I guess I just wanted something to be mad about. I feel strongly about “femin”ism being a horrid word primed for subversion by female chauvinists. Meh.

By the way, this running into one another on an apparently commonly read blog is soo cool.

I think I agree with you, in fact. People are always falling all over themselves to tag statements that could simply be taken at face value and argued on their own merits as -ist (enter the -ism of your choice), and therefore not worhty of being discussed.

On the other hand, some statements have a long history of being “code” for racist beliefs. The Nazis argued that Jews had too much influence, and bandied around that canard as a rationale for exterminating them. They weren’t actually trying to make a valid argument, just using veiled terminology to incite hate. It would be disningenous to ignore the history behind that statement.

“Feminism” is a term that has taken quite a beating, and you may be right that it cannot be rehabilitated, but it does still mean simply that women are as worthy as men and deserving of equal treatment, so if someone says they are against it, I can wonder whether they just misunderstand the term or if they really mean what they are saying.

But, yeah, labels and -isms and jumping to conclusions about someone’s meaning is generally to be avoided. As long as it isn’t to give their bigotry a free pass.

“Jews having too much influence on our culture” could very easily be a perfectly legit opinion (much the same way I feel that Christians have too much influence on our culture) and the framing of this type of comment as a prime example of the veiled racists/sexists, I feel, threatens to teaches the wrong lesson.

“All straight men will say they like women, but if they don’t like feminism, then they don’t respect women or consider them worthy as human beings, whether they realize it or not.”

I wonder if I’m just in a contrarian mood, because this gets my goat as well.

1. Plenty of straight men will up and admit they fucking hate women. (A nit pick, but still… )

2. I’m glad to know you can just declare some word the embodiment of all good and happiness and everyone who opposes such term and its proponents is therefore Satan spawn. I don’t even think I’ve done that with “Anarchism” when I’ve been ready to brawl with asshole socialists.

Honestly. The vast majority of the US doesn’t agree with the flowers-and-equality definition of “Feminism.” (And with many good, man-hating, reasons) You can fight a bitter war to rehabilitate the term, but even if I thought you had a shot in hell of winning, I’d still refuse to use such a fundamentally flawed and sexist word.

How bout I say this: many women may claim to like men, but if they don’t like equalism, then they don’t respect men or consider them worthy as human beings, whether they realize it or not.

What the quote seems to be talking about are veiled statements that attempt to frame bigotry in some semblance of a reasonable form, but the underlying meaning is just: yep, I’m a bigot.

I agree that culture is not the same as race, but to racists and misogynists, that distinction does not occur.

There’s quite a big difference between objecting to a cultural identity and the influence it may have in the greater cultural diaspora and classifying people according to their ‘race’.

Respecting Latino Americans, for example, is not in anyway connected to holding what is referred to as “Latino culture” in high esteem.

I, for example, fucking hate Nazis. But when Nazi-culture was briefly considered equivalent to “German culture” it would have been totally non-racist to say I thought the Germans had too big of an influence on our culture.

I’m not in anyway comparing Jewish culture to Nazi culture or saying German culture currently involves the swastika or something… But the point is one can object to a “people’s” cultural identity without unfairly targeting their genetic identity.

We choose culture, we don’t choose race.

Right. Um. /rant.