Why is that? Is it because you doubt women make unwelcome sexual gestures toward men or that you just don’t think it happened to Blaster Master?
I’d imagine that in that instance, it’d be awfully hard to not call him an “asshole” or some other epithet.
Well, a little of both, but mostly the latter, given the way he describes it. My credulity won’t stretch that far. Random women don’t grope men in subways or any other public transportation.
As a rule, I’d be with you, but there are exceptions.
Just to be clear, 35-37 weeks of this is parental leave having nothing to do with gender. Pregnancy leave is only 17 weeks. http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/brochures/br_leaves.html
The pay comes from a government fund into which both the employee and the employer pay, so the employer does not keep paying the employee while the employee is on leave.
I strongly suggest everyone in this thread immediately rent Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, the best satire of feminist politics ever.
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, or a prostitute.
Rebecca West 1913
I think this definition still works.
Mmmm…doormat prostitute…
Nearly everyone I know is a feminist and is fine with saying that. Once in a blue moon a guy will say, “you aren’t a feminist are you,” and I’ll say that I am and they’ll ask me if I hate men and I’ll say “do I seem like I do?” and they say, “well no” and that’s the end of that. I’ve just found it’s better to call yourself a feminist and act according to your feminist values and let the chips fall where they may. Lucky for me I don’t live on a talk radio show so nobody has ever given me shit for being a feminist.
I probably wouldn’t bother to call myself one except for the fact that it still seems pretty socially acceptable to be prejudiced against women. I know that people can be prejudiced against just about everyone but being a woman I don’t mind taking a special interest in myself and my problems and experiences.
Seriously, I’m a guy. I’m a stay at home dad and I would call myself a feminist, certainly. However… I must say that sexism today seems to cut a whole bunch of different ways in this more enlightened era and things aren’t as simple as they used to be. I’ve heard some crazy lunatic fringe shit coming from my acquaintances in the women’s/gender/queer studies world. That Judith Butler, Foucalt quoting world where a hot topic of discussion is agitating for gender neutral public restrooms. The amount of in-fighting and the utter lack of solidarity I’ve observed is staggering to me, as an outsider. I can completely understand why some have abandoned the term, though it seems unfortunate.
Thanks for clarifying. I still find it objectionable, but agree that it’s not relevant in this thread.
Wow, it took until post #87. I’m astonished.
Yikes! And this is a shortened version! Sorry…
The fundamental beliefs of a feminist are that the sexes should be treated equally economically, politically and socially.
We are about gender equality. We can’t be equal without the guys being equal!
Take a look at the Equal Rights Amendment that we have tried to get passed in slightly varying forms since the early 1920s:
" Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex."
Bunch of man-hating terrorists, all right…
I believe that men can be as nurturing as women and should be on an equal footing in family courts. They should also have equal childcare responsibilities at home. Since their genes are also invested in the child, they should be equally responsible in taking time off from work for parental duties such as picking up a sick child at school.
If that’s your idea of a feminist, why did you say this?
It sounds like that’s not what it means to you either!
I can’t imagine anyone thinking that Gloria Steinem is part of the “fringe.” Did someone imply that?
Most of the women and many of the men that I know are feminists whether they use the word or not. Certainly they are in their philosophies. Those of you who think it is about man-hating are buying into Rush Limbaugh’s game plan. I believe that “Feminazi” was his invention. He used it for a reason.
In the meantime, women can go to Harvard and Yale now and the military academies. That wasn’t allowed when I was in college. Medical and law schools have reasonable numbers of women in them – about 50%.
On the other hand, I switched my car insurance from one company to another a couple of weeks ago. For thirty years the old policy has been in my name. I set up the new policy myself, handling all of the details on the phone. The car is in both names and the bank account is in both names. The first business letter concerning the insurance came addressed to my husband.
Also, I bought a couple of pieces of electronic equipment over the past two years from the same source here in town. When I went to pay for the second purchase, they had a record of my first purchase. The man looks directly at me and calls me by my husband’s name. I have a soft voice and big bazooms. There is no mistaking me for a guy. How dare he presume that it is all right to put my purchases under my husband’s name and call me by that name?
So some big things are much better, but many little things are very carelessly hancled.
Refresh my failing memory. What is meant by “the excluded middle”?
The fallacy of the excluded middle is an argumentative flaw that goes something like this (greatly exaggerated, of course):
Person 1: I don’t like the Republican platform
Person 2: If you don’t like Republican politics, which is anti-communist, that must mean that you’re a communist.
In that example, person 2 has committed the excluded middle fallacy, by assuming that there is no middle ground between Republicans and Communists.
In addition to Mosier’s general explanation, it was in reference to this:
Which tended to imply that you were reluctant to accept all the baggage that comes with calling yourself a feminst, you didn’t get to exercise any of your rights. IOW, if you try to distance yourself from the hairy bitches/femi-Nazis, then you can’t expect to be treated decently by anybody. Which strikes me as a fallacy.
Certainly one can distance oneself from the fringe elements of any movement. The fringe don’t like it, but so what?
The Ms. messageboards are no longer in existence, and Andrea Dworkin is dead, so examples of extremist “feminism” are somewhat harder to come by offhand.
Language is a social contract. If one cares to call oneself a feminist, then you just have to deal with the fact that a certain percentage of the rest of the world would like to insist that feminism necessarily implies being a man-hater, or a lesbian, or that by definition a feminist cannot be a SAHM or pro-life or Christian or whatever.
Regards,
Shodan
Academic feminism is weird. But it isn’t mainstream feminism any more than theoretical physicists have that much to do with electrical engineering.
In other news, no true Scotsman drinks cider. 
If they’re the ones using the label, then that’s what it means, especially since (as evidenced by this thread and many articles and books over the last 15 years) many of us who support gender equality, rights and opportunities are rejecting the label. Chicken v. egg, maybe, but that’s how language drifts.
But there ARE plenty of other women that use that label. All of my friends who think academic feminism is weird. Even people like Christina Hoff Summers who has a conservative agenda. There are lots of different kinds of feminists - and people who embrace different parts of the agenda. Not every feminist is thrilled about co-ed bathrooms, I know pro-Life feminists, and I know a LOT of stay at home mom feminists. And I know a few intellectual women’s studies professors who are as disassociated from reality as the intelligentsia often are.
I’m not saying that academic feminists aren’t feminists. Just that MOST feminists aren’t academic feminists. Most feminist don’t publish, they live their ordinary lives. They don’t even march.
Within academic feminism you have the range from Mary Daly to Camille Paglia - you can’t lump them all together and say even those people all believe the same thing.
Personally, I find it a shame that women don’t grab the term feminist. Because most of us certainly aren’t “anti-women” and the other meme “feminism is the odd notion that women are people” holds true. Its a bad long term thing to allow people who don’t have women’s best interest at heart to ghettoize the term - we WILL need the term again.
Are there extremist? Sure. Just like there are extremists in any group of people.
Andrea Dworkin was a chimp.
The problem with the label “feminism” is the baggage that it carries due to the shrill, poop-throwing Dworkins and the hilariously schizo Solanases of the movement.
In my experience, someone who identifies as “feminist” is someone whose gender tends to be their only hobby, interest, and therefore defining characteristic, which is kind of one of the whole things that feminism was trying to get away from. Most capital-f Feminists that I know only read books about gender issues, talk incessantly about gender issues and see them where they simply don’t exist, and often pursue advanced degrees in fabricated gender-based areas of study.
I’ve know this woman!
She’s a very nice person and very intelligent, but get her talking on gender anything and you just want to hang yourself.