Saturday, October 5, 2013

A post-feminist future?

Apologies for going slightly quiet in recent days - I've been having a bit of a manic spell (I could tell you what I've been up to, but you wouldn't believe me!). I still plan to write a post about Arthur Donaldson soon. In the meantime, I just thought I'd recommend a rather wonderful article I stumbled upon about the crossroads facing modern feminism -

"More broadly, I am convinced that if feminism is to have a positive future, it must reinvent itself as a gender equity movement advocating for both sexes and against all sexism. Focusing solely on female disadvantage was perfectly understandable when, whatever paternalistic benefits women might have enjoyed and whatever burdens men might have suffered, women were the ones lacking the basic rights of adult citizens. But today, there is simply no moral or rational justification for any fair-minded feminist to ignore (for instance) the more lenient treatment of female offenders in the justice system or the anti-father biases in family courts. The concept of feminism as equality of the sexes is increasingly on a collision course with feminism as a movement championing women."

The way I always put it is that if feminism is simply about equality, then I'm a feminist - but it's a bloody silly word for it, because equality is by definition about two genders, not just one.

Incidentally, I typed the whole 1400 word article into Google Translate and converted it into James Mackenzie-speak, and it came out as just four words - "what about teh menz". Hmmm. It's an admirably concise language at times. In fact it doesn't have far to go to emulate the virtues of Orwell's Newspeak, which of course managed to condense the unwieldy American Declaration of Independence into the single word "crimethink".

2 comments:

  1. Couldn't agree more.

    I reckon the majority, really the vast majority of any group, be they gay, minority ethnic, religious, elderly, women, bird spotters...whatever, really just want equality.

    And if equality is a new definition of feminism, then count me in.

    It is of course the fringe of any group that gets the attention of the media, but fringes are, by definition, not representative of the body as a whole.

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  2. Believing in equality quality makes you an egalitarian.

    Feminists are evil. See every single day on CiF for examples.

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