I can?t speak for other posters on the FWR but would genuinely wish to offer apologies if anyone feels that they have been patronised or bullied by any comments that I have made.
If it helps to understand, I used to have the view that the feminist boards were full of posters with a fixed set of views and that it was impossible to voice anything other than the ?party line?. In honesty, there probably was a degree of that but there is genuinely more welcoming feel to FWR at the moment.
There are some extremely generous posters who will take the time, every time, to explain their viewpoints and welcome discussion. There are others who get frustrated with always having to justify their views and can come across as more abrupt. In fairness, they are usually involved in women?s rights and see a huge amount of domestic violence and rape and it must be incredibly upsetting for them to constantly feel that they are being harangued and attacked for their views.
There was a discussion a while back on FWR where many posters tried to understand the hostility and fear of the boards and there seemed to be a consensus that many of us as self identified feminists became a bit evangelical about feminism (in it?s various theoretical forms). For my part, once I started seeing how society worked, it became impossible to not see examples of inequality everywhere.
The recent example of threads about shaving show that we still don?t get it right when expressing our opinions sometimes. I don?t believe that the vast majority of feminists would say that you can?t shave your legs, be a SAHP, etc etc, but when you understand how these things arose, you may well have a different view on why you do them. I have been fortunate not to have experienced many blatant prejudices myself but I can still see them all around me every day. I can see why it?s so ingrained. Society tells us that women should be primped and preened, that we should be the main child carer, that we are vulnerable to attack from men. This is a society built by men in their favour. Women can drive changes that men perhaps do not see as necessary but in order to do that, we need to understand why society is the way it is.
Men, not individual men, but as a whole, start life with more advantages built into the system. No one is condemning men for that but the structures that make up society. These continue to favour men and the backlash against feminism seems to be one designed to put us back in our place.
There are so many little things that reinforce a patriarchial society that make up everyday lives, taking your husband?s name on marriage, your father giving you away, my title designating my marital status, being judged on how clean my house is, being judged as a mother, being judged on whether I shave my legs, wondering if it?s too late to say no, worrying that I might be judged as a slut, worrying that I might be judged as frigid. I don?t want men to have to worry about all these things, I want women NOT to have to. Until these issues simply don?t occur to women, then we don?t have equality or even freedom.