Why Feminism is Flawed

Not all feminists hate porn, not all feminists hate men, not all feminists "fill in the blank" I feel sad for those who live in a world where things are only black and white and everyone can be pigeonholed up nicely. I guess it is easier to hate feminists if you tell yourself that we are all exactly the same.

 

It's funny that people on here seem to hate feminism and anyone who believes in it because they are under the impression that we all hate men and want to castrate them, but you are doing the same fucking thing by believing that all feminists are man-haters.

 

how about everyone stops bitchin and realizes no body is more superior to anyone else under any circumstances. equality.

 

It would be interesting to know your age so we could have a perspective on the background from which you're drawing your observations. In my lifetime I've seen a lot. Historically there's more.

Women didn't even have the right to vote until 1920. While that's a bit before the 70 year timeframe you reference, it does demonstrate that women's rights of any kind are recent developments. Up until the 1970's, women were largely relegated to being homemakers and mothers. The "traditional" woman graduated high school, got married, made babies, and that was her existence. The Rolling Stones’ song, "Mother's Little Helper," examined the boredom of women’s daily existence and the need for prescription Valium to treat depression in women who lived such lives. That's not to say there wasn't/isn't something noble in being a good wife and mother. It's just that until the 1970's, women really didn't have the option of having careers. Prior to the 1970’s motivated women were largely ridiculed for having career aspirations.

In the 1970's, the Women's Liberation Movement began. This was an effort to cast aside the traditional stereotypes that women were frail beings who had no place in the male dominated workforce. The feminists of this period were labeled as "bitches" because they were creating waves in male dominated society. Gloria Steinem, Billy Jean King, and others were ridiculed for challenging the archaic, but accepted values of the time. It's an ongoing struggle, but there have been major advances by women in the area of professional equality. For example, I'm a chemical engineer. In the 1980's, maybe 10% of a college class was female. These days it's upwards of 50%. During my internships, female students were largely humored because no one seriously thought they'd become contributing members of the workforce. Today, women make up a large percentage of the chemical engineering workforce including process engineers, project engineers, environmental engineers, and other sub-disciplines. That said, I question your contention that nothing of note has transpired in the feminist movement in the past 70 years.

 

The only flaw I see in feminism is the same flaw I see in any other "ism": It's a human movement. That makes it fallible just like anything else we come up with. I'm glad that feminism exists.

 

i think it's just another label women put on themsleves to feel validated. i don't believe in equality because it doesn't exist. you are as different from i, as i am from you. who wants to be a carbon copy of someone else?

aside from more educational and job opportunities, i really can't think of anything feminism has accomplished in modern times. except for a thriving movement of emasculating males (metrosexuality) and not just trying to remove the inherent importance of gender. but trying to remove the idea of gender period, out of the silly idea that gender inherently keeps the female sex down. and it's especially noteworthy that as feminism gained more strength in the sixties and seventies, it shifted from males in general being the oppresors, to white males being the oppresors. in those two decades feminism not only got more openly sexist itself, but also got more outwardly racist too. two of the very things feminism is supposedly against. i can't stand this anti western thinking, it's ushering in the cultural and moral decay of europe and america.

i can tell you what else feminism has ushered in. it has ushered in a careless attitude amongst young females that careers and self serving ideas are more important than family structure is. this has lead directly to an increase in promuscuity and abortion. i believe henry makow is on to something, when he elaborates on how feminism is another belief structure designed to destabilise society and destroy family. one can read how more young women who are college aged and educated are turning on to pornogrpahy. why is this? that a movement that has rallied against women being viewed as sex objects? can now fall into the clutches of these same seprents they once spoke out against?

feminism really isn't that subversive when one considers that gloria steinem used to be a CIA employe and also dated establishment figurehead and war monger henry kissinger. something about feminism does not pass the smell test

 

You're right about this: not everyone who identifies themselves as a feminist embodies these qualities. The main question I have is, when these qualities seem so prevalent in the movement, why anyone who doesn't embody them would want to identify themselves with that movement. I believe in equality of the sexes, but I'd certainly never class myself as a feminist. That's partially because I see it as a misnomer, being that it's called feminism when it's supposed to be about equality. Either way, I would avoid the label.

 

Ohhhh!!!!

I'm very stoned but that was some awesome rhetoric.

 

No - parts of masculinity and femininity are social. Other parts are biological, and some may argue they are also qualities left over from evolution. The impulses to act in certain ways, to some extent, are biological. Why else do gay men often act more feminine and lesbians often act more masculine while bis find themselves most often somewhere in between? (proof homosexuality is a biological difference) For instance, men are a little bit more likely to act like jerks, women are more likely to act crazy (http://www.rd.com/living-healthy/differences-between-men-and-women/article75557.html).

Supreme court justices are picked by the President This argument is only as strong as your presidnet argument was.
And you said yourself:

Really, now?
I disagree with those numbers.

White men. And how are the white women being degraded? =S
They are the one insulting the white male..

True. We can agree these are not valid argument because there is too much room for error in the unreported instances =)

 

people have gotten into the very bad habit of thinking belief in one thing means you must believe all the things that stereotypically go with it. like i say "legalize marijuana, it's stupid it's illegal" and i get some guy yelling about "stupid stoners like you being the at the center of the destruction of human society with your hyper liberalness." or i'll say, "i'm fiscally conservative, i prefer things to be well thought out and financially sensible" and i get some idiot crying about me about being a "baby killer and racist/classist fundamentalist christian nazi" or whatnot. it's intellectual laziness.

 

why is it flawed? it tries to empower woman

 

I can see how men may beleive that feminism is obsolete and it isn't until you witness yourself the discrimination many women face in the workplace and everyday in common situations that standing up for our rights as women is completly necessary. Not only are feminists fighting for their rights but also to protect the rights they've already won and assure that oppression never happens again. Their are women in other countries that are unable to leave their homes without a man, who are stoned to death for casualities that are commonly ignored if done by a male. Having to drape themselves from head to toe with fabric and being taught that their bodies are to always be hidden. Women who are being paid less then men, women who are told they are devious and sluts for having more then one sexual partner. While a man simply does so and becomes the 'alpha male' type. The hero in his group for nailing 10 chicks in a week.

 

Exactly KC! You totally nailed what I was going for. One word can't define everything a person believes in and it's just stupid to feel that it does or can.

 

I agree, feminism is a righteous and totally necessary movement.

 

oh, just a thought. someone blamed metrosexualism on feminism, which is simply incorrect. men have been flashy fashion victims throughout time ever since they realized women like pretty things and don't wanna be raped. the unadorned american male was a holdover from puritanism, lack of money, practicality, a desire not to look like european aristocracy which wasn't very popular here and eventually it was simply fashion.

after all, high heels were invented for men.

 

For riding purposes.

You are pretty much correct, however. Fashion has flipped back and forth throughout time, with men being the more dressed up quite often. Whether this actually correlates with which sex was better in the social world is anyone's guess.
You got me there =)

 

not just riding. for being short, too.

 

you're silly

 

hehe... my boyfriend would probably like it if high heels came into fashion for guys then.

 

Woah really?! I had no idea. This is an interesting bit of trivia. I just can't imagine myself in stilettos though.