Quick poll before bed

[andrewducker]

Taking the definition of feminism as:
The view, articulated in the 19th century, that women are inherently equal to men and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
and remembering that you don't have to select entries if you don't want to (and therefore don't need to choose "I am a woman and a feminist" if you're not a woman):

[Poll #688002]

Comments

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I am a man and I am SPARTACUS.

[cx650.livejournal.com]

To qualify my declaration: I believe that women, whilst different in many ways, inferior in some, superior in others (probably more), merely different in yet more still, are personalities with the same motivations and emotions as men however they are balanced, and deserve equal rights and opportunities.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Egalitarian feminist, though.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

I said yes under that definition, assuming that equal /= identical, etc. In practice, a lot of feminists don't seem to want equality - I tend not to identify as feminist because of the loud subsection going, "Society doesn't let me run the Bank of England on a two-day-a-week basis, taking time off early to pick my kid up from school, and pay me the same as a man doing it 80 hours a week would get. It's SO UNFAIR!!"

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

With the proviso that this is a principle, and bearing in mind that *most* people, irregardless of gender, are crap :-)

Oh yeah and seconded on what pickwick said, absolutely...

[diotina.livejournal.com]

It really should be/if only it were so simple. For me, it is.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Nice idea but as is evident below, this poll merely papers over the problem of anti-feminsism by presenting a definition of feminism that almost no "liberal" can be seen to disagree with. It's rather like asking "do you believe people are inferior because they are of colour?" :- Well of course not BUT.. ) doesn't solve the problem of how you address actual inequality .. the details of what is *required* to provide "equal pay and equal opportunitiea" are where the rub/disagreement is.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

Just to say, I answered the question andrewducker asked me, but I don't want to get into a debate here because it'll take up my entire day and frustrate me intensely without changing anybody's mind about anything. Didn't want to just ignore everyone though!

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

It's often not used that way in current practice, though. Let me explain what I mean by it. A lot of modern feminists claim that feminism is fundamentally about women, and that men's problems have nothing to do with the movement and should be disregarded entirely. I think, on the other hand, that men's problems and women's problems are of a piece - for instance, men in our society are socialized to be "tough" and "strong" and to hide or deny their feelings. This can lead to a lot of internal confusion in men, which can in turn be dealt with through violent acting out (since anger is the emotion which is most commonly accepted in men). Basically, in a nutshell, I think our society socializes boys and men men in a very disturbing and potentially damaging way, and I see that as both a feminist problem and a general one - a feminist problem because men who take out their confusion and aggression in this way often take it out on women, and a general problem because I don't think anyone should screw with another human being's head the way that boys' and men's heads are sometimes screwed with.

The feminist movement has done a lot of really great work around opening options up to women and helping them to realize their full potential. That's great, but I feel like boys have been left by the wayside in a lot of ways, and that their requests for help are contemptuously dismissed as "whining". In addition, a lot of the problems that women face, men face as well, and that gets ignored. I think you know my feelings on male rape, and how that gets dismissed because "it doesn't happen/can't happen", and even if it does, "men have been raping and abusing women for centuries, they can sit back and take it themselves for awhile." I find that repugnant, but it's what I've heard a lot of feminists say. I see myself as an "egalitarian feminist" because I *do* want full equality - I want both women and men to be free of gender-based stereotyping and socialization, and there are a lot of factions of the women's movement that don't seem interested in going in that direction.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

The thing I would want to add to this definition is "and equal responsibilities"