Does anyone else agree with feminism?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm pretty much a 3rd waver, but one thing that I hear young feminists talking about lately is the concept of kyriarchy (vs. patriarchy), that being the multi-faceted, many layered system of unearned privilege and dominance that exists in a given culture. In addition to gender, it takes into account race, class, etc.
Young feminists are also talking about something called 'intersectionality,' which is the idea that any one person might experience multiple social defecits and multiple social advantages at the same time (for example, I'm white, heterosexual, and middle class, but I'm also female and non-neurotypical; someone else might be a white, heterosexual male, but also be working-class and under-educated; someone else might be a gay black female with a job as a professor at a large university; someone else might be a straight black woman from a family where no one has ever finished high school. etc).

I think I was initially drawn to the 2nd wave because I don't look like someone who could go on a Slut Walk.

Before people jump on me with, 'what do you think a slut is supposed to look like?', it was self-deprecating joke about my appearance. I look too crap in a corset to be third waver.

I still believe patriarchy precedes other forms of power. The concept of race and class are much more recent things. Patriarchy exists in even the most primitive societies (most of them, but not all of them, are patriarchal). I think it existed even prior to the Neolithic revolution because there are hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon where women are treated like dogs. I'm not a believer in the idea of pre-agricultural matriarchy. Other forms of power do exist (there are no rad fems so deluded to say they don't) - and I do own the fact that I am privileged as a white, First-World person. Just because individual women can be more powerful than individual men does not alter the fact that patriarchy is the oldest and deepest power structure. For this reason, feminism is the most radical philosophy, which is why it pisses so, so many people off.

I'm all for intersectionality, though.

My issue with the whole idea of patriarchy and male privilege is that it trivializes, or even completely denies, the unique challenges men face as men. Most of their points I do agree with (though the idea 1/3 of women are rape victims is ridiculous) but they are selective in the points they bring up. Also I think feminism sometimes mistakes 'rights' for 'duties' or 'responsibilities', for example voting or going into the military, neither of which are wonderful things to do and in the case of the military, men were historically FORCED to fight while women have the 'privilege' if you will of not having to.

The pay gap is a shame but really, is it that big a deal compared to some things? Sure women might make 80% of what a man makes on average, and that sucks, but a Chinese man on average makes multiple times less than an American woman. It wasn't seen as the woman's responsibility to be a breadwinner and the pay gap just reflects the holdover of that mentality.

A lot of people think that the point of feminism is for women to get equal legal rights. So they say: "Well, job's done! Why are there still feminists here, anyway? That seems a bit pointless."

The truth is that feminism is more of a worldview at this point. It is a way of looking at the world and seeing it as a structure built to benefit men. It can be a very enlightening perspective, but so can a lot of other perspectives.