Wow, some very good replies here and a good post! Thanks Kiwi.
Unfortunately, there are some guys that still believe that feminists are hypocrites.
In the philosophy forum, under the homosexuality thread a guy said this:
Quote:
Yeah, like how Chechen terrorists are representative of all Muslims.
Feminists aren't just women, they're walking contradictions.
"Hey women should be treated equally to men, but all men are bastards"
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http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...27#post1456027
Now, i'm not posting this so we can all flood the forum and bitch at him, and i'm not suggesting that we do either.
I'm just giving you a basis for a point of view that we can discuss. I think that a lot of men view feminism as the notorious "man-hating" phenomenon because there have been a lot of people in the media that refer to feminists this way and use the word femmenazi's, etc. I simply think it's not true and that you can't just paint one picture of feminism because all feminists are different.
Maleficent says she's a feminist, yet still wants to be treated like a lady. So this doesn't support xxSquirtxx's obviously personal rant about feminists who don't want the door being held for them, etc. Not all feminists are the same and, as such, have different views amongst themselves. Feminism is "the belief in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes". This is the one definition that unites feminists, but they can have different views around these things as well and that's fine. What is equality? For some, it may mean having equal rights in the military but for others, it's more loosely based on have equal rights as *people*.
I like Shannon's response. "i think feminism is about shedding our labels".
But most importantly, I think feminism is about shedding our *gender roles*. It's not about what women can or can't do. We have to remember that gender roles and sexuality are different things. Gender roles don't MAKE you a specific gender... In our society, "boy" or "girl" isn't as black and white as what genitals are assigned to you anymore. "Boy" and "girl" includes the gender role systems we, as a society, have created for each other. It's not enough anymore to BE a girl, we have to act like one. How does/should a man act? How does/should a woman act? These things are taught to us all our lives and are carried into adulthood.
I think what feminism tries to do is break down the gender role systems so that we can be treated like people. And so that we can be treated as humans and not commodities. I think there are some similar struggles here with homosexual/transgendered rights as well. It is all an attempt to break down the gender roles.