9 opinions, 5 replies
Add your opinion:
Preview:
(mouse over or touch to update)
Add your opinion
100
User voted Positive.
4 votes
May 11, 2015

This is feminism in the sense that women and men are equal and can do anything (non-biological) that the other can. This is NOT women need to be treated differently so that they can achieve the exact same as a man. Unfortunately the term "feminism" has changed it's meaning so I'm voting based on the original.

subscribe
::unhide-discussion::
0
User voted Negative.
main reply
0 votes,
Jun 25, 2015

I completely agree with this. More of this type of feminism needs to happen but I believe it should be called equality. Its about men and women being equal and therefore should not be aimed at women by calling it feminism. Today's society is not happy or equal place, from wars to domestic violence and rape, people are being hurt and treated unfairly and it really does need to stop.

subscribe
::unhide-discussion::
0
User voted Positive.
main reply
0 votes,
Nov 3, 2015

Changed its meaning according to whom? I recognize that this is your opinion, but not only do you cite no people who actually HAVE this opinion and no indication that others do not.

Moreover, what is the dividing line? Your accommodation maxim seems unduly limited. Let's say that the military could, relatively easy, give women an alternate combat role that would allow them to meaningfully participate. How would that not serve the cause of gender equality and justice? Without recognizing that others are using approaches like you are suggesting not because it's ideal but because it is a bridging measure toward true equality. Further, let's say that the best female soldier will never be as good, by any metric, as the best male soldier. But let's say most female applicants can meet the minimum criteria. Why would it be just NOT to hire the

And do you believe biology and society have no interlinkages?

subscribe
100
User voted Positive.
3 votes
Jul 27, 2015

[Warning: Wall of text ahead]
[Disclaimer: I am male, feel free to disregard everything i say if you are female. Until the day i can claim a female brain for my own use in the way of thinking, and experience life through a social female's eyes, i simply am not a reliable source of facts about anything regarding women. I can only use common sense to be as less wrong as possible]

Feminism as an idea sounds as good as communism. It's awesome! Everybody gets what they deserve, nobody has to suffer and struggle anymore, and we fix the wrongs and misdeeds some of us made in the past.

However, in truth Feminism perhaps should not be about equality. For the longest time, females have been at all sorts of mercy to the males. As i like to say, though, the fact that you can doesn't means that you do.

The fact that males could and still can say what females are or should be doesn't means that they have always done so. Not every man disregards women's opinion. Not every man treats them as goods, and most certainly not every man believes them to be inferior. But that doesn't mean that they can't, oh no that it does not. If more than a handful of men have ever been able to disregard women's opinion, to treat them as goods and to believe them to be inferior, then men hold a power* over women that women have relinquished and thus do not hold back over men.

[here, and all throughout the text, power is not only control, but also resources. To say a man has more power is not only to say he has more control over women than viceversa, but also to say that it is easier for a man to have opportunities and ways to improve than it is for a woman]

I do not know if women ever held such power. My history lessons fail me and common sense says too many things at once. The fact that men are inevitably born from women should be a point for women, but the all-too-often-stated fact that women bodies are ready to be weaker than men's takes that away. It might be that somewhere along the human timeline, women stopped fighting for power and thus lost it altogether. Men have fought for survival, then control over their peers and finally the path of least effort. Women might have had different fights, they might have them yet. I believe this to be beyond a historical problem but rather a conceptual one. I am not a female, thus, i can not know, only guess with varying degrees of wrongness.

In the end, men and women were born, not the same, but with the same potential. That still holds true, even when society tries to prove it wrong. The mind of a baby female and a baby male are supposed to be equally as capable, and their body is likewise able to grow and do great things. Feminism is, thus, not about trying to raise the potential of women because theirs was lesser than men.

So, what should feminism be about, then? A while ago i said men have had potential power over women for a very long time. Shouldn't feminism then be about women having the same potential over men for an equally long time, for the sake of equality? It makes sense, but it doesn't has to be right at all. After all, who says equality is the end game?

if it is not about retribution, and neither about fixing the damage, what is there left to say about feminism? I'd like to say it is about change. Changing the way the power already defers to males without even a second thought. Changing what hasn't been changed for the longest time, not on a whim, just to grant female and womenkind the very basic right of having their fate on their hands. A fact which i, as a male, can say i have always had. That i, as part of the hivemind that some call malehood, and other call "patriarchy", know for a fact defers to me unchallenged.

And change? Change is good. All change is good. But this change in particular, i believe, goes beyond good and into the realm of necessary. Granted, i am not affected nor benefit from feminism (At least, not directly), but i wouldn't like at all to live in such conditions. Would you?

subscribe
::unhide-discussion::
100
User voted Positive.
main reply
2 votes,
Nov 3, 2015

I disagree wholeheartedly that you are unaffected by feminism.

