feminist

created by elliott

(person) by elliott (7.8 y) (print) ? I like it! Sat Nov 13 1999 at 9:18:24

Practitioner of feminism
Rebecca West: "People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."

Feminists analyse the world with respect to gender-based power structures, much as Marxists analyse the world in terms of class-based power structures.

(idea) by moJoe (3.1 mon) (print) ? 1 C! I like it! Sun Feb 20 2000 at 5:08:56

The actual definition of a feminist is one who believes that women should be treated as the equals of men in all (reasonable) things and vice versa. Women who believe that women are better than men and claim to be feminists (the ones that give feminism a bad name) are actually chauvinists (see chauvinism).

To answer a commonly asked question; can men be feminists? The answer is yes. I am not an activist, but I still believe all people are the same regardless of sex or nationality, thus I am a feminist by definition.

(idea) by Wintersweet (1.1 y) (print) ? 1 C! I like it! Sat Mar 11 2000 at 4:47:46

There is no "actual" (i.e., universally accepted) definition of feminist, any more than there is of "Christian." My favorite, and the one that I use, is: Any person who recognizes that women have been and are frequently oppressed, and believes that something should be done about it.

My next realization was that I'm not really interested in associating with anyone who's not a feminist by this definition, which makes me slightly uneasy because I try to be accepting of others ... and yet ...

Oh, and there's also one of my personal beliefs expressed as buttons pinned on my backpack, which is: "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people," which I think does sum it up nicely.

(person) by Serpentine (7.3 y) (print) ? I like it! Fri Jun 30 2000 at 10:31:37

There exists a second form of the Dame Rebecca West quote:

"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."

True in 1913, just as true now. And given the free appropriation of the term by a myriad of quite distinct philosophies (admittedly: can anyone say cline?), too many people have too much stock in it to give it up willingly. *sigh*

The masochists among you may endur^H^Hoy Where feminism lost me.

printable version
chaos

Where feminism lost me	Feminism	I'll be a post-feminist in the post-patriarchy	Men should never call themselves feminists
chauvinist	Chauvinism	Gertrude Stein	What girls aren't taught
Does Nature matter?	Why feminist ethics is not relativism	Why it's rude to open a door for a woman	exceedingly subtle sarcasm
Marxist	Why Cucumbers are Better than Men	radical feminism	Anonymous Men Think They Can Talk To Me
dry humping	Lesbo nympho killer whores	real woman	porn
Gender	Qiu Jin	Boy meets me, boy becomes infatuated with me, boy realizes I take up space, boy runs like hell	Andrea Dworkin

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