I'm upvoting, but I don't agree with your sentiment. The feminist label has been tainted beyond repair by people who were not worthy of it. Its message would be far better received if offered under a different label.
When I hear the word feminist, I imagine...well...pretty much exactly the picture you attached to your post: A scowling woman with no makeup and thick glasses giving me, and the world, the middle finger. Not that there's anything wrong with being a scowling woman with no makeup giving the world the middle finger, it's just not something that most aspire to.
I think you are talking about something which is perhaps most unambiguously referred to as "radical feminism."
Feminism is a very, very, very, very, very, very common-sense idea. It is the default. If you don't agree with it, the burden of proof is on you to explain why. If you say "I'm a feminist," you haven't said much.
If you say "I'm not a feminist," whoa...
That's pretty sketchy.
You may agree or disagree about the linguistics here, but I'm just laying out the facts as I see them.
I have lots of complaints about all kinds of corners of the English language, but I accept that the English language and semantics in general are a "commons," and not necessarily something that I can just change because I agree or disagree with the way negation works in a particular context.
I disagree with all types of collectivism and the label feminist often is used by this kind of person, who believes simple abstract categories are more important than the complex, concrete individual. Your brand of feminism seems only marginally distant from pure individualism, and for that reason I upvote and comment here.
I can honestly say that I have been fortunate enough to have met and had varying depths of contact with wonderful, geeky women, and I wish there was more, because it makes my search for a good partner all that much more difficult. Feminism often gets muddled up with all kinds of crappy stuff like fascism, misandry, misanthropy in general, and I think that is not what it originally meant.
The earliest feminists were liberals, and notable early anarchists were involved in this, some were socialists, some libertarian, hell, all these labels get confusing as false me-toos get a benefit off riding the achievements of the pioneers, and certainly some very evil people have made much hay out of this movement to destroy the natural tribal and familiar bonds between people, even to promote the idea that humans are an inherently evil species, except for the slimebags promoting this nonsense.
I think it's something a lot of women would aspire to. I regularly go on my balcony and flip double birds to the world just in case anyone is watching.
This is where you went wrong: you imagined what one would look like. STOP. That's the point of the post. Bad stereotypes about feminism hurt their cause just like bad stereotypes about Bitcoiners.
You don't like my glasses? :(
"Imagine" was a poor choice of words on my part. I should have said that I've been "conditioned" to conceive of feminists that way, mainly by feminists themselves The picture you chose reinforces that conditioning (rather than countering it, which was apparently the intended purpose of your essay), so it was an odd choice.
You may recall that the narrative around Bitcoin shifted in 2015 when most everyone stopped hyping "Bitcoin" and instead started hyping the "blockchain". This was because the word "Bitcoin" had become so tainted in the public's mind that we had to change the buzz word to make it more palatable and get past their mental blocks. Feminism needs to do the same thing.
I actually like your glasses fine, they just fit the conditioned stereotype, that's all.
I took the picture specifically for this post. Its a photo of me, I took on my iPad right before posting it. I guess I look like your idea of a stereotypical feminist just in my natural habitat. Pinning my cause, and your assessment of it, to a photo of myself seems trivial. My point still stands. You can do something about your conditioning. See @susanne as a feminist, too. See @florentina as a feminist. We don't all look the same.
I disagree. Hyping "Gender Equality" (or pick whatever term you want) has its place. Hyping feminism has its place (like when speaking about women in tech).
We hype both Bitcoin and the blockchain still. (most news regarding crypto in mainstream media I see are still about Bitcoin, but that's anecdotal).
We can hype both. Here, I wanted to talk about feminism specifically.
Unrelated: I ordered these a couple weeks ago, so maybe I'll look a little more "feminine" for you next time. See?! They have glitter! Like for girls!
" This was because the word "Bitcoin" had become so tainted in the public's mind that we had to change the buzz word to make it more palatable and get past their mental blocks. Feminism needs to do the same thing." So are you, @sean-king suggesting that if the "buzz word" for equality was something other than the word FEMINIST, it would be more easily accepted? And that there is a need to make the word and concept "more palatable" for sad little men who are easily intimidated and put off by women who don't wear makeup and have the gall to wear glasses that were not chosen with a man's precious point of view? Thank Goddess for men like Prime Minister Trudeau, actor Mark Ruffalo, young Joseph Gordon Levitt and many, many other men who call themselves feminists. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/23/joseph-gordon-levitt-feminism-video-hitrecord_n_5868608.html
I would have agreed with you not so long ago but I have been looking into the movement for a while now and all is not as it seems. I had a dark and divisive history. You can throw that dictionary definition out of the window, actions speak louder than words. If anybody is interested in what the movement is trying to achieve and how it goes about trying to achieve it have a look at amongst others https://www.youtube.com/user/girlwriteswhat or https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVRQqUgDRBevsDGOeE1DL3A (Feminism LOL), these ladies will shock you
She is not a scowling woman with no makeup, she is an articulate, accomplished individual who was intelligent enough to study at MIT. That is sure as hell something to aspire to.
What does makeup have to do with it?
@soulsistashakti are you asking me or the guy who brought makeup into it?
If it's me, I don't think makeup should have anything to do with it. Instead of focusing on her words, he went straight for her appearance--which blows my mind.
I am a woman who works as an environmental attorney. While I enjoy makeup, I often skip it because I am busy doing other things. Let's hope it is not secretly being held against me.
lol. I know it's not being held against me I'm a recording artist in dance music. Let's just hope being a feminist isn't being held against me. :)
You shouldn't upvote
Who the fuck is she to shame other women into not saying their are not feminists
Alright, so upvote him then. That's how steemit works... :)