Is my understanding of feminism wrong??

NoTech Male violence is something I'm familiar with - my biological father was violent to my mother (witnessed by me) many times when I was very small. She left him when I was 4 (not that common a thing to do back then). Being brought up by her and my adopted Dad was positive because she is an extremely strong person whom I admire greatly. She also doesn't identify as a feminist but their relationship is about as equal as I can imagine.

I was raped as a 15 yo virgin. Yes, it has affected my life but it was one man. He committed the crime against me, not against all of womanhood.

Everyone, whatever their sex, has a certain amount of freedom of choice. If people choose to have children, then they need to accept that employers may not be delighted by losing a valuable employee for a year at a time. That in turn may affect their chances of promotion etc.

If men were able to take a year off for whatever reason then I'm sure they would be affected in the same way.

I have never been discriminated against for being female and I know a lot of people who would say the same. If something bothers you, then fight it or walk away, but I don't feel that I am responsible for fighting something I don't agree with simply because I am the same sex.

This is a bit garbled, but hopefully it makes sense

Going back a bit to Abbey, if you're still around, I'm really curious about this. You don't feel that you're discriminated against. How do you square that with male violence against women and the fact that men commit most violence? How about with most people staying at home with kids being women?

Sorry to return to Lass's ridiculous derail, however, she has, once again, deliberately misrepresented me. My post on the other thread, as anyone with a modicum of intelligence noticed, was in response to a pp's assertion that talking about this using a specific post from relationships was wrong, it successfully conveyed that the language used about theOW in that thread wasn't confined to that particular relationship at all, had been used about the OW in my friends relationship, and that if people felt more comfortable, my friend was happy for posters to use her as an example instead. Thus removing the lack of sisterhood difficulty.

I am obviously at fault there for expecting Lass, who rarely posts in good faith, to be able to discern that most people DO post in good faith, and shall henceforth explicitly state in all posts what my motivation was to post, just so she doesn't need to waste her time calling me out for imagined slights that only someone who generally posts in bad faith would see.

Lass, you now have several options.

You could: do your usual thing of leaving the thread your true motivation has been demonstrated on, while happily posting equally disingenuously on other threads,

Or, you could continue to post on this thread, misquoting and ascribing false motivations to people until you do the above, as you sometimes choose to do,

Or, you could, as you sometimes do, name change and slag FWR off on AIBU or chat, by saying that we're all mean to you randomly and for no reason.

Or, you could admit your mistake, apologise for it, and we can all move on, which would be a first.

If we're calling out other people behaviour, then I have to say that your posts are increasingly indistinguishable from the ranting of some of the trolls who come to MN purely to upset and antagonise, is that what you're going for, Lass?

Further apologies to everyone else for this long post, it's not meant as a PA on Lass (although, I suspect she will see it as such) but, as she has decided to target my posts, I felt I had right to reply.

Getting back to the OP, I think that a lot of people don't identify as feminists because it has negative connotations for them.

I know adult women who see feminism as foolish, because they think it is about man-hating or because they think it focuses on what they see as unimportant details, like titles.

Or people simply haven't thought about it at all, of course.

I also note that your 2nd July post on that thread was after the post you have mentioned, but you didn't say anything about it then.

And yet you assume that other posters who didn't explicitly respond to it were condoning the phrase? Yet that presumably doesn't apply to yourself and your own lack of comment?

Why is it one rule for you and another for everybody else?

So you had, Lass, on 2nd July. I apologise for that error.

Would you now like to apologise for misrepresenting me by quoting selectively?

Oh, and you had not commented on that thread at the time I posted, as well you know

Wrong. I had posted on that thread before you posted that. I haven't checked the exact time of my second post which was in reply to JAPAB (although presumably you did) but I posted before I saw your comment.

Screwing over feminists. Attempting to belittle and antagonize. That seems to be about it, I think. I could ask 'sisterly?' But that would be the height of irony.

And once again with the selective quoting, lass. Here's what I actually wrote:

"From that, do I conclude you agree with his position and condone it? Of course I don't, I assume you're busy doing something else."

Key phrase in bold.

Oh, and you had not commented on that thread at the time I posted, as well you know.

I really don't know what you are getting out of this.

Are you on that thread right now, calling out JAPAB, who sees nothing sexist in the words slut, whore, gash etc? No, you aren't. From that, do I conclude you agree with his position and condone it?

I had participated in that thread. Your comment above is vile. I don't subscribe to the women as eternal victim theory but given I have consistently stated my oppposition to porn and the sex industry it is pretty unlikely I would agree with what he (I'm assuming it is a he ) said.

It's the difference between words and deeds isn't it. I'd like to think that everyone who acted in a feminist manner was ok about being called a feminist, but for many reasons, people aren't. That being the case, at least they can act (and think) like feminists but avoid the label.

Puffins - you raise your girls as I do my boys I think - ds1 and tbh dp are probably more feminine than me in character, and it doesn't matter a hot. We already tailor lives to interests, why make like difficult by trying to hem them in further than they have to.

I don't care when people who have feminist / egalitarian ideals refuse to wear the label of feminism because that is up to them, but I do care when people redefine feminism to be what it isn't because I don't like to be told I am what I'm not.

