Ratarsed, you have got it wrong. I most certainly do accept criticism against (some) feminists - it is a word I never use to describe myself largely because it encompasses many different viewpoints. There are some people who post as feminists on these boards whose views I totally reject.
It is just that the people you describe as feminists are not feminists in my book, and if they desribe themselves as such they have some funny ideas about the woman's movement!
Absolutely! But if they call themselves 'feminists', if they claim to post 'feminist' ideals, if they throw tantrums at my opposition to what they call 'patriarchy' on grounds that I am being hostile to 'feminists', if they are what people generally think of when 'feminist' is mentioned, who am I to say they are
not feminists? I did in fact start from that position, that what was representing itself as 'feminist' was a reaction
against a 'true feminism'. I still take that view but I've adopted their own terminology of '3rd wave' and '2nd wave' 'feminism'.
It's the old 'Communist' and 'Christian' argument: "It wasn't
Communists who murdered millions, it was
Stalin and
Mao betraying Communism; it wasn't
Christians massacring and torturing, it was
Churches betraying Christianity". Maybe true enough compared to some Platonic ideal, but we have never seen this Platonic ideal. Meanwhile we
do see their history and their demands and the abuses that continue in their name. So do we follow their propaganda and pretend that every criticism of their
actuality condemns
ideals quite opposite to that
actuality?
I have links to 'feminist' sites to see how they totally oppose these
sub-BBC Feminists but what is the point of arguing terminology with people who slither past linkage to any specific view so that they can condemn and can name anything they like in the name of 'feminism', with responses like
'Feminism is a broad church',
'Feminism believes in equality of the sexes'? They might as well say
'Feminism is a Good Thing'. I wish I had bookmarked (and probably have but I use some six browsers on two systems as three different users and they don't all talk to each other) a 'feminist' blog that starts of
"Feminism is for ... " and continues with a list of just about every person conceivable. Well big deal: all that says is that 'feminism' is anything at all that anybody wants to say it is. Therefore it is no-thing, nothing, has no meaning because it has every meaning.
I'll certainly agree with your last point. The truth is that one male can fertilise an awful lot of females, so males are expendable. I'd say the whole of civilisation developed from the need to protect vulnerable infants and nursing mothers. As savages have always said, civilisation is a feminine project.
I do not buy your point about
protecting his genes. He does not know whether he is the father or not. Today there seems to be no society unaware of a connection between sex and birth, though human reproductivity is so low that it is not obvious, and some (leastwise in the 1930s) had some very odd ideas. Much more obviously, the female has a drive to reproduce that
includes sexual desire more than necessarily resulting from it. So she is more selective about her choice. I wouldn't say her reproductive drive is 'as strong as' the man's at all, I'd see it as much stronger.
Therefore, abortion is interference in a natural female activity. I would think of it as the
only real difference between the sexes and their abilities: I'm a great believer in cultural behaviour as
Nurture over Nature. There are occasions when this interference is desirable, but also occasions when we have to ask whether it is being done to fit the woman to a society that feminists all seem to agree on calling 'patriarchy' because that society refuses to value this female ability on a par with the money-making activities traditionally undertaken by men
because they lack this ability, or to change its organisation to support it.
Yesterday, some woman was decrying 'inequality' that of executives, some half of men have children but only 10% of women. That misses the point: those men do not
have children, their wife does. The inequality lies in the job taking precedence over the domestic life it is supposed to provide for. It is far easier for men to give this domestic life up than it is for women. The equality is not for women to have to give it up too, to be like men, it is for the job demand to let men regain their humanity and be like women.
"The Sabbath exists for Man, not Man for the Sabbath" - Institutions are created by people for people, not imposed rigidly by an implacable deity.
It is very easy to go from allowing women the freedom to get rid of an awkward pregnancy to then making all pregnancies
awkward by saying there is no need for child support or any other services - if she can't afford it, can get a man to provide or get rid of it and get to work. We have already seen
allowing women to work the same as men has become
requirement to work as hard as men, not more freedom for men to be in the home because an increased work force means less demand on all.
I have also seen the spluttering hostility of these
feminists to any suggestion that men should value and participate in women's traditional domestic activities regardless of the number of women who downright
expect equality in the home as much as men
expect their wife to have a job.