The Liberal Avenger
Zuzu tagged me with this, and I don’t usually do memes, but then again people don’t usually tag me with them. So, here goes:
1) Feminism doesn’t have to do anything for me.
Yeah, it’s a semi-copout answer, but it’s my semi-copout answer, and how dare you try to take it away from me? The fact is, I’m a white male who grew up fairly comfortably (my relative comfort now is a different story) in the United States. The closest claim I have to oppression is as a Quaker, and the last time we were really seriously oppressed was about four hundred years ago*.
I’m about to list four things that I, Auguste, white male American, can thank feminism for, but I thought I’d point out that feminism’s only real responsibility to me is not to actively harm me**.
That said:
2) Feminism had a hand in putting me in the family I’m in.
I’m adopted, and so is my younger sister. However, my parents were not infertile, as far as anyone knows. No, they were adopting because - especially what with this being the 1970s - they believed in zero population growth (if not Zero Population Growth) and were doing their part to minimize their impact on the world, as well as the impact of my dad’s five-child-having sister.
From what I know, and from what people have told me, feminism is so intertwined with the idea of zero population growth - not least due to the family-planning advocacy that would not exist without feminists - there’s almost no way to avoid the conclusion that feminism helped put me with a fantastic family that I celebrate every day.
And even more to the point:
3) Feminism is a part of making me who I am.
I haven’t always been a feminist-ally. I haven’t ever, to my knowledge, been a feminist-enemy, but it wasn’t until later in life that I realized that almost the entire framework of my opinions and attitudes about women - from simply understanding their agency to working alongside them to the dynamics of my domestic situation - the entire framework would quite simply not have been possible without feminism.
The danger in saying this is that someone will break out the argument that “well, yeah, that’s why feminism was good back then; what’s the need for it now?” People who seriously make this argument, though, almost always fall into one of two camps: people who aren’t paying attention, and people who aren’t being honest.
It takes only a week’s attention to a blog like Feministe, Pandagon, Feministing, or Ilyka Damen (to name only the feminist blogs I spend the most time reading; there’s a ridiculous amount more obviously), read with an open mind, to see the myriad ways in which the patriarchy is still denying or attempting to deny the most basic of rights to women. It’s not just choice rights, either. Birth control. Work equality - it seems like every day another right-wing woman writes an article about how women who go to work are terrible people (articles for which they are usually being paid handsomely). Sexual and social determination. It’s all under attack, and it’s all rooted in the idea - held by many, many more people than I ever imagined - that women’s agency is at the behest of men.
So, thanks to historical, basic feminism, I as a man have the framework - “sure they can vote, sure they can work, sure they aren’t chattel” - to accept and relish the fact that there’s still work to do - “they can make choices about their lives and their bodies that aren’t up to me anymore than my choice about my life and my body is up to them.” Am I always perfect? Super fuck no. But without feminism, I wouldn’t even be trying.
Still,
4) Feminism has taught me that feminists aren’t always right.
But, more importantly, that they’re not even claiming to be. To look at it another way, who else do you know that expresses an opinion and is greeted by the kind and degree of attacks that feminists are? Obviously, the political realm is full of all kinds of invective and attacks and vitriol. I, for example, think that David Horowitz is a fascist douchebag*** from hell.
But the fact is that it’s basically only feminism (barring, of course, many instances where racially-motivated organizations have come under fire) that gets that extra little something, that “why do you even think you have the right to exist” that one sees everywhere one goes - from the right to the left and back again. “Feminists are greedy.” “Feminists are ugly.” “Feminists are all lesbian man-haters.” A feminist has to wade through an extra layer of bullshit even to get to a point where someone’s addressing their actual argument.
Most of the feminists I know don’t think they’re any more infallible than any other political writer/activist/whatever. But they’ve gotten that reputation, and even female members of my own family, who I would describe as de facto feminists, run and hide when that label is brandished, even by me.
Female Family Member: I hate it when men think that once they poke it, they own it.
Me: Feminist! (By this time, it’s a running joke; no more explanation is needed.)
Female Family Member: No I’m not! Feminists totally hate sex!
Me: Are you kidding? C’mon,
5) Dude, those sex-positive feminists are totally easy.
Ba-dum chik.
The worst part of a meme, though, is that by the time it gets around to me, there’s usually not anyone left who hasn’t written on it, at least not five different people I know who would be willing and able to write on this topic. Please feel free to add things in the comments that feminism has done for you.
A warning, though: feminists may not always be right, but they and feminism will be respected on this thread. You can disagree, but you can’t denigrate.
Thanks.
* Yes, Professor M, I remember from Quaker History that it was more like 200 years ago, but the joke was funnier this way.
** And no, the retraction of unfairly given privilege does not constitute harm.
*** Douchebag: Agreed on by many feminists as an acceptable insult, given that a douche is an evil tool of the patriarchy in the first place.
