Am I a feminist?

[wight1984]

Thoughts: Pro-Feminist, not Feminist .

Comments

[ninshubur]

Interesting thoughts about this issue. I am pretty much on the same page as you are, although my conclusion was not quite as well reasoned as yours.

I see one main problem in contemporary feminism which makes it such a minefield and so hard to really embrace for me: It intermingles the very valid demand that all human beings should be treated with the same amount of respect and should have equal opportunities regardless of gender, race or social status (this is something I totally agree with) with a rather counter productive attempt to create a "woman" identity that is totally separate from the "man" identity.

[wight1984]

That's an interesting point. Despite considering myself as being gender-queer, I've often found that I've had a masculine identity fostered onto me during conversations with feminists just because there is a very simplistic 'us and them' phenomenon going on. That hard line also becomes problematic with transphobic radical feminists who are very particular about who should be allowed to identify as 'a woman'.

[ninshubur]

Ah yes, there is that to it. I have to say though that as much as it is politically incorrect, there are certainly trans women out there who make it rather hard for people to accept their female identity. Somewhat unfortunately these are also probably the people most likely to lock horns with radfems, simply because there's an odd alignment between the motivations of genetically female radfems and somewhat ill-adjusted feminist transwomen. Both obviously deeply despise maleness, yet both are unable or unwilling to just get on with being a woman in society and to more or less follow the gender-mainstream in this regard.