I’m still waiting for more input from Conservative posters on the use of “liberal” and “bleeding heart”, which are even more commonly used in ad hominem arguments than “feminazi”. Anyone who has used either term recently is invited to answer the OP in the linked thread.
Everybody knows what a femiNazi is, even I with my miserable English, have somehow been able to grasp the concept – and I haven’t even been subjected to a loving sermon at the tongue of the tender Limbaugh.
Ever.
Regardless of how feminism is defined in the dictionary, it is the opinion of many that it has gone from a movement just seeking equality between the sexes to a special interest group fighting for perks for one gender only. If feminism was truly gender neutral (as many feminism avows) I suppose it would be called genderism or humanism or something (recon sexism would be a no-starter). How many of the self-anointed feminist in here would also call themselves masculinist? The reason I normally wouldn’t call myself a feminist even though I am very much in favour of equal pay and rights and all that, is my impression that it nowadays comes with a whole wagon of unvoiced baggage. It’s all the stuff written with small letters on the bottom of the page I can’t subscribe to.
Way to fight the notion that women are dumb bimbos lusting for a strong hand and a hard cock to set them right. That is not, of course, to say that women are dumb, or need a cock to control them, nor that most men think of them as such.
Why would anyone try to win points with such silly women? Screw them stupid bitches. 
- Rune
It seems to me that the “theory of political, social and economic equality of the sexes” is by and large accepted in most quarters of American society. As such, the definition of a feminist as someone who supports such an agenda is non-operative. If the majority believes in an ideal, then there is no need for a label to specify people who hold that philosophy. I’m sure everyone in this thread agrees that slavery was a terrible thing, but I doubt any of us self-identify as Abolishionists. It’s assumed that being anti-slavery is the default position, and there’s no need for a special term to identfy such people.
I think what we’re seeing here is the inevitable effect of the feminist’s victory. As more and more people adopt the traditional feminist viewpoint as their default worldview, the term “feminist” itself is left open to being hijacked by extremists and fringe groups. Joan Average was a feminist when she wanted the same job opportunities men had. Once she got them (more or less) she was too busy pursuing them to make it to the meetings like she used to, leaving the crackpots obsessesed with gender bias in the English language or the phallic symbolism of neck-ties in charge.
At least, that’s this dude’s take on it.
So now you’re going to expand your previously narrow definition so that it includes me?
Common usage of the word has changed the definition to mean the extremists fringe groups, as Miller put it. I don’t identify with either of those groups, so I do not consider myself a feminist.
Let’s see what you got wrong:
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Gloria Steinem has been a leader in the feminist movement since the late 1960’s, which means she’s been involved for nigh on 40 years, not just the 1990’s.
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Where in the fuck do you get your assertion that Gloria Steinem thinks that all sex is rape? She was a Playboy Bunny for fucks sake! And if your cite for your assertion involves El Blimpo in any way, it doesn’t count.
He’s got Gloria Steinem confused with Andrea Dworkin, who is often misquoted as the author of a misquoted statement of Cynthia MacKinnon’s. Or something.
Catharine MacKinnon.
And there are such things as ‘feminazis’. Anecdotal (because mentioning the name of the board would likely start war) evidence here:
I posted on a ‘feminist’ web forum for a while. I was told that because I like orgasms, BDSM, and am not forever destroyed by having been raped that I must be a man, a liar, a misogynist, and worse. I encountered people who said it was OK for a woman to lie about being raped if it gets her what she wants. In that case, it was a college girl who didn’t want to watch a movie in one of her classes, so she was going to lie to her professor and tell him that she was raped to make him change the film. I saw people who called themselves ‘feminists’ advocate the ‘breeding out’ of men by simply not giving birth to more of them because a population that is 20% male and 80% female can sustain itself. They said things like ‘orgasms are a man’s way of oppressing a woman by trying to force her to express her sexuality in a way that he wants.’ They posted long essays on how much they hated their fathers and how much better off children would be if there were no fathers. Some of them posted that if a man made eye contact with them while walking down the sidewalk, they would loudly shout ‘No!’ at him, and that if a man complimented them it was because he wanted them to ‘owe’ him something or feel entitled to have sex with them.
That’s feminazism, not feminism. That’s not about equality.
If it sounds outrageous to you, ask anyone else from this forum who read it.
