02 November 2006

Feminism?

Hurumph.
Feminists make me grumpy. (feminists in general, not friends who happen to also be feminists)
I am in favor of equal rights, for men and women (pretty much everybody, really)
In fact, I am very firmly and strongly in favor of equal rights and fair treatment for everybody. But as far as I can tell, Feminsm is not about equal rights or fair treatment. It's about "girls are great because boys are so stinky" and about some weird sort of turning the tables to objectify/belittle men. That I'm not in favor of. Any more than I'm in favor of belittleing women.
It seems to me that if something is out of balance in the way people are treated, the answer is not to swing everything too far the other direction, but to balance it.
Also, there really are biological differences between men and women. I heard a feminist writer decrying the inherent unfairness of annual pap smears for women, but not men. men just can't get cervical cancer. Try as you might, it just won't happen.

To be perfectly clear -- I am in favor of equal treatment for everybody. Health plans that cover Viagra, but not Mamograms? That's not right, and I'm against it.

Maybe I'm wrong about feminism in general, and only extremists make me grumpy.

(extremists DO in fact make me grumpy)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I want to be very clear! Miranda is a great friend, and I like her a lot! Also, she is a sensible sort.

Anonymous said...

No, no. I'm a feminist, but I'm all about reason, too. :) I think feminism should be just as much about recognizing and *remedying* the inequalities that men experience because of gender stereotypes......inequality for either genders is wrong.

For example, did you hear about an Australian Islamic cleric who gave a sermon, comparing women who go out with their hair uncovered to people leaving meat out in the backyard with cats on the prowl...can you blame the cat?

This statment is terrible wrong in that it shouldn't matter how a woman dresses or if she goes out unescorted (or escorted, for the matter)..... women don't ask to be raped because of the way they dress in public.

But this staement is equally deplorable because men *are more than animals with urges.* To me, it's demeaning to think that guys can't control their instincts and desire..... or even that men have as part of their inate instinct a desire to rape .... but I didn't hear suggesting that men aught to be offended by the clerics statements......

I think part of the problem is that the women's movement has been around for over 100 years, and it went through a surge 35 years or so ago..... but men's studies programs / conciousness raising circles in colleges are still fairly well in their infancies. Furthermore, men are often taught as part of unspoken genderification to "suck it up" "be a man" "set a stone face" to problems that they face.