"I hate those bra burning feminists"

Great Debates
1

One of the things that annoy me most is when an independent, free-spirited young woman, doing her own thing, sexually liberated and uninhibited, etc. etc. turns round and says she ‘hates those bra burning feminists’.

How can she not realise that if it were not for those feminists she would be sitting at home guarding her virginity until her father decided if, when and who she was going to marry? That she would be unlikely to have been allowed to continue her studies, or to have a profession? That independent travel would have been unthinkable? That had she rebelled and tried to live the life she does she would have been shunned as a fallen woman? That she would have been denied the vote?

Or am I exaggerating and would sexual liberation and acceptance of independent women have happened even without the feminist movements of the 20th century?

Is it pointless to inform her that the ‘bra burning’ image is a myth?

2

Just because some feminists did some good things like women’s suffrage, it doesn’t mean that all of their movements were sound. There were some feminist ideas such as there are absolutely no innate sex differences other than the superficial. That idea did not pan out through social and biological research and it was a core idea of feminist theory at one time. It also doesn’t follow that today’s feminism is working towards the same goals that feminists in the past did. It can be well argued that radical feminism today is a huge liability to women in general. There a large number a delusional, misguided people in its ranks and people respond badly to that. A large number of people believe that feminism has achieved virtually all of its goals in the U.S. and it is now time to disband the movement. The only people that are left are the nuts.

There have been several Great Debate threads on this recently. Here is one:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=312722&highlight=feminist

3

Shagnasty, I’m not proposing a debate about the excesses, errors or achievements of feminism in the US or anywhere.

This is IMHO, but if there is a debate to be had here, it is “where would women be now had the suffragettes and subsequent women’s rights campaigns never happened”.

4

Perhaps it’s because of her perception that those ‘bra burning’ feminists were also men haters? And that, quite often, those modern women that are free and uninhibited, also truly love men? (not just individual men, but the idea, the touch, the feel, and the promise of them)

Perhaps it’s the modern woman’s rejection of both matriarchy and patriarchy.

Or, perhaps, with the confusing jumble of choices with which women are faced, nostalgia makes them long for a simpler time?

Of course, those are just guesses.

5

Martha, the only place this place can go is a debate about the failings of modern feminist. I’m not really sure what you expected.

I consider myself a feminist. So it was quite a shock to me when my “Women in the Culture of Violence” class- which I thought was going to be about rape and rapre prevention, a subject I am deeply interested in- turned out to be mostly about trying to ban pornography. Porn is my friend! I was the only person in the class arguing that women sometimes enjoy porn, too, and that sexual expression is important as is free speech.

This turns a lot of young women off. They don’t want to ban porn. They don’t want a bunch of somewhat prudeish people claiming that their version of sex (which usually runs to the candles and bubble bath direction- doesn’t excite me in the least) is the morally approved one.

6

Somehow, I fail to see how any of this can be seperated and it is a Great Debate. Your first sentence basically negates any discussion of the issue at all.

7

I appreciate what feminism has done for us, as a society. And to respect that today, I’m not a feminist. I’m an individualist.

8

I don’t think this is a debate about feminism, I think this is a debate (and it is one) about the lack of context women have about feminism. Yes, there were, and there still are, stupid feminists who believe dumb things. Yes, there were, and there still are, feminists who hate men. But even those feminist had roles in fowarding thought and changing public opinion. It has been argued that the sufferagettes would not have succeeded without the extremism of Alice Paul and her followers. Or that sexual liberation owes a lot to the “lavendar mafia” and frank talk on sexuality. We don’t always bother to give credit for people who challenged the status quo - even if their motivations were a little off.

From 2005 its easy to believe that things like holding credit in your own name or being able to hold a job without fear that your gender would get you first in line for layoffs because the men are the assumed breadwinner would have all just come in time. But I don’t know if it would have. Would we be having conversations on gay marriage had gay activists not brought the topic foward?

9

What I would say to this woman, if I had the chance, is that whether you are a feminist or not, you are enjoying the benefits of these campaigns for women’s rights. Even though you might not share some of the ideas or agree with some the slogans that were banded around at various points in the history of the women’s movement, [like the examples cited by Shagnasty, even sven and Stonebow] how can you belittle it by dismissing them all as ‘bra-burning feminists’?

My brand of feminism is that women should be able to make their own choices as opposed to being told what to do by fathers, brothers and husbands. That goes for the small details like whether we shave our legs or not, right up to whether we get married, have babies, study, exercise a particular profession, stay at home, etc. etc. This is a far cry from the outdated stereotype of dogmatic, man-hating feminists with compulsory body hair and birkenstocks.

I resent the fact that by supporting the broadest definition of feminist principles I am lumped in with that definition, which in my experience is no closer to reality than a racist caricature anyway. Dare I say that it’s worse when that sort of ‘bra-burning’ put-down comes from a woman?

I think I just needed to rant, and I wasn’t pissed off enough for the Pit, but hey, be my guest and debate away! :slight_smile:

10

Thank you for saying it better than I ever could. :slight_smile:

11

One problem for the appreciation of modern feminism is that the movement worked so well that it almost seems like the original problem was wiped from collective consciousness. Very few people are going to bat an eye if a male says that his new boss is a women and almost none of those people would be young. That applies to almost all issues for equal opportunity that feminists fought hard for. How many people are going to object if the cancer specialist treating their loved one is female? Old TV shows indicate that something like that could be part of a hillarious joke at one time.

Compare this to the fight for racial equality that occured throughout some of the same period. That problem is still with us and even young people still see the friction. That is not the case with much of sex equality. It is hard to appreciate something if you can’t relate to the original problem.

12

I suspect many of those hating old line feminists have no ideas of what things were like even 35 years ago, not to mention before that. They probably think things were pretty much as they are now, so why get upset?
Harvard, Yale and Princeton started accepting women about the time I graduated from high school. Some women from my class went, and found it tough (but they were even tougher.) Many alumni had a fit. MIT was only 10% coed when I went, which I think was mostly societal, since the visible Administration position was very positive, and I never heard complaints from the women I knew. In 1978 in Louisiana, my wife, who was making all the money, had to get my permission to get a check cashing card at the grocery store.

13

I think this is part of it, but another part is the modern day ‘bra burning feminists’ aka feminazis are not the same as the feminists of the time which helped secure ‘equal’ rights for females

14

I consider myself a “feminist”- hey, I enjoy voting, driving, getting equal pay, and all those other awesomely good things. That said, I wont just randomly tell people that I’m a “feminist” because of the connotation of the word.

Whether you like it or not, the common perception of a “feminist” is a woman who hates men, disregards all forms of male chivalry, and believes that women are better than men-not just equal to.

Personally, I like having boyfriends. I like when men open the door for me or offer to carry something heavy for me. I like when I walk down the street with a male friend and he walks on curb side. Although guys can be annoying (cough, particularly my ex boyfriends, cough), they are just as essential as I am. Because I have a uterus, I am not better than him. We’re equals.

I also recognize that when it comes to certain things, we aren’t equal. I could be in the best shape of my life, running, weight lifting, and doing push ups for 8 hours a day and I STILL wouldn’t be able to do as many push ups or pull ups as a male in the equivalent body shape. Because of this, I completely agree when the military does not expect female recruites to do the same number of push ups as the male (and I have read MANY feminists arguing against this).

Random story: I was at school and about to walk into a building. A guy ran ahead of me and grabbed the door for me. I smiled, said thank you, and started walking through the door. My arm was snatched by a woman, who pulled me outside the door and yelled, “How could you let him open the door for you? You are a disgrace to the women’s movement” (or something like that).

15

Unlike, say, the social movement to identify and condemn antisemitism, or the social movement to identify and condemn racism, feminism as a movement did not (or has not as of yet) succeeded in establishing their moral position as virtually beyond condemnation.

Patriarchy deniers are as intellectually and morally bankrupt as holocaust deniers in my opinion.

