I wouldn't come within 50 feet of someone that calls themselves a feminist.

Feminist to me translates to angry, whiney, bitchy, woman that thinks they are oppressed and disadvantaged nothing could be further from the truth.

Lets see some of the the advantages women have over men:

1. They can score lower on tests and get into schools ahead of men, such as law school and medical school.
2. They can become police officers and firefighters while not even scoring in the same stratosphere as men.
3. They don't have to register for the Selective service.
4. They can join in the military and almost assuredly not see combat.
5. If they get a sucky overseas assignment they can get knocked up and go stateside or be discharged.
6. They can jump from relationship to relationship and get paid by someone in the form of welfare, child support, alimony etc...
7. Even though there are more male highschool dropouts than female there are numerous programs for females to improve themselves academically and none for males.
8. A woman can accuse a man of almost anything and the man is considered guilty until proven innocent.
9. Women get shorter sentences for crimes than men. Known as the female sentencing discount.
10. A woman that commits an unspeakable act is considered to have mental health issues, a man is considered to be a bastard.
11. Women determine if, when and where sex will take place.
12. Although women outlive men, more money is spent on female related health issues.
13. On the job death rate for women is nowhere near men.
14. Women can end a marraige or relationship any time they feel like it for any reason and take a man's children from him.
15..Look around you and see the things that men have manufactured or provided to give you a higher standard of living. Your house, car, computer, phone, air conditioning, furnace, your food, your freedom.

What would you do if you lived in a society where you were such an advantaged citizen like women are in western cultures?

Well of course you would have to bitch to get an even greater advantage.

For feminist special interest groups to survive they must continue extorting funds from the government and other people by beating the same old drum of, I'm oppressed! I'm disadvantaged!

Nothing could be further from the truth!!!

But keep beating that drum!

Among most of the things David M. has said, my biggest bitch about feminists ever is the "women don't get paid the same as men" complaint.

Men don't a) get a job and get knocked up three weeks later, suck up all the maternity leave and quit and b) don't take six years out of the workforce and then bitch because they don't make as much as the women who actually STAYED AND DID THE JOB.

All my life I've heard about all these oppressed women that are beaten down and are unable to speak their minds or reach their full potential because of male oppression. I keep wondering where these women are, because I've never met a woman like this in my whole life.

Feminism is just Marxism in a dress...coupled with the belief that some women are better than the entire rest of the world.

No equality about it! If was about equality, then they would've called it that.

The only good thing I can say about Jessica Valenti, is that she's statistically unlikely to have few, if any, children of her own. We should all encourage her to keep up her fight against "the Patriarchy," so that she never has time to breed.

On the other hand, if someone were to put her on a plane to Saudi Arabia and destroy her passport, that would be okay, too. She might learn what "Patriarchy" really is.

Good job, David.

On another blog posting, I commented how hard it is to find AW who will admit men are being mistreated.

The really strange thing is it is just as hard to get most men to admit men are being mistreated.

Each man imagines he, among all men on the planet, is special and different and it will never happen to him. Thus, everyone else deserves everything that happens to him, and he doesn't care. This with a 40% divorce rate.

In my activist/counseling stage, from time to time some 'man' at work would come up to me, and tell me what a screwed up, pathetic individual I was.

One hundred percent of those men eventually called me up, screaming out their lungs in what I called agony and despair. Guess which simple-minded, conceited, arrogant fool just got his papers? And, if I was so stupid, why did they all call me when they got their papers? Heh, heh.

I wonder if most Muslim women also think all is well? We know many do not, but we cannot generalize from them to all Muslim women.

A good general principle is that if you're whining loudly in a public forum about how oppressed you are, then you're not oppressed. Roman slaves who complained would be crucified, or tossed to the lions in the coliseum. If Idi Amin overheard any Ugandans talking about oppression, he would invite them to the Presidential Palace for dinner to discuss it, and then he'd eat them. You get the idea. So what terrible fate awaits a Western feminist who blames the Patriarchy for everything?

