Thanks for your response, Bekk. I’m sorry, but you said this early on:
“I do not want to be associated with this type of person, and I am more than aware that the vast majority of feminists don’t either.”
And then you go on to give reasons why “feminist” is a bad word and maybe even a useless cause. Being a feminist is none of the things you rail against here, so the solution is not to insist you not be called a feminist, but to be the kind of feminist who gives feminism a good name.
Your entire argument diminishes feminists and works against equality for women when your argument then swings to, “All people should be equal”. That smacks of the white argument against “Black lives matter”. (That ALL lives matter. Well, of course they do, but people of color suffer discrimination far more than white people do. That’s the point of “Black lives matter”.)
Feminism looks at gender inequality the same way — women need support against discrimination. The dictionary definition you post here is the right definition.
Either you respect the work of feminists or you work to paint them in a bad light — which is what you’ve done here. You can’t have it both ways.
By the way, your Emma Watson meme is dishonest, too. She isn’t saying feminists are man-haters, she’s saying feminists are accused of being man-haters. What’s missing from your meme are her last words: “This has to STOP.”
In that same UN speech she said this: “I decided I was a feminist and this seemed uncomplicated to me, but my recent research has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word. Apparently I am among the ranks of women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, anti-men, and unattractive.”
And this: “I was encouraged not to use the word feminism because people felt that it was alienating and separating and the whole idea of the speech was to include as many people as possible,” she told the Evening Standard. “But I thought long and hard and ultimately felt that it was just the right thing to do.”
I suggest you rethink how you feel about that word and work with us to get rid of those images. Millions of us feminists are proud of who we are. We don’t need more sabotaging from the inside.
