Neo-Liberal Revolution

Friday, August 25, 2006

What has feminism come to?

There have been times in my life when I've been criticized, lumped impersonally with other "non-feminist" women. I've also been verbally attacked personally for typing the words, "I don't consider myself a feminist, but..." That particular event was rather interesting. The crime of "spitting on my sisters" was apparently absolute. This "feminist" called me a little woman (something a man has never done) and informed me that I got all my thoughts given to me by men, just because I didn't *identify* as a feminist. The conversation surely went downhill from there but I assure you that "you are so a man hating lesbian feminazi" came well after the "little woman told what to think by men spit on your sisters" part.

Truth is, I am a feminist... mostly. I don't like the term because it seems that the opposite would be masculinist, and what is that? The "I'm not a feminazi" I mentioned above claimed feminism was a lot of philosophical things, in fact, every *good* thing was feminist. I thought that feminism was about the vote, about self determination, about being able to own property after marriage and legally control your own bank account... about being able to make choices about your own life your own self. Legal equality.

Yet in my life I *had* all those things. Workplace inequities existed but had every appearance of being a passing annoyance that required diligence rather than passion.

NOW, by it's pro-abortion stand declared it didn't want me, so who was I to argue? In fact, "feminist" had no room whatsoever in it for differences of political opinion. Feminists were Liberals and that was that.

In this post I mentioned and linked to Pamela Bone who had been linked by Tim Blair. Today I was directed to another article by her via Instapundit.

Yes, conservative people are making note of the fact that a liberal feminist is speaking out. What fun it is to read,
"if fighting to prevent the possibility that my granddaughters - our granddaughters - will one day be forced to wear a burka makes me right-wing, then right-wing is the label I'll have to wear."
I'll admit it. But the fact it's fun to read isn't what makes it important. I feel safe to say that Pamela Bone doesn't consider herself right-wing at all. She's every bit the socialist and humanist that she ever was.

The difference is that apparently she meant it then and *still* means it now.

Read the Op-ed. In *my* world the feminists had won the war and all was left was the clean-up. Not so in the middle east. In my world the mission of the feminist movement changed with the times, went on to other issues, so that now feminism has become so removed from it's roots that it can't even chose to side against a patriarchy so opressive that it makes complaining about symbolically "giving away the bride" at a wedding in the West look like petulant idiocy.

Some quotes from Pamela Bone:

IN Tehran in June, several thousand people held a peaceful demonstration calling for legal changes that would give a woman's testimony in court equal value to a man's. The demonstrators, most of them women, were attacked with tear gas and beaten with batons by men and women from Iran's State Security Forces, according to Amnesty International.

(...)

Do you think women in Western countries marched in solidarity with the Iranian women demonstrators? Of course not.



Thank goddess, as they used to say: a few Western feminists have begun to wonder why women who once marched for women's rights are marching alongside people who would take away even the most basic of those rights.

The latest is Sarah Baxter, a former Greenham Common protester, who in Britain's The Sunday Times had this to say about a recent demonstration in London calling for a ceasefire in Lebanon: "Women pushing their children in buggies bearing the familiar symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marched alongside banners proclaiming 'We are all Hezbollah now', and Muslim extremists chanting, 'Oh Jew, the army of Mohammed will return'.

"I could never have imagined that many of the same crowd I hung out with then would today be standing shoulder to shoulder with militantly anti-feminist Islamic fundamentalist groups whose views on women make Western patriarchy look like a Greenham peace picnic."


As they say, read the whole thing.

3 Comments:

  • At 8:34 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    The problem I see with the 'feminist' movement of the 1960's was that by the very nature of its name 'feminism' it pitted women against women. In order for feminism to acquire legitmate power it had to destroy the very nature of Womanhood, ie.,our wombs, our purpose, our relationship to the male.

    At age 45 for all my adult life I have lived the 'feminist' ideal because feminism demanded that anything else would be submissive to the male. I could not be a Woman because that path represented a betrayal of feminism. Having lived such an ideal I can honestly say such feminism is a hollow, empty cause which leaves nothing after I'm gone.

    Oprah Winfrey, with all her wealth, power, achievement, fame will never achieve what a homemaker mom achieved when she chose to bring children into the world to raise hope for the next generation. After Oprah is dead, nothing of her will remain but ash and dust but the legacy of Motherhood will remain throughout time.

    I didn't know until much later in life that the true force of women's right was in Susan B. Anthony's fight for our right to vote so that women would be able to acquire their own finanical means so as not be forced into the humiliating act of aborting her off-spring.

    The feminist movement on the other hand used this humiliation as a means to destroy our wombs; the feared parasite patriarchy pregnacy.

    Today I see feminism as hollow, empty and representive of the destruction of Womanhood; rather backward reflecting the viciousness of Medea's barbarism.

    Feminism is a cause I abhor with every last fiber of what is left of my Womanhood.

    Susan

     
  • At 12:01 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I recall, in the early '80s, all of the radical feminist publications like Off Our Backs and Ms. Magazine were outraged at the brutal oppression, torture, and mutilation of women in Africa and the Middle East. Now it's all crickets chirping.

    Now, Ms. Magazine's take on the Iraq war and other mideast conflicts is "women always suffer the most in wartime, blabbety blah." Which is why the war must stop, blah blah. Nary a mention of the aforementioned denial of human rights for women--only a blind opposition to the US government. We got ours, now let's see if we can get some more. For ourselves. Only. It's hard not to be cynical.

    If I think we need to fight for human rights for women around the globe, "culture" notwithstanding, and that means I'm not a radical feminist anymore, well....ok. I'll own that.

     
  • At 5:25 AM, Blogger mdfay said…

    For about 8 years I was very active in the local Unitarian Universalist fellowship. The UU movement is VERY big on women's rights and loves to lay claim to everyone from Margaret Sanger to Susan B. Anthony. As the father of an only daughter I'm completely onboard with equality of the genders. However I've fallen away from UUism in large part because they, like many on the so-called progressive liberal left, due to their rabid hate of Bush et al, have allied themselves with the very folks who are violently against the very things they claim to be for. How the women's movement can stand shoulder to shoulder with those advocating, among other things, female circumcision and a status barely higher than good household appliances is simply amazing to me.

     

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