So what terrible fate awaits a Western feminist who blames the Patriarchy for everything?

Probably about as terrible a fate as men who blame feminists for everything.

It's easy to complain this or that about femenists as a guy, because what we have here is a failure to communicate. A guy actually can't know all the things that are part of and influence women. The same way women have no sense of those things in us. There are surely individual differences among us anyway, but I can't change the fact that I have a male perspective on the world. For that reason, enumerating feminist this or feminist that is counter productive. They have their reasons, even if you don't understand them. It doesn't make them right... but re-writing everything that you don't like, is no different then a woman complaining about how much men suck.

We often want contradictory things from each other, as individuals and genders. I saw a funny thing on how women don't like modest men, because they appear weak. All the female commenters said that it was completely untrue, while admitting that they liked 'bad-boys'. Um, yeah? You CLAIM something, but it is action that actually speaks.

So? How does a guy comment forthrightly about feminism? I ask a femme a really basic question: why do you keep giving your power away? There is much blather about "empowerment" but the truth that goes with that is that you have to accept the power and take it. NO-ONE can give it to you, the quarter laying on the sidewalk doesn't magically jump into your pocket. You have to pick it up.

So when we have this that or another special program for women, it astonishes me how many will simply not accept them. So women who are "fighting" for something, continue to do so, because nobody is accepting the gift.

You can't speak truth to power until you open your mouth. You don't get the quarter until you pick it up. Making constant exceptions for women, just because they are women, takes their power away. If a woman makes a decision, it is hers alone, and she has to own it, EVEN IF IT WAS THE WRONG ONE.

In this there is equality. Everyone makes their own mind up, and everyone lives with the consequence.

So when all these special rules are made and changed constantly about what women can do or can't, what is actually being done? Somebody in power is telling women not to worry their pretty lil heads about it, it'll get taken care of. If I was a woman I'd be pissed at that condescension. But I'm not... so I just point it out to femmes, and ask them why they feel OK about giving their power away.

If you want it all, fine, take it. Don't complain to me later that it's too hard, you made the choice. You have to own it.

I have reached the point where even seeing or hearing the word "feminist" makes me recoil in disgust.

Long ago I learned that women who didn't have a full subscription to the official Feminist agenda weren't considered real women by those in the cult. Ditto for Black Americans who dared to be conservatives ... they weren't "really Black" accordingly to the Black Leftists.

And yet this false belief system is propped up minute by minute, day by day throughout much of the MSM so weak minds tend not to question it.

60s and 70s vintage feminism actually served a good purpose by making more people aware of the level of inequality, and forcing a lot of people to at least think about the issues, even if they didn't agree with them.

Unfortunately, 90s & up neo-feminists went off to some other planet. Every week I'm more and more convinced that they are not living in the same dimension as the rest of us.

Last week's discovery was a feminist review of the book "Pride & Prejudice & Zombies", in which the reviewer complained that it was only white male privilege that allowed such books to be written, and that poor Jane Austen had to fight an uphill battle just to be recognized as an author, while Seth Grahme-Smith simply co-opted her work, and nobody put up a fuss. Oh, and BTW, nobody important to the story was a zombie, and he didn't add anything to the characters, either.

And if that weren't bad enough, other reviewers were agreeing and me-tooing. All this for a humorous book?

Oddly, I didn't see a review of the Koran...

Modern day "feminism" is nothing more than a cult of victim-hood. They seek to remove all personal responsibility from the lives of women and the result has been a bunch of narcissistic twits, permanently stuck in a junior high mentality.

"Long ago I learned that women who didn't have a full subscription to the official Feminist agenda weren't considered real women by those in the cult."

This... it's true that the contemporary feminist's disdain for men is exceeded only by her disdain for women who don't toe the ideological line.

At one time I considered myself a "Feminist". I believed we should all be evaluated and valued on the basis of our character and accomplishments rather than gender and conforming to pre-designated sex roll expectations. Do I get a cookie for remembering all those college level buzzwords from 25 years ago?!
As time passed I realized the definition of Feminism was changing; from calls for equality to incessant whining of victimization. This is rather appalling to me. I can not and do not identify with a belief that one group is so voicelessly and universally oppressed in this country simply because of their gender.

