Is the constant misinterpretation of Feminism ignorance or wilful misunderstanding?

True goodboy.

I guess it was automatic because people who I have heard make that sort of scathing comment have been male. You are right though it could have been a woman.

zzzz I see.

Seven - why have you assumed that the colleague is male?

zzzzz not zazzle autocorrect sorry

Interesting zazzle

Her colleague looked at a book title and said "oh gawd, you're not going all feminist on us are you messy?". He wasn't disagreeing with anything she had said at all.

So how does that fit in with your response? I'm not sure I get where you're coming from.

I think that the main problem with feminism now (yes, I'm a guy) is that it has got very close to males in terms of equal rights. That said, I'm in Norway which is one of the best countries in the world for it. So rather than being feminism I think it's more about equal opportunities, and that these will benefit both sexes. An example:

I know female colleagues who have been on maternity leave and have got bigger salary increases than males who have worked the whole year. I guess it's a question of is it fair? I certainly don't want females to lose out on having babies, but it is somewhat strange when a company is paying more for a years less experience? To balance this, I think if guys had mostly similar rights to paternity leave it would mean this isn't an issue, as both would lose the same amount of experience. The same goes for looking after kids in a divorce, default always tends to be the female being the carer. So females could be benefited by giving guys more rights in regards to salary. Obviously time for the mum's body to heal should be considered in paternity leave though.

I guess where guys can get frustrated with it is in situations like a few below.

• Highlighting the stupid amount of photoshopping for girls in magazines. Often this seems to be blamed on guys, and yet often guys aren't the target audience/ ones doing it. For example gossip magazines and so on - guys don't care if so and so got a bit fatter/ slimmer etc etc. Also we have similar pressure put on us too - needing a 6 pack, "have" to work out all the time etc. So for us it's got nothing to do with sex and everything to do with making money, despite it often being used as a feminist issue.

• Girl's nights. A shop in the area arranged a "guys" night recently. Previously it has had "girls" nights. Yet for the guy one a few girls were complaining about it being sexist, yet no one (guy or girl) had complained about the girl ones. Technically it is sexist, but then a lot of girls themselves have girlie nights with wine etc. So a lot of guys feel they can't do anything that highlights it as being a "guy" thing, but that females can.

However, there are many parts of the world that really need feminism to balance out massive inequality, I don't think many (normal) guys would complain about that at all. I think it comes down to guys thinking most of the issues in the west are more related to consumerism etc, rather than being a female only issue. And that girls can celebrate being girls a lot more than guys can celebrate being guys (at least in an official way). There are a lot of stupid guys who are sexist though, but that goes for both sexes. So yes, there is also willful misunderstanding from both "sides".

A mixture I think. It is very much in the interests of the dominant group (men) to belittle and besmirch any movement that threatens their dominance. Men have done a very successful job of letting women know that they are not interested in addressing their own privilege by using that same privilege to silence feminism.
Also, women reject feminism as it is too scary and mind-bending to think the people who claimed to love and protect them have been benefitting in various ways from their oppression. It's easier to reject it and say it's "gone too far" than to accept that sexism is everywhere.
Feminism also rejects the restrictions and requirements placed on women in the pursuit of men's approval. When women don't play the game they're punished.