To leave MumsNet because it's becoming RadFeministNet?

[SigmundaFraudina]

Had enough of their agenda being forced down my throat whether I want it or not. Major recruitment drive going on lately, and serious opression of other posters views. Just gets worse and worse. This was not what I believed MN was supposed to be about.

I'm off.

Feel free yellowraincoat. And I'll feel free to highlight if people are being attacked with misrepresentations of what they have said.

Your misrepresentation is another's indirect quote.

Yes, Sinical, that is exactly what I mean. You would only become a feminist if you looked at the world and thought it was going wrong for women. Which is the beginnings of political awareness.

I don't think it is especially useful to characterise people who do analyse power structures in depth, do the research, discover and debate etc etc, as living in 'ivory towers'. It sounds suspiciously like a synonym for 'up their own arse', and can easily dovetail into a position which glorifies or romanticises ignorance. There is a long and proud working-class and feminist tradition of self-education, and I think it is disrespectful of that to treat the pursuit of knowledge with disdain.

That's not what I meant by ivory towers, nor is it the common usage of the term.

Where on earth did I imply that I wanted to romanticise ignorance?

I am not being personal, yellow- I am pointing out the danger of dismissing political analysis as a pursuit for those in ivory towers.

thistle but the reason we feel differently about the spirituality board is because the fundamental premise of a religious/atheist belief that "there is/isn't a god" cannot be proved or disproved, it is a belief, whilst the fundamental premise of feminism that all women fundamentally should have the same social, etc rights cannot be credibly challenged by anyone reasonable... it is only the ways to get there can be different, hence the arguments...

admit - i have no theoretical clue about feminism, i am just a woman who lives her life...

if we can't debate we might as well just post statements and get little thumbs up/thumbs down buttons.
boring pointless popularity contests - but at least each likey/no likey carries the same weight as any other.

bemybebe - agreed, but I was drawing an analogy not with the actual belief but with the effect of debate. I strongly believe that there is no deistic being as described by the Judaistc religions, so I feel no upset if anyone seeks to tell me there is a God. If a scientific exploration came up with a credible theory that actually there was a heaven or hell situated in a wormhole from which an omnipotent force appeared to be emanating, I might feel more strongly inclined to get into a debate as to whether the evidence had been correctly interpreted. The gap between what I believe in and what religious people believe in would be that much closer, and I would feel the need to work harder to defend my beliefs.

I don't think a single poster has actually come out and said that they don't agree with the basic principles of feminism, and there is only a fairly narrow gap between the social theories that explain how we should reach the ultimate goal. The defensiveness arrises when people start to feel on shaky ground in defending their position.

Thistle - as you say no-one has come out and said they don't agree with the basic principles of feminism.

However there might be some disagreement or variation around what those basic principles are.

As I said in a previous post: wanting to be in charge of one's vagina is a no-brainer, but some other tenets held by self-identified feminists may be felt to be more up for discussion.

I don't think that anyone can accuse us of not discussing the issues. That seems to be the problem, not the remedy.

What seems to be the problem is accusations of bullying being made when you can't convince the person you are 'discussing' with of the lack of logic in their argument, because their logic is revealing the flaws in your own.

Nobody's told me what radical feminists believe yet.

I believe I can fly

Radix malorum est patriarchy

Yeh, I was/am interested to know what might be the differences between radical, liberal, and any other strand of feminists. Beginners guide anyone ?

Main areas of debate within feminism ?

bloody radfems with their latin

usually on yere it says libs work from within, rads tear it down.

It's like the Sharks and the Jets

The Libs and the Rads

I don't know about the cultural ones, perhaps they meet at the Southbank?

Liberals want equality with men within the current system.

Radicals want freedom from men and the destruction of the system.

Funfems (sex pozzie feminists) want to fuck their way to freedom and think men can help them with that.

seeker - I think the problem - which comes up again and again when people talk abotu 'radical' feminists - is that radical feminism is actually a simpler ideology than liberal feminism, and people expect it to be more complicated or more 'extreme'.

Radical feminists are ones who believe that misogyny (ie. systematized oppression of women) is the root problem.

Liberal feminists would qualify this - lots of people would say 'hmm, well, I'm sure misogyny is a problem but I don't think there's any such as systematized oppression of women'. Or 'well, I think the root problem is racism/capitalism/socialism and not misogyny'.

Probably most people can identify with liberal feminist views at least some of the time and I am not knocking them.

But when you say 'what do radical feminists believe', even there there's room for disagreement, because saying misogyny is the root problem is really (IMO) a way of thinking, rather than a set of beliefs. You could ennumerate all the things every radical feminist has ever believed, and that would only tell you how different people used the same methodology to come to their conclusions.

I don't know if that makes sense but I wanted to try to answer (badly) if I could since I'm one of those people who's trying to be a (not very good) radical feminist.

Thanks hully

• That's helpfully succinct

Perhaps libs are still with a man, whereas rads are not !

I can see how one might progress from one to t'other when less under the influence of the patriarchy in a personal way

I don't think anyone can say you must think x,y or z or you are not a feminist. In fact I think telling women what they must or should think is pretty

The basic princple of feminism is the belief that women should have equal rights to men politically, socially etc. I doubt many women disagree with that. Other views and beliefs may be held by some feminists but not by all. It doesn't make the views any more or less valid or the holder and more or less of a feminist.

Thistledew - my accusation of bullying on this thread was made to a woman who had just called another woman a moron. I am pretty sure that is bullying but some posters felt it was fine and the woman deserved it.

Again, there is this view that being a feminist is akin to becoming a Borg-like entity. It is perfectly possible to be a feminist and to hold a number of views or do certain things, some of which can be properly characterised as feminist, and some which cannot. Pointing out to someone that a view that they hold may not actually properly be classed as a feminist one, does not take away from their right to self-define as a feminist, but neither does that view automatically become a feminist one simply because a feminist holds it.

Loving your posts today Thistledew

Beautiful logic