Yes, I have been passed over for a promotion in favor of a man. Was it because I am a woman? No, it was because I didn't have the leadership skills or the drive (read as : the ability to scare the hell out of my would-be underlings and interest in working 50% more hours to perform the job. Feminism has become (as the above posting states) a cult of victim-hood, which worships anger and the refusal to accept responsibility for one's own choices.

While I don't immediately wretch in disgust at the mention of feminists I do there is enough negative evidence to apprehensive of them (which probably breaks their hearts because many feminists would really like for champagne to rain from the heavens, velvet ropes, and for the masses to shout in awe inspired praise at the mention of the word feminist).

Just like any other movement there are good ones and bad one.

At one time I considered myself a "Feminist". I believed we should all be evaluated and valued on the basis of our character and accomplishments rather than gender and conforming to pre-designated sex roll expectations. Do I get a cookie for remembering all those college level buzzwords from 25 years ago?!

As time passed I realized the definition of Feminism was changing; from calls for equality to incessant whining of victimization. This is rather appalling to me. I can not and do not identify with a belief that one group is so voicelessly and universally oppressed in this country simply because of their gender.

Yes, I have been passed over for a promotion in favor of a man. Was it because I am a woman? No, it was because I didn't have the leadership skills or the drive (read as: the ability to scare the hell out of my would-be underlings and interest in working 50% more hours to perform the job with a 12% pay raise). My supervisor knew I was not up to it. Was he a patriarchal oppressor as my "Feminist" coworkers and friends labeled him? No, he was a pragmatic businessman who actually had a more realistic understanding of my talents than I did at the time. Was I disappointed and angry? Of course. Did I blame him or the man who got the job? No. I accepted the fact while I was "qualified on paper" I was not a good fit for the job in this particular company. This incident marked my break from the "Feminist" label.

Feminism seems to now be (as the above posting states) a cult of victim-hood, which worships anger and the refusal to accept responsibility for one's own choices. It has ceased being about equality and become for many an excuse for the shortcomings and disappointments life hands to all of us in equal measure.

Please forgive me for previously hitting the submit rather than the preview button.

"60s and 70s vintage feminism actually served a good purpose by making more people aware of the level of inequality"

I thought that once upon a time. But the more you look at the way things were, and WHY things were that way, the less sense feminism EVER MADE.

This is a little TL;DR, but others have posted their teal deer here, so I will too.

A while back, maybe two years ago, there was this big kerfuffle on Live Journal about the word "feminazi." My friend, who was in a very liberal, "feminist" college, and who took the "women's sudies" courses, sort of shook her head and said that instead of being proud of being called a feminazi, most women needed to know that the term "feminazi" was actually more correct than any of us knew. Have I mentioned that she's Jewish, and therefore maybe a little better qualified than the people who were rending garments about the word "nazi?" I asked her to tell me what feminism really is, if it's so tied closely to naziism.

She linked me in an e-mail to a LJ post by a true feminazi. This woman equated all sex to rape because there's no such thing as consensual sex between a man and a woman because society is so patriarchal, there is no equality. (Now imagine someone saying that a white boss with a black underling is automatically a slave driver, because society is so Anglicized that there can never be a respectful working relationship between a black man and a white man.) She went on to lament that she allowed her husband to have sex with (rape) her (and she wrote it just like that), and now she's pregnant with a boy who will grow up to oppress women and want to have sex with (rape) them.

I was...appalled. I mean, yeah, things can always be better, but that was going WAY overboard.

