Letters to the Editor
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Anonymous
In an ideal world, you'd be right. In this world, I'm right.
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if men are going to hold women resonsible for being hypervigilant men can't reasonably complain
when women treat them "hypervigilantly"
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But men, for the most part, do not have to worry that if they go to a sorority house and drink too much, they will wind up getting sexually attacked.
I spent years worrying myself about it and it did me no damm good at all.
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Aaron:
Of course equality is not an idea that is owned by Feminism, but if gender equality still doesn't exist, feminism still has to.
Feminism wouldn't have to address the patriarchy we didn't still have one.
If the NAACP ever reached the point where they felt that Colored People had adequately Advanced, they could disband.
I can understand that men feel attacked by feminism at times, but men often ARE the sole beneficiaries of benefits that rightfully belong to both genders.
Gender dynamics will, as you say, always be more complex than any political platform can address. But I wish men could stop feeling blamed by feminism and start understanding that as long as no one is legislating YOUR medical procedures, there is still gender disparity in our laws and in our expectations of fairness & liberty.
And the "feminists" are still the only group devoted to correcting this problem.
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But men, for the most part, do not have to worry that if they go to a sorority house and drink too much, they will wind up getting sexually attacked.
Neither do fat chix and uggos.
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Consent
The bottom line is that she didn't say "no." Friedman calls it rape because she was drunk.
Cordelia, he forced himself on her. That's the problem.
The bottom line is that when a man forces himself on a woman, it doesn't matter if she says "no." What matters is that she didn't give enthusiastic consent. One doesn't avoid becoming a rapist by waiting until someone is too drunk to say "no," one avoids becoming a rapist by making sure that one's partner is enthusiastically involved and consenting. --roymac
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the problem is there is no rational definition of equality
since men and women aren't the same equality can't mean be treated the same as in all circumstances (and NO ONE really wants that, whatever they may say) what it means is be treated as "morally" equal i.e fairly but there is no agreement on what that means. What it means in practice is that anything that appears to give women more power or a change in circumstance that most women would like is good and since all that is being asked for is "equality" anyone who questions anything can only be attempting to cling to their patriatchial privilige.
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one avoids becoming a rapist by making sure that one's partner is enthusiastically involved
by that defintion 90+ percent of married sex would be rape, probably 90+ percent of sex period.
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Full Frontal Femifisting!
Same old anti-male, anti-fact, illogical feminist shite.
Where to begin?
If a man points out feminism's essential hypocrisy, he's dismissed as "angry." Meanwhile Traister-like screeds are always deemed "energetic" and "scrappy." The message? Men have not legitimate grievances, especially not against feminism.
Rebecca asks: "Do you think it's fair that a guy will make more money doing the same job as you?"
Actually, women make less because they DON'T do the same jobs. Nor do they work over-time, for as many hours, or as many uninterrupted years. Women don't scramble to become cross-country truckers, test pilots, demolition experts, road builders or high-iron workers.
More ms-communication: "Does it piss you off and scare you when you find out about your friends getting raped?"
She doesn't, of course, ask women if they are angry or upset when males get mugged. Rape is one of the rarest, most lied about crimes. It's also the only one where the accuser is protected while the accused is attacked. Men are also its biggest victims, many males being raped in prison. That's deemed okay because, well, incarcerated women aren't raped as regularly, even by members of the opposite sex.
Another gem: "Do you ever feel like shit about your body?"
Men worry about expanding guts, balding heads, aging faces, etc. But because men are socialized (often by women!) to not talk about such things, feminists assume silence means no male problems. So much for females being more empathic.
Repackaging more tripe, Traister asks: "Do you ever feel like something is wrong with you because you don't fit into this bizarre ideal of what girls are supposed to be like?"
As if boys (drugged in class and committing more suicides) don't have equal issues!
This repackaged Faludi-in-Wolf's clothing continues: "On the top of my list is violence against women, and how almost expected it is that we're still having conversations about whether it's OK to rape someone because they're drunk."
MEN are the biggest victims of violence. Of course, selfish and sexist feminists focus only on women, lying in the process. Rebecca assumes men routinely rape drunk women. She never notes that women CHOOSE to get drunk and/or that subsequent sex is a muddled mess (the male often being drunk, too). How about telling women to stop getting hammered? How about saying drunken men are legally exempt from punishment, too?
As for equal reproductive rights, feminists fight that. They want choice for women, obligation for men.
Per feminism and "backlash"...the latter is merely the understandable reaction to being perpetually slapped by feminists who like to dish it out, but can't take it.
She asks, "how can I make a blanket judgment about all young women who do something? I also don't know that this boob-flashing thing is as pervasive as everyone thinks it is." Right. Showing tits is "savvy," while men looking at them is sexist. And while boob-flashing is deemed not pervasive, rape is everywhere.
Traister protests the "general idea...that women are children" yet wants the government or other Big Daddy to protect them and punish men. She wants women to act like bosses' daughters at company picnics, always getting home-runs while barely being able to hold the bat.
She learned about "rape schedules" in Women's Studies. Such programs teach the fear of men. Instead of compulsively wiping doors with germ-killers, modern girly-girls dread encounters with half the world. It's like they were taught in science fiction classes that Martians will invade at any moment.
Nothing new here. It's the same old anti-life, anti-intellectual, anti-male claptrap recycled from bitter, aged, lonely crones who couldn't get dates 40 years ago.
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Intersectionality
your favored commenters like Donna Darko and Ginmar
I'm not favored. I just comment a lot. :) Ginmar doesn't post at Feministing.
Trina Trent, there have been many individuals in the second and third wave who weren't classist and racist but overall feminism in the US has been very classist and racist. It's hard to see these things when if you're white. It's not just who shows up at meetings. They have to be inclusive in practice and theory to retain nonwhite women.