saquigley@watdaisy.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (01/15/84)
I have noticed that feminism has a very bad press, so i would like to present my views on this topic so as to show that we feminists are more than disheveled screaming women out to castrate poor men who dare disagree with us. (You too can be a feminist even if you don't have a bra you can burn!!) Feminism is called that way because it started out originally as a philosophy that women are disadvantaged in a patriarchal male-dominated society and that this is wrong and should be changed. So its purpose was to elevate women's roles to the level of men's roles and show that women could do men's work as well as men. This stage of feminism represented men as monsters who treated women like animals (not always so far from the truth :-) ) and introduced the concept of "war of the sexes". But as women's position in society improved, feminism evolved, coming to the realisation that not only women, but men are disadvantaged by the status quo, but in different ways and that there is some good in the basic "masculine" and "feminine" characteristics but what is wrong is the arbitrary distribution by society of these characteristics into two mutually exclusive groups and the arbitrary assignment of one of these groups to each person being born, on the basis of their sex (gender, whatever). This is what I consider to be the basic philosophy of feminism nowadays. Feminism should more appropriately be called "humanism" but this term is already taken. On the other hand feminism is a good name because it gives credit to the originators of that philosophy (women) and also because only true feminists men will dare call themselves feminist as they know that there is no shame involved in giving themselves an attribute with feminine connotations and that since women have been refered to as "he" for centuries, they can be refered to as "feminists" without suffering too much. The problem is that there is a big amount of women who agree with the idea that women should be men's equals as long as they have something to gain from it but not if they have anything to loose. They also call themselves "feminists" but the proper term is more "opportunists". There is also a minor proportion of the feminist population who has become very involved in feminism and ends up hating all men. I tend to believe that this is not a very appropriate reaction as men living nowadays are not responsible for the actions of their predecessors, but I have had the chance to know relatively nice men whose qualities and defaults were not caused by the fact that they didn't have a uterus, but rather that they behaved the way they wanted to. I am told there are still quite a few MCP's walking down the streets, and it is very understandable that women who have encountered a disproportionate amount of these creatures would end up hating all men. It might be safer that way. Feminism also points to some of the horrible treatments that women get (or got) from men and it is quite normal to become somewhat hostile towards men when one becomes aware of this. The important thing is not to stay hostile. So, there is no denying that there is a certain amount of hostility towards men involved in feminism, but that is not the whole point of feminism. The point of feminism is first to make people aware of their condition and how much their actions and the way people behave towards them is dictated by society's male/fe- male role models. Anger and/or depression will usually come as a result of that awareness as well as a sense of hostility towards members of the opposite sex (this goes for men too, women are not angels, but as women have been more blatantly mistreated than men, they are the ones who will feel more hostile) but it is important to remember that it is more society than individuals who are reponsible for the status quo, and that individuals only follow the status quo because it is the simplest less dangerous thing to do. The second point of feminism is to try to use that awareness and anger to change things constructively. It is then important to remember that even though society (i.e, the people before us) is responsible for the inequalities, society is formed of individuals and unless these individuals modify their behaviour, society will not change, so it is up to each and everyone of us to modify it by our actions. Now, the problem with feminism nowadays is that there are not enough men members Women feminists so far have done a very good job of complaining about everything that is wrong with the role they have been given as well as everything that is wrong for them about the role that men have been given. Unless men start doing the same thing attacking the two roles from their point of view, there will never be a balance. It is not true that men have not done their amount of complaining;the whole playboy/sexual revolution idea was that men had been taken advantage of by women and should shake the marriage/provider role away and do whatever they pleased. Unfortunately this involved treating women like dirt The original hostility never turned constructive, but became destructive instead (Personnal opinion: I think that pornography and forced sex (for fear of not being "cool" "with it", whatever) are destructive). So unless this movement is truly representative of men's profound desires, which I do not think it is (but I could be wrong), men have not yet started seriously to get into feminism. Until they do, the world's view of feminism as a one-sided strive from women to get as much as they can get will not change. While men continue to be ignorant about what feminism is all about they will also continue to believe feminism is about men doing the dishes and the laundry while women go chant in the streets. Women will also continue believing that men are complacent and not interested in modifying sex roles, and will thus continue being hostile towards them.