Feminism.

[garnet_gaijin]

My girlfriend Sarah considers herself a feminist.  ...she also finds herself in a lot of arguments with other people who use the term.  I asked her to explain her definition to me in an email exchange we were having, and once I read it...well.  I was damn impressed, and wanted to share it.  Copied and pasted direct from the source, kids.

There are

Comments

[mourningdoveava]

Holy hell, you need to print that out and stick it on your fridge.

Did this fucking come up in *casual conversation*? You two make my brain hurt.

[garnet_gaijin]

I so do, don't I?

I don't know if it was casual conversation, but yeah, it came up. ^^ We talk about this shit, bro.

[bornbeautiful]

wow. that's deep. lol.

i agree with ava. my brain is hurting.

[garnet_gaijin]

My girl is a deep woman. ^^ Reason #367 I think she's fucking awesome.

[bornbeautiful]

lol. you have a running list. that's ... cute!

[garnet_gaijin]

Yeah, well. lol. In this case I'm not going to argue.

[belenen]

*steals your girlfriend* ;-) Sarah is amazing!

My own definition of feminism is pretty simple -- feminism is the belief that all human beings should be treated with equal respect. I often call myself a feminist/equalist, because I believe that all discrimination is linked. If we destroy sexism, we destroy homophobia, and vice versa. If we truly destroy racism, we destroy classism. If we destroy hatred of 'fatness' we destroy hatred of 'thinness' -- because it's all the same thing! it's pushing someone else down to try and maintain a sense of being respected. We believe the lie that in order for us to have respect, others have to be disrespected. People who truly have self respect do not have discrimination, because they feel no need to justify their worthiness of respect.

hmm maybe I should save this and turn it into a post. ;-)

[garnet_gaijin]

She so is! You can borrow her as much as you want if you let me have her back. ;) She's really blown my mind about a lot of things - the way she handles feminism, her Christianity, her faith and her strength. It's awesome. Little wonder she's Ava's best friend. ^^

I like the label of feminist/equalist. Feminism is starting to get a bad name in some places where it's too misunderstood. Sarah and I's whole conversation about this started at a party of Ava's where some woman jumped on Sarah for letting me get a drink for her (How DARE you let a man bring you something?) It was completely irrational and....purposeless.

I sometimes think people who try to only eradicate one facet of discrimination at once are playing whack-a-mole; it just keeps popping up over and over somewhere else. And I believe in order to eradicate everything, it takes all kinds of people. So it's a call for unity, if nothing else.

Sometimes the things you write remind me a lot of Sarah - it's why I enjoy your writing so much!