I don’t know about the OP, but I’m having a big problem grasping Rush’s concept. I’m picking on you NurseCarmen because I’ve always found you to be clear, straightforward and concise in your posts and if anyone can explain the concept to me, it would be you.
Is Rush really, really just referencing about 12 women when he uses the neologism “feminazi”? Which 12? Betty Freidan? Gloria Steinem? Andrea Dworkin? Anne Coulter?
I believe that we should fight for a woman’s right to choose abortion to the bitter end. According to Rush does that make me a FemiNazi?
It seems to me that Rush is trying to equate the whole feminist movement with the crazy fringe. Are all the woman in NOW FemiNazis or just the crazies who think all heterosexual sex equals rape. Is Hillary Clinton a FemiNazi just like Valerie Solanas?
There seems to be a consensus that FemiNazi means extremist feminist. The problem is that no one seem to know what constitutes an extreme feminism.
Purely in the interest of accuracy, nobody ever actually said “sex is rape”.
Here’s what snopes had to say.
I’d also like to re-express my amusement that much of this thread is about the accuracy of an ad hominum. If Mr. Evil Breakfast were to be accused of being a “bleeding heart liberal”, do you think he would produce a note from his cardiologist?
Hit the button too soon. Here’s again.
Have you hear the latest Rush Limbaugh broadcast?
Neither has he.
No, that is what some feminists claim to believe in. Actually, when a situation is in their favor, such as the higher college enrollment levels and longer lifespans for women, they do not advocate equality.
If that is a common truth, you should have no problem supplying numerous examples of feminists expressing liberal attitudes toward men.
Examples, then?
OTOH, if you check the votes when a feminist-supported bill goes before Congress – such as ones on Women, Infants and Children support, child support, crackdowns on domestic violence, and improving women’s health care, rape, sexual harassment – you will often find great number of conservatives supporting the bills.
Feminism has a long and cherished tradition of hoping for a female-only society, thus advocating a Final Solution for the male problem. Many have taken as their ideal the Amazons, women who allegedly killed male babies in order to maintain the purity of their race.
Let’s see, the Nazis wanted to do away with the current order of their day and institute a Third Reich, or empire, that as yet did not exist. So in what sense are you saying they were conservative?
Also, conservatives traditionally support established religions. Hitler wished he could quash the Catholic Church and institute a religion amenable to Nazism – a sort of Darwinian nature worship. So in what sense are you saying Hitler was conservative?
Please clarify these points, ** Mr. Evil Breakfast.** Otherwise, it might look as though your line of thinking is that conservatives are evil, and Nazis are evil, therefore conservatives are like Nazis. I hesitate to even bring this up, because most people would feel insulted to have such a simple-minded and uninformed belief attributed to them.
Valerie Solanas is often cited as a lone nut. She was a nut, to be sure, but hardly alone. Her main work, “The S.C.U.M. Manifesto,” was repeated reprinted, reproduced and distributed by feminist groups on both sides of the Atlantic. It was used in feminist study groups and was eventually picked up by Robin Morgan, the editor of Ms. Magazine. Morgan included “The S.C.U.M. Manifesto” in her feminist anthology, “Sisterhood is Powerful,” a staple of women’s studies courses used on many campuses – even those where hate speech was supposedly allowed.
Errata’s effort to dismiss Solanas as a lone nut is either uninformed or dishonest, so the other comments from this source should be taken in the same light.
For those who might not know, “S.C.U.M.” stood for “The Society for Cutting Up Men.” Solanas not only harbored violent attitudes toward men, she built her philosophy around it, preached it, advocated it to others, and ultimately engaged in that violence. Even if she had never acted out her violent beliefs, it tells us a lot about major feminist figures like Morgan that they were blithely willing to promote such anti-male hatred. The fact that they were willing to embrace and study something on “The Society for Cutting up Men” tells us something not very flattering about the level of their intelligence and the nature of their morals.
The fact that they studied Solanas’ work does not necessesarily mean they endorsed Solanas’ work. If Valerie Solanas (whom, I confess, I’ve never heard of before this thread) had a major impact on feminism, either for good or ill, than she ought to be studied as part of any comprehensive course on feminism.
Question: How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Answer: That’s not funny.
You wouldn’t understand such a comment. Satire and commentary require a sense of humor.
And while the point is overstated, it is done so with a grain of truth. When was the last time you heard a self-professed feminist warning about the psychological damage that can follow abortion, or warning about the adverse health effects? So to such feminists, abortion truly is a higher sacrament than the mother’s life.