And it's pretty insulting to be told that you hate men or that you think women are superior.

I am quite happy to be called a feminist but wouldn't take huge offence if someone labelled me "non-feminist" (I would argue my case if someone called me an anti-feminist and explained why).

As this thread shows, for some interpretations of the word I suppose my beliefs and behaviours 'hit the mark' and for others they don't. I have a friend who features in the media as a "feminist journalist". I found some of her opinions a bit 'extreme' at times in the past, so I don't tend to follow the content of her work too much now because I want to maintain a personal friendship that doesn't involve political debate.

I am only now reading and thinking about how transgender issues impact on feminism. There is a poster here who makes some amazing and thought-provoking posts on the topic but who said something recently that I felt uncomfortable with (i.e. wanting to support female-born transgender people because they are female but not feeling any inclination to help male-born transgender people any more than they would 'ordinary men'). I understand the point. I'm still thinking about it. It made me uncomfortable.

Agree with that as well, Whirlpool!

Yes also meant to say in terms of labelling, giving someone a label they don't want / identify with is not something that lots of "us" like, so to do it to someone else about something else "I'm not a feminist" "Oh yes you are!!!" is somehow, doesn't feel right to me.

I personally think that labelling or not as a feminist is neither here nor there. For those who want to identify others with certain views it is useful to organise under, or as a shorthand to say "I have these beliefs". However whether a person self-identifies as a feminist or not is really unimportant next to how they behave in day to day life.

So for eg OP who doesn't identify as a feminist well that's up to her obv and it's fine whether she says she is or not, there's not a set of rules and you're "in" or "out" whether you want to be or not IYSWIM. I hope though that OP has had an interesting conversation here over the last couple of days, I have found it interesting.

Anyway there have been some threads in chat recently that I have felt very uncomfortable with around are you a feminist or not / if not why not / what's wrong with you type stuff. I say live and let live, the label is useful for those who want to use it, but fine if people don't, especially if actually they espouse ideas around a better situation for women and girls (amongst whatever other things they may believe in!).

So say someone says "I'm not a feminist but I will donate some money to this charity for educating girls in X because I think it needs doing" is, you know, great.

Someone says "well I'm not donating to that charity because bad stuff happens to boys to and really have you thought about that maybe your money would be better spent elsewhere, say on a charity that supports all children" is, you know, not so great.

So OP in response if someone says they're not a feminist but their approach and ideas are compatible, or at least not incompatible, with the furtherance of females then it doesn't really bother me.

OP, sorry for participating in the derail.

I do think lots of people who, say, believe in global warming, wouldn't describe themselves as environmentalists (me included!) because they expect -Ists to be activist in some way -? Rather than just believing a set of principles.

Personally I took the post that you were "calling out" as saying "we are ok to discuss this" because I thought it was pretty crap to start using a very specific woman's thread in Relationships in Feminist Chat without her consent, not least when the woman in question had been blindsided in the worst way and is in crisis and the conversation was inevitably going to do down the route of discussing what the OW did or did not deserve.

It was clear that MN women who identify as feminists think the term is disgusting. Clearly some other non-MN feminists (e.g. Vagenda authors) do use the term.

So what? Plenty of people had already said they disagreed with the phrase and one of the posters who'd been on the thread about the OW in question came on and said that a thread that was supposed to be general was getting too specific, so we'd moved on.

Are you on that thread right now, calling out JAPAB, who sees nothing sexist in the words slut, whore, gash etc? No, you aren't. From that, do I conclude you agree with his position and condone it? Of course I don't, I assume you're busy doing something else. Mostly condemning feminists and turning this thread into a TAAT, it would seem.

Did anyone called out the post I quoted.? Don't think so.

What Whirlpool said. All of it.

Again and again you do this, Lass.

"However I feel no sense of "sisterhood " but apparently calling another woman "wank fodder" is for some , not unsisterly. How "feminists " square that intrigues me."

So, I'm a feminist, I think. I don't "square that" I think it is extraordinarily objectifying.

Does that help at all.

Lass I've read the thread and I have no idea how you came away with the impression that feminists in general think that referring to other women as "wank fodder" as per your earlier post at all.

You said "I think the use of words like slut etc and the horrible one being discussed on the other thread are unacceptable. I would never call any woman (or man for that matter) such names. (I've always been puzzled why words relating to consensual sexual behaviour and/or genitalia are used as insults ) However I feel no sense of "sisterhood " but apparently calling another woman "wank fodder" is for some , not unsisterly. How "feminists " square that intrigues me."

And to say that is what the consensus is on that thread is a total and utter misrepresentation.

For a start you don't know the politics of the women posting (whether they are feminists or not)
For a second this is MN not every feminist in the world is rallied here, there's not a hive mind that is represented by the posts on here as the final and definitive word of the feminist collective mind
For a third most of the posters said it was a disgusting thing to say about another woman anyway

So why on earth did you come on here and say what you did? I don't get it. You were trying to make a point by exaggerating? Or did it really come across to you like that - did the posts that said other things not impinge? If you re-read it can you see that there were posters that were saying that's a disgusting thing to say?

I honestly don't understand.