Quote:
Originally posted by 33girl
I don't think her response is "weird" at all. If the only women I knew personally who called themselves feminists acted in that manner and insisted they were what feminism was all about, I wouldn't want to call myself one either.
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That's a function of one person's experience with a very small minority of people. My whole point was, why are women so scarred off by this small minority? Whenever there is a political, religious, or philosophical movement there are extremists, people who take it too far, but you don't see massive groups of people abandoning their religions or their political party or their principles just because of those people. I am politically on the left but when I watch kids on the news throwing rocks at the police at a WTO conference I don't go out and change my voter registration to independent. I don't abandon my political beliefs or stop calling myself a democrat because there are people out there in my party who are more extreme then me who I disagree with.
If every woman in america, freaks out because of feminist extremists and abandons the feminist agenda because they don't agree with some of the ideas or people there won't be a feminist agenda in this country and feminist issues will become the providence of a bunch of hairy legged man-haters. You're creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. It's particularly disturbing to me because there are so many things that women still need to accomplish.
If you are disturbed by feminist extremists the best thing you can do is take up the feminist banner and show that it IS something relevant and important to mainstream women. Then it will get the recognition and the power it needs to help the lives of everyday women.