I used to know a woman like this, too, and I found that I had to stop hanging around her. She was so negative (probably still is), and if there was a man within a ten-foot range of us, she would get so upset if he wasn't waiting on us hand and foot. Heck, she tried to get a mutual friend to break up with her boyfriend because at a dinner party that Miss Feminist hosted, he pretty much just sat back and enjoyed himself. (He did a few things, but her kitchen is the size of a postage stamp, no one but the hostess could do anything in there, and Miss Manners will tell you that the hostess should have had everything ready by the time we got there, so I still boggle about that. Come to think of it, that was the night when I stopped hanging out with her.)

So, all that to say that if you support equal rights for all, that is one thing, but it is not feminism. Feminism is frightening and very odd.

I do agree that feminism is a tight little orthodoxy unto itself. A bit like a religion. They talk, write, have beliefs, but few do things or accomplish things. Few are activists.

Most of what they seem to talk about is how others do/do not fit their orthodoxy.

Having said that I don't think Palin or other conservative women are feminist. I don't think a woman is automatically a feminist because she is loud, extroverted or verbally spars with people.

I think Palin and those women enjoy the benefits of what earlier feminists *activists* achieved, without even being aware of those benefits.

One of the nice things about not being in college anymore is that the feminist orthodoxy has no effect on my life.

I merely have to point-n-click to make those people disappear with no effect on my life.

Jan, it is unfortunate that the gender feminists (the ones who want special privileges for women) succeeded in yanking the word "feminist" out from under the people (women and men) before them who did the heavy lifting. But maybe it was time for that word to go anyway. Even before the gender feminists got hold of it, the word "feminist" was already associated with a philosophy that claims that women and men are identical in every way except for the proverbial bits of flesh. That was a popular philosophy back in the '60s, but subsequent research has shown that it isn't so. Men and women differ in ways more significant than that.

We need a new word for a philosophy that supports the concept of equal opportunity, while recognizing that women and men are never going to be equally represented in all areas because of different qualifications and different preferences. The word I'd like would be something like "gender libertarianism", but not so long and academic-sounding.

I abhor this kind of feminism. They have truly given feminism a bad name. If all people are equal then all people should be treated equally, there should only be one set of qualifications for any job. I don't want a female firefighter trying to save my family unless she can pass the same physical as her male counterpart. To actually set different standards based on gender (or race) is not only unjust it perpetuats negative stereotypes of women and minorities - people will say she is only an engineer or executive because they lowered the qualifications. It is not treating people equally, consequently the people who are successful because they work hard and are intelligent get treated as if they only made it because they are female or black.

I don't think that Feminism is about equality any more. That's how it's remembered by many older women, but any longer it's pretty obviously an anti-male ideology.

What I think confuses the term is that it's now used very loosely to describe almost anything related to womens' concerns, from healthcare to employment and family. So changes in family roles will be described as 'feminist', when they're really motivated by more mundane factors. But if you look specifically at Feminism as it's practiced by actual Feminists, it's just a kind of anti-male cult.

Cousin Dave said: "it is unfortunate that the gender feminists (the ones who want special privileges for women) succeeded in yanking the word 'feminist' out from under the people (women and men) before them who did the heavy lifting."

______________________

It may interest some to know that in the 1990s, Miss Manners did an interview for Ms. Magazine in which she said her daughter had gotten the impression that "feminists" means "rude people." Her response was "I am not about to let that word get co-opted." (She's over 70 and remembers the old days of feminism very well - and yes, she calls herself one and has addressed men's grievances in her "Miss Manners Rescues Civilization" book.)

BTW, Amy, how about writing something about ACLU lawyer Wendy Kaminer at some point? She calls herself a feminist too, and yet I'd say you two have plenty in common. Many people mistakenly think she's a conservative, but I met her once and asked her for her opinion of Cathy Young - and she said, in effect, that Young tends to oversimplify matters. On another occasion, she wrote about paternity fraud and how ridiculous it is to cover it up "for the sake of the children." More on that here:

www . prospect.org / cs / articles?article=fathers_in_court

It says 2002, but I think it was actually from 2000.

Last lines: " If the complaints of fathers' rights advocates are well-founded, they're testaments to the failures of feminism, not its successes. Only chauvinists want sex to matter more. Feminists should strive to make it matter less."