Is that the same Webster’s that for centuries used “man” as the common discriptor and accepted such words as chairman, policeman, fireman and councilman as generic terms? The pendulum has swung the other way, and the self-serving definition that feminists supply for themselves do no accurately reflect their activities. Feminists never advocate equality when it means that they would have to give up something. Feminists do not advocate equality in child custody. Feminists do not advocate for a man’s right to defend himself against charges of sexism or sexual harassment. Under the slogan that “women do not lie about such things,” they have advocated that a woman’s word be enough to have a man punished, demoted, fired or jailed. Feminism’s advocacy of the so-called “rape shield laws” are transparently an effort to block men from mount a legal defense against rape charges. And you will note that when a rape charge is made, the man is identified and the female accuser is not. Equality? No there.
One of the hallmarks of the anti-male manbasher is the belief that men have no legitimate concerns.
Keep in mind folks, that when Zoe met a blatant, anti-male bigot joining the board, she welcomed the bigot and said not a word against her hate speech.
Feminism eventually got the reputation that it earned. It took a combination of outright haters and people like Zoe who were perfectly comfortable siddling up to that hatred.
Nazi’s wear polished leather jackboots made in Germany.
Feminists wear sensible Birkenstocks made in Germany
FemiNazi’s wear leather boots with sensible heels made in Germany
Nazi’s relax in beer gardens singing folk songs
Feminists relax in coffee houses singing folk songs
FemiNazi’s relax in their houses drinking beer and watching re-runs of Xena Warrior Princess
Nazi’s used the terrifying “buzz bomb” in waging war
Feminists think war is a by product of an violent, oppressive patriarchal culture
FemiNazi’s like a good buzz
So then you turned in your NOW membership card when it was common for them to refer to “male chauvinist pigs”? And you objected to them labeling everything male as “patriarchy” and labeling that evil?
The only person who can control CrazyCatLady’s prejudices is CrazyCatLady. It’s symptomatic of bigots that they find an example that reinforces their prejudices and thus feel the prejudice is accurate.
I see on preview that your following post seems to back away from that.
Let’s look at what Catherine MacKinnon actually did say:
Perhaps it just means that the vast majority of women are truly masochistic? Or maybe it means that characterising vanilla sex as ‘violent’ is a load of crap?
If you read Dworkin’s book Intercourse, you’ll find an incredibly bitter piece of hate literature against men, but not only against men - against women who are “collaborators” (ie enjoy heterosexual sex).
As someone who enjoys reading extreme literature of all angles, I definitely appreciate the fact these books, such as Solanas’, exist, but it’s not that much of a stretch to call such dogmatic opinions of how people should think and act (and what people’s sexuality should be) fascistic, in the broader sense of the word.
My point was that they were prominent in the early 90’s when Rush was starting up his show, I didn’t assert that she was only well-known during that period. That she was a feminist leader for 30 years before that is completely irrelevant to the point, which is that she was the face of feminism at that time when Rush made the remark, and he referred specifically to her and Patty Ireland when he talked about feminism/feminazis.
As for the “sex is rape” thing, it seems I misattributed that, so alright.
The “all sex is rape” concept has a number of feminist sources who did not put it precisely in those words but said things that amount to much the same thing. For example, our old friend and Ms. Magazine editor Robin Morgan:
So yes indeed, Morgan was saying it’s rape unless the woman initiates it. Guys, every time you have initiated sex, you have committed rape – according to her.
And no, Andrea Dworkin is not some misunderstoon waif. She said things such as:
Then there are those feminists who likened heterosexual sex to European colonialism – the evil despoiler invading the pristine lands, as it were. These women advocated lesbianism as the way to accomplish “body de-colonization.” With this group you get the likes of Sheila Jeffrys, who says: “When a woman reaches orgasm with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticizing her own oppression.”
In a similar vein, you have the very influential Susan Brownmiller, who states that rape “is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear” – (Against Our Will p. 6)
Have you got that, folks? She attributes this to all men. That means me. That means every man reading this thread. That means all your fathers and brothers and nephews and sons.
So yes, there are many feminists who have attempted to portray heterosexual sex as innately and inevitably destructive and oppressive. About the only thing worse than this outright gender hatred is the effort to deny it’s existence underpinning the beliefs of some of feminism’s most influential leaders.