I was speaking more of individual jobs like hiring a maid or a personal assistant.
Sure, if your a hiring manager for a company, then you need to be inclusive.
Hating men (or women or whomever) but making exceptions sounds to me like being racist but pointing out that you have one black friend “because he’s one of the good ones.” I understand hating a system or wanting to strike the root but individuals should be approached as individuals, especially when they have no personal fault for whatever happened or perpetuating the causes.
But, with Republicans, it’s the majority who are hateful. With feminism, it’s a small minority who “hate men.”
I don’t not call myself a feminist because of TERFs (trans exclusionary feminists), and there are a lot more TERFs than there are feminists who hate men.
One thing that can hold back a group is when their opponents get people to associate them with bad things. It’s the whole “SJW” argument, where the few who do go too far are treated like the norm. Similarly, the “man-hating feminists” is treated like more common than it is in order for anti-feminists to attack them. My response therefore is to proudly say I’m a feminist while also being male and obviously not anti-men. Heck, I even will push the legitimate “MRA” issues, pointing out that feminism sees those as wrong, too.
I would like to request that you consider that, as a former Republican, you may have been inundated with such messages, and thus be more biased to noticing that stuff now, despite it being a minority. And that you consider not letting that minority define your perceptions of the movement as a whole.
Couple of thoughts:
There’s a big difference between not liking and disliking. One is neutral and one is hostile.
And as LSLGuy pointed out above, many of the same people who decry broad-brush strokes when it comes to one category of people are remarkably comfortable with broad-brushing another category of people. It all comes down, as usual, to partisanship.
I don’t find this particularly shocking. Wasn’t this already done in the 70s? I remember reading a book in university while doing research on some topic (I forget what) and I came across some radical feminist literature from that era. It was memorable because I remember it not just promoting misandry, but specifically citing even male children as equally culpuble and guilty of oppression and deserving of hatred. Kind of fun for me as a freshman in college thinking, “wow – there really are people who think a lot differently than me out there.”
Every large group has a few out of line people.
Then you’re a feminist. Congratulations.
– I’m not going to try to find the book; which according to the article is already out of print. The article reads to me as if the author thinks that ‘I don’t trust strange men’ is equivalent to ‘I hate men in general’. Those seem to me to be two very different statements. There are a lot of women (and for that matter quite a few men) who don’t trust strange men, or some familiar ones either, and they should certainly be allowed to say so. If what Harmange actually means is that women in general should be encouraged to hate men in general, that I’m definitely opposed to.
A single young woman with no particular background in the subject writes a 96 page essay titled Moi les hommes, je les déteste which is published by a micropublishing house staffed by volunteers, a political official looking for publicity demands that it be banned, and now we have a thread titled “Women embracing misandry?”
No, we have a single woman suggesting that a bit of misandry might work better than excusing what men do just to keep their support.
Said that way this isn’t even a teacup tempest. More like a thimble tempest.
Although as always, for every person who succeeds in getting something published, no matter how weakly or undeservedly, there’s another who-knows-how-many-others thinking similarly. Back when social media was mostly genuine original content rather that forwards (of often professionally produced propaganda), we could begin to see what the lumpenpublic actually thought about this, that, or the other thing.
Nowadays the quest for viral fame and sweet $weet clicks have debased that currency to uselessness.
How did it come about that espousing a position of equal rights for everyone means one is a feminist? As opposed to, say, a black rights activist? or a “some-other-historically-oppressed-subgroup-of-humans” rights activist?
If I believe in equality for everyone, doesn’t that make me just a run-of-the-mill egalitarian?
What you do mean, “as opposed to”? You can fit in more than one category. Feminism doesn’t denote activism, though (at least not the definitions I’m familiar with).
What do you mean, “come about?” That’s the original definition of the term. When it was coined, the idea that women and men should have the same rights was a radical idea. Women couldn’t vote. They couldn’t own private property. The couldn’t get higher education, or work in most careers. The people who thought that was a bunch of bullshit were called “feminists.” The fact that feminists won on all of those issues doesn’t change the meaning of the term.
It always amuses me when women who are the primary beneficiary of feminism, in all the ways you describe, don’t like to call themselves feminists.
My college roommate back in the '80s said she wasn’t a feminist because she never experienced discrimination. I watched her write a check from her own bank account, sitting in a college dorm that she was a student at, while she said all that with a straight face.
(ETA I hate this replying system. This was a reply to Miller’s post)
A person who believes in equal rights for women is a feminist.
That person may or may not also believe in equal rights for other historically oppressed people – I would hope they do, but the historical record is kind of mixed. And they may or may not be activist about it. But, as LHoD said, there’s nothing contradictory about it. And, as Miller said, espousing a position of equal rights for women is the basic definition of feminism.
And, as BigT said, opponents of feminism have put a whole lot of energy over a whole lot of years into trying to convince people that there’s something wrong with the word, in the hope of discrediting the overall idea.
It is not my intention to discredit the goals of feminism. But Ranch_Dip specifically said upthread:
The key phrase there is “…for everyone,” not just for women. But then you declared they were a feminist, rather than an egalitarian.
No. I declared they’re a feminist as part of being an egalitarian. It’s not an either-or.
If someone says to you, “I speak a complex language, so I’m a human rather than a mammal,” how would you answer them?
@niata Truth!!!
Best post of the day!!
It seems to me that many men might keep telling themselves that a particular woman “hates men” because it’s a lot easier on their egos than admitting that the woman is fine with men in general…she just hates you.
truth
Sure, there are some men who are like that. But some women are indeed misandrist and open about it; it’s not a misrepresentation of them.
Such as the SCUM Manifesto, and also Pauline Harmange: