero tolerance for toxic masculinity and so-called “alpha male” attitudes that promote dominance, entitlement, and emotional repression. That culture hurts everyone, but it especially harms women by normalizing control and aggression.
I want my daughter and every woman to see examples of men who are allies, not bystanders. Feminism is a promise: to show up, to speak out (or more often shut up), and to help dismantle barriers so that every person, regardless of gender, can thrive without restriction or fear.
I will say yes, because I am a woman who has benefited from what feminists did in the past, and don’t believe in strict gender roles for men or women, and my kids were all born as girls, I had to work a lot to get them good education, my focus has necessarily been more on advancing the lives of girls than boys, I didn’t get boys until I married.
I think humanity as a whole is stronger when women are stronger. Empowering women empowers men too, when we all do more we are stronger, it’s not a zero sum thing.
So yeah I think so, yes, soy feminista.
Yeah, specifically I’m fairly third wave in that I’ve been convinced of the value of an intersectional perspective, am pro modern sexual liberation (including the freedom to not want it), and generally am more aligned with the feminist critiques of the second wave. Furthermore I find a lot of the fourth wave to a shitshow, though considering the concept of the fourth wave is not based on academic ideas or coherent demands, but rather the idea that social media changed feminist discourse so radically as to constitute a change to a different wave.
Feminism has always had multiple sides, and like most liberatory movements it has people who are cringe, who are counterproductively hostile, and who generally suck. It will try things that don’t work or push things in bad directions. Also college students and young people will do it in ways that look terrible. But feminist theory is also insightful texts that challenge cultural biases. And in a time where rights such as abortion are under attack and government officials are expressing their opposition to women’s suffrage, the principle of equality and fundamental rights remains even if it looks different now from when our grandmothers and great grandmothers were fighting for the right for a bank account.
“Ecofeminists examine the effect of gender categories in order to demonstrate the ways in which social norms exert unjust dominance over women and nature. The philosophy also contends that those norms lead to an incomplete view of the world, and its practitioners advocate an alternative worldview that values the earth as sacred, recognizes humanity’s dependency on the natural world, and embraces all life as valuable.” —https://www.britannica.com/topic/ecofeminism
Yes. Because it goes hand in hand with Cynicism, my main guiding philosophy:
Cynic: “an adherent of an ancient Greek school of philosophers who held the view that virtue is the only good and that its essence lies in self-control and independence” —Merriam-Webster
The Cynics (notably Diogenes of Sinope) also advocated for sexual relations between relatives (such as brothers and sisters), since incest norms were socially imposed and thus “arbitrary” in the view of the Cynics.
Diogenes also died after eating a live octopus, which is amusing.
Either way, love Cynicism (incest aside and all), cheers!