I know this letter will be lost in a sea of words, from the Rebecca Traister Pom Pom Squad (tm) hollerin' about Duke and Dad's rights and the thinly veiled catrastration agenda of NOW to the angry grrls who get all of their feminism from blogs, and proudly believe in whatever the loudest Down With Patriarchy pundit believes without question. This participatory media trend is certainly amusing for a voracious reader and armchair sociologist such as myself, and I tip my tea cup to all of you for providing me hours and hours of coffee break entertainment

Feminism has been of great interest to me recently, or at least the myriad definitions, insinuations, assumptions and "camps" that seem to have popped up since I worked for Planned Parenthood or campaigned for female politicians in college. I've learned that I was part of some sort of new wave of feminism, and that I've come and gone.

This, of course, came as a bit of a shock.

Being a rational sort, maybe not as educated/enlightened as some of my sisters on the coasts, I think we've all gotten kind of off track. It's much easier, in these days of fighting to be seen in the endless internet, to cut down an opposing idea with a snarky verbal eyeroll than to really look at what the opposition is saying.

Ms. Traister and Ms. Roiphe both are from my generation, and frankly I admire both of them for their passion and position to speak their minds. I think they are probably more similar, at the core, than either would admit, but I suppose that may be part of my beef. When I read these aricles/blog entries/books, here in my fairly modest home in the middle of America's heartland, what strikes me over and over again is how bloody different all these women's lives are from mine; and how more extreme voices such as theirs are shaping an entire country's worth of feminism. The majority of women in the US are a lot more like me than like these women that are increasingly becoming our voice.

I'm here to speak up for the Everywoman Feminist. Those of us that are more worried about how we're going to afford gas for our crappy cars and put money away so we don't starve when we're old than whether or not someone who believes something different than we do said so publicly. Those of us who believe not all men are responsible for the actions of a few assholes, and should be innocent until proven guilty of assholery. Women who know men and women lie, cheat, hurt, love, create and enrich equally, and equality requires us to be responisible for our own behavior, no matter our gender, race, religion, IQ, political party, sexual preference, net worth or other way we've managed to sort and categorize ourselves over the years. The practical realists among us who are ever so fully entrenched in the real world.

Our first order of business, as a newly formed branch of feminism, is to call for a moratorium on any woman judging any other woman for her choices, as long as they're legal and don't hurt anyone. Picking on each other for being homemakers or strippers or executives or socialites isn't helping anything, is it? What empowers me isn't going to empower you. That's the great thing about women, we're all remarkably different from each other.

Our second order of business is to stop holding a grudge against men just because they're men. We're blessed with a generation of menfolk who were raised by smart, independent women. While I can't speak for all men, I'm surrounded by guys who chip in on housework, cook like master chefs and support the women in their lives like champs. They deserve a lot of credit, and they don't get it.

Now that we're all getting along, our third order of business is to stop using gender as an excuse for any behavior, in any circumstance. If anything, we're flawed simply because we're human, gender - and a multitude of other pre-mentioned categories - has nothing to do with any of it.

Our movement isn't going to burn our bras, or get cute t-shirts or anything. We're going to keep going to work and cooking dinner and balancing the checkbook and reading Salon, but we're going to do it knowing we've stopped wasting all of our extra energy on outrage! over silly stuff.

Well, lots of good points all over, in fact.

I agree, women as well as every other social group have a long history of being unfairly judged or discriminated against based on whatever it is that seperated them from whomever was doing the discriminating. It's appalling how human beings treat each other.

I also agree that being aware of discrimination is key to changing anything, and ignoring very real problems related to the deplorable way humans treat each other is as bad as inflicting said deplorable treatment yourself. BUT I'm also aware enough to notice that these very real issues of humans behaving badly are often lost in a sea of sensationalistic and downright imaginary polemic, to use the word of the day.

Hee, someone called out my previous post as Fembotulism, that was pretty funny, dude, I snorted. I don't think our positions are as far off as you think. My post was pretty respectful to men in general, and for the record I do know a little bit about cars, power tools and drywall. I totally agree that I should share those responsibilities with my husband if I expect him to share the housekeeping chores with me. Equal is equal across the board, right?

It all boils down to things being fair, IMHO, and accepting our own responsibility in making that fairness happen, instead of throwing around useless barbs and coloring huge groups of people with the same crayon.