There is plenty of room on this board (and elsewhere that reasonable & intelligent discourse takes place) for someone to say, for example, “I think the centrality of Martin Luther King was overrated” or “You know, some of the fallout from Brown v Board of Ed has been detrimental to American blacks”. But for someone to come here (or to a similar environment) and post “I’m sick of hearing about ‘racism’ and how black people have been socially mistreated, and as far as I can tell, for every ‘unfairness’ suffered by blacks, there’s been an equal or equivalent suffering on the part of whites, if not more so, so I think the people who espouse all these ‘racial civil rights’ views are emotionally constipated and viciously selfish people who deserve to be made fun of” would be to quickly be perceived as a troll. Yet I’ve seen equivalent posts pertaining to feminism, sexism, and patriarchy, and such opinions are far more tolerated.

But not for any good or defensible reason.

Patriarchy is a historical fact. Period, end of sentence, new paragraph.

Anyone divorcing themself from the entire historical women’s liberation movement casts themselves into a reprehensible category. To say “Well, I thoroughly disagree with Marilyn French and what she says about hierarchy”, or “I’m not into that Andrea Dworkin antipornography angle at all, here’s my take on the issues of porn and violence”, however, is a different thing.

When I hear someone diss the whole movement just because of something they think Robin Morgan or Phyllis Chesler said once because they heard about it somewhere else (but have never read it themselves), it does piss me off. Elizabeth Fisher, Robin Morgan, Sheila Jeffries, Ti-Grace Atkinson, Marilyn French, Kate Millett, Elizabeth Janeway, Betty Friedan, Sonia Johnson, Natalie Angier, Naomi Wolff, Nancy Chodorow, Azizah Al-Hibri…these are my heroes and anyone who belittles the entirety of what they have done and attempted to do without having even listened to them or read their stuff just belittles themselves.

16

Anyone who thinks it’s time to close the book on feminism in the US, look at the composition of the Cabinet, the Senate, the House, the top CEOs…

It’s really that simple. The vast majority of the people with the most power in the country are men. Patriarchy lives.

17

I personally do not like a bra-burning feminists, because I am a huge fan of brassiers and love how they look on women, especially white lacey ones, those are my favorite. Also, breasts with excessive sagging are less attractive to me. So I’m not a fan of bra-burning feminists, but I will support anyone that campaigns on a “pro-bra” platform.

18

/She rode a blazing saddle
She wore a flaming bra
As she set out to battle
Bad guys near and far! /

19

It’s not clear to me that the young women the OP is complaining about are refering to “bra-burning feminists” in a historical context, or in a contemporary context. Certainly, if they’re dismissing the importance of the early feminist radicals, I think they’re badly in need of education. However, if they’re talking about women who continue to promote '70s style radical feminism in a 21st century context, they may have a point. To draw a broad analogy, at one point the best answer to race problems in the South was armed conflict. However, if someone today reacted to, say, a Klan rally by calling for the invasion and subjugation of the Southern United States, that person would be rightfully ridiculed and dismissed. Solutions that were historically appropriate are not always appropriate to modern situations.

This is not to say that sexism has been eliminated in modern American culture, of course, merely to say that the nature of the problem is both sudued and shifted in nature, and the response to it needs to adapt in kind. Those that have not adapted are open to criticism, I think.

20

Was it the bra-burning feminists who evoked policy change? Or was it more moderate, less controversial feminists who maybe weren’t shown screaming and hollering on TV at the top of their lungs, but still managed to change people’s minds?

I sincerely don’t know, but it seems to me that just as the Black Panthers didn’t really change the white establishment’s views on race, neither did the radical, more in-your-face element of the feminist movement do very much to propel the status of women.

If someone says “I’m not one of those bra-burning feminists”, can’t they be seen as being akin to someone who says “I’m not one of those Rush Limbaugh conservatives” or “I’m not one of those pinko-commie liberals”?

I consider myself a feminist, in that I’m a strong woman who wishes to be treated fairly and equally as any other human being. Gender roles have always troubled me, even though I accept that there are fundamental differences in the way men and women think, feel, and act. I also do not wear bras, which someone may or may not interpret as a political statement (it isn’t, I just don’t like them). But I admit that if someone were to say “monstro is a feminist”, I would wonder about their definition of the term, which has a negative connotation. I might feel like defending myself by saying what I’m not: someone who hates men and has a permanent scowl on her face because of the patriarchical oppression surrounding her. I’m not saying that there are a lot of feminists who are like this, but regardless–this is the image that many people have of a typical feminist. And I don’t want to be associated with that image.