Stop it. Stop invalidating me because of my reproductive choices. Stop telling me what is and is not worthy of discussion. Stop calling me names because I have a different sexual expression than you. Stop discriminating against our sisters just because they don’t have the same naughty bits as you. Stop telling women that they should not be allowed to choose their life’s path. And, for the love of little green apples, stop trying to make the only valid path in life the one you want to take.
That’s what the patriarchy does, not us. Get it?
So, stop it. Just fucking STOP IT.
It’s surprising and dispiriting how it’s just the same shit, different pile, when it comes to you doing things that members of a group don’t like. You’ll always be the “bad feminist,” you’ll always “cater to the patriarchy,” you’ll always be a “gender traitor,” you’ll always “betray feminism by acting like a man” — the insult depends on the particular subset of feminism you piss off. Once I came over my initial leeriness about joining an on-line feminist group, I thought that feminism was about accepting equality-minded women without reservations. Unfortunately, lately it’s been proved to me that my reservations were right; the loudest voices are the quickest to condemn rather than support the women they claim to fight for.
A couple of days ago I made the comment that I’m far more likely to be unquestioningly accepted in an childfree forum than a feminist forum, which is seventeen different kinds of fucked up because without feminism, women wouldn’t have the option to be childfree.
Exactly. How will we ever, as a movement, manage to accomplish anything if we’re too busy putting other women down to focus on achieving social and economic equality? Can’t we just try to agree on the most important thing, which is that we all want to fight for some of the same basic principles? We can have differing opinions beyond that. I think that far too often the real purpose and meaning of feminism (the rights of women) is lost within all the internal attacks and misunderstandings.
I think so, too. It seems like such a simple thing to engage with an argument rather than a person, yanno? But I guess when it’s personal, it’s not so simple. *sigh*
I just wish we could all sit back and remember that feminism is about equality for women, and that equality comes at the price that sometimes women will do things that we don’t like. Our job is not to demolish them, but rather to call into question the reasoning behind those choices – as well as the reasoning behind our dislike for those choices.
I do suspect that feminism’s progress has been deeply hindered by all the infighting. I don’t know how you get beyond it though.