Injustice affects the perpetrator of injustice and those complicit with it in immeasurable ways.

Moreover, patriarchy sharply limits the range of permissible male expression and undermines our capability to mobilize for ourselves as workers, fathers, Irish men or French men or black men, gay men, etc. Patriarchy is just like whiteness: A constructed identity that offers privileges with severe downsides.

subscribe
::unhide-discussion::
100
User voted Positive.
1 vote,
Dec 2, 2015

Yes, you are right and i now see that i am wrong. As a male, i have been raised into several methods of which some take advantage of the fact that i have more power than females. As such, whether i accept or refuse it, i am a part of the patriarchy (Which doesn't means that i am trying to further its goals, nor that i even accept it as good. All it means is that i am inside a social condition which i can accept, reject or outright rebel against). Being part of the patriarchy also means being part of the very thing feminism is trying to change. As such, it was foolish of me to say that feminism doesn't affects me.

However, you bring up a different point. The idea that i might benefit from feminism.
It is a very weird notion, once you see it from a certain perspective, that a movement that has not been created with you in mind can be beneficial for you. I mean, sure, it helps males be more than what the patriarchy tells them they can be, but given that both "feminism" and "patriarchy" are amorphous conglomerates of ideas and people, respectively centered around females and males, i'm not sure i'm ready to reap any profits feminism might bring to me. If nothing else, i could also reap the profits of taking down the patriarchy from other movements that share that one goal with feminism, like gender equality, LGBT activism, etc.

subscribe
::unhide-discussion::
0
User voted Positive.
0 votes,
Dec 2, 2015

Exactly. Talking about privilege and social systems is never about dismissing the hard work that people have, or saying that their experiences are wrong. It's to point out that others have had different experiences, different challenges, which deserve redress.

I disagree that feminism was ever intended to not include men. From first wave feminism, most prominent feminists have been married, or had kids. Maybe over time that's changed somewhat, but I still think most feminists still want to have all their male friends, their brothers and boyfriends and husbands and fathers and coworkers, doing fine. Of course both "feminism"/"men's rights" and "patriarchy"/"institutional sexism" are big, complicated, often-amorphous institutions, but the reality remains that we'd all be better off if we were less unequal. The first link forged in a chain irrevocably imprisons us all.

Moreover, while "feminism" may focus on patriarchy, feminists have gotten a lot better at being complementary holists and intersectional. Almost every feminist I know is very passionate about white privilege issues, class privilege issues, etc. That's at least as old as Ehrenreich, de Beauvoir, Wollstonecraft and Peggy McIntosh.

subscribe
100
User voted Positive.
1 vote
May 14, 2015

I gave this some thoughts in the past and i think feminism is dead

Why?

Feminism isn't about equality anymore, now it's about trying to get "justice".
In the past, women were looking for equal rights, and now they have achieved that, they can work, they can vote, they can basically do everything that men do (legally). Nowadays feminism is mostly about trying to make women and men exactly the same and that is imposible, we are not the same, we have differences and that's okay because we are different

Said this, i like feminism, but there's no more feminism. Now there is something different that i don't recognize as feminism

subscribe
100
opinion
1 vote
Oct 24, 2015

Uneducated, entitled, ignorant sjws/women who have never gone through true suffering and act oversensitive to everything and think it isn't free speech when their pwecious wiitle feewings get hurt, have made feminism universally perceived as a joke.

subscribe
-1
User voted Positive.
1 vote
Jul 20, 2015

Generally good, except for radical feminists

subscribe
0
User voted Positive.
0 votes
Sep 28, 2015

I am a lifelong feminist.

I see very clearly through all the scholarly literature and my own life how male privilege is real and it is ultimately harmful to men. I believe that an equal society is what we should all strive for. I hope for a masculinity to emerge that lets men do what they please without couching it in terms of domination, violence and power.

subscribe
0
User voted Positive.
0 votes
Nov 3, 2015

Feminism is the most valid, correct perspective for gender equality issues. Its robust philosophical history gives it a basis to continue to inform positive action.

I only embrace approaches that lead to true gender equality and liberty, approaches that recognize the true differences between men and women without making those a locus of ongoing inequality. Despite this, I remain not just a feminist but a radical one, because I want transformation of underlying institutions such as constructs of masculinity and femininity.

subscribe
0
User voted Negative.
0 votes
Jan 3, 2016

The feminist movement is a fifth column.

subscribe
0
0 votes
Mar 8, 2016

A girls who has no love in their hearts, or less attention that they want

subscribe
Add your opinion
Challenge someone to answer this topic:
Invite an OpiWiki user:
OR
Invite your friend via email:
OR
Share it: