Letters to the Editor
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Robert Franklin
I'm sure you understand that your friends and acquaintances don't make up a significant portion of feminism or even a representative sample. That's why it's necessary to actually read some feminist literature to find out what feminism is all about.
So if I am a feminist who does not fit your stereotype of feminist then I'm ... not really a feminist???? And I'd know that if I'd read enough????
Okay, that's a new one. I'll give you that.
You know, there was a lot of stuff written in the 60s and 70s on the left right and center. It is one tiny fraction of an intellectual tradition that goes back to the 18th century and has different shades and flavors all over the world.
I find it intriguing that theoretical nonsense from the 70s is well remembered ... but 70s-era initiatives to get deadbeat dads to be responsible for their children have fallen down the memory hole.
Do you know what one of the biggest feminist achievement of the 20th century was?
Dress reform.
It was once a radical, man-hating, anti-family initiative to get women out of painful, health-destroying corsets and smothering petticoats and into loose skirts and trousers. These clothes were dangerous, they made working really hard, especially outside the home. That's why Victorian women got no exercise and carried smelling salts.
Not even the vote so profoundly affected the life and well-being of women on a day to day basis. And today even the most radical, woman-hating anti-feminists have no interest at all in reversing dress reform.