Are you a feminist, if yes, what does it mean to you?

[YouAreNotBatman]

YANBU = I’m am
YABU = I am not

Make up your mind about what on earth you are thinking or saying. You've now directly contradicted yourself in some kind of quest to be right.

Devote your vaunted powers of inference to the actual conversations people have, instead of non-existent subtext.

I said: I don't think anyone from any nationality is born "predisposed to rape", but I do know that the extent to which soldiers rape civilian women is affected by their country's cultural attitude towards rape and women's rights, and the senior officers' policy and I stand by it.

No man is born a rapist. It is something he chooses to do, and so any country that has a level of misogyny will see that reflected in the level to which it needs to act to prevent its male soldiers assaulting both female soldiers and female civilians.

And for the love of anything, stop blessing us with your opinion about whether you'd rather be raped than dead. It doesn't matter, because in a warzone, no-one will give you the choice. You brought up Nanking yourself, so you know that soldiers raped women and girls and killed them. So stop it.

Half this stuff would disappear into obscurity overnight if the internet died IMO.

Yep. Everyone knows slavery only happened because it was originally an internet meme.

Not my problem you can't comprehend a fairly simple point. You prefer to cherry pick and argue semantics. Unsurprising.

Pleased to see you Googled Nanking, always good to spread awareness so not a completely pointless waste of my time.

I am stopping now, utterly pointless engaging with you as you have nothing of substance to add.

I think it says a lot about the importance of feminism that the very first answer was one saying natal men should be just as centred in feminism as natal women, if they identify as women, and that the thread has now descended into women debating if they would rather be raped or killed.

That pretty neatly represents the reality we are living in.

The very first answer on the thread centred men. Unreal. You couldn't make it up!

This thread is proof that feminism isn't just a hot topic, it's fucking vital to girls and women.

One of my biggest gripes with a lot of modern feminism is that it often disempowers women rather than empowers them IMHO. They're told they'll always be playing second fiddle to the men, and taught to be pessimistic. To be otherwise would almost nullify a lot of feminist discourse due to it's inherent foundation of being based around oppression.

I actually agree with this. There's a fine balance to be found in noting/cataloguing/tracking all the data that shows women to be oppressed in certain ways, and then making suggestions about how to rectify that, and creating a victimhood narrative that can become self-perpetuating. All identity politics does this, some with steroidal levels of bad faith (see CRT), others less so.

What I would point out is that as much of the feminist movement is about empowerment through consciousness raising - and that purposely steps away from the victim narrative.

On a related note, I always get mildly irritated when people claim they haven't experienced sexism or racism or whatever, and seem to be oblivious of the fact that a lot of that will be down to the hard work done by feminists over the centuries. (See the upper middle class scoffing at socialism while enjoying their weekends and maternity rights - which only exist thanks to trades unions.) Ignorance of history isn't a great look.

Good question, I was asked once how I define being a woman. Imagine my answer being I was born with a vagina that was the answer the person asking was looking for. Yes I was but being a woman is so much more than that and also much more than anything my body can or can't do. Its everything I've experienced and the things I haven't because I'm a woman. That is what being a feminist means to me.

The very first answer on the thread centred men. Unreal. You couldn't make it up!

This.

Imagine my answer being I was born with a vagina that was the answer the person asking was looking for. Yes I was but being a woman is so much more than that and also much more than anything my body can or can't do.

Except that apart from your personality, much of what you experience is due to having a female body. That is one formed around the production of large gametes, regardless of whether is ever has, will or actually is.

I think that many people would like to ignore that their life experiences are influenced by having a specific type of body. I think there are many reasons they do this. Is it a factual based way of thinking? or an idealised one?

Really, the rest outside of the influences of your unique body, is personality isn't it? But the body does matter still.

If you don't define being a woman as being female, how do you define it?

It's all very well sneering at the people who say "I am a woman because I have a vagina and not a penis", but have you actually got a better answer?

Equal rights and opportunities for men and women.

Sorry, I meant to include this in my post.

Its everything I've experienced and the things I haven't because I'm a woman.

I think you must recognise this at some level since you effectively acknowledge it with this sentence. Unless, as pps have pointed out, you seek to detach your life experiences from the fact you do indeed have a female body. And you think that this will allow you to say having that body has nothing to do with you being 'a woman'.

Good question, I was asked once how I define being a woman. Imagine my answer being I was born with a vagina that was the answer the person asking was looking for. Yes I was but being a woman is so much more than that and also much more than anything my body can or can't do. Its everything I've experienced and the things I haven't because I'm a woman.

Yes, it would be wrong to reduce your phsyical female body to your vagina. You are genetically female in nearly every cell in your body (XX chromosomes are in most cells, not just reproductive ones). Being female changes your build, and your hormone system, and your reproductive organs, and your metabolism. You even have more female sex organs than just your vagina!

And it would be circular to define being a woman as "Its everything I've experienced and the things I haven't because I'm a woman."

But you could say "Its everything I've experienced and the things I haven't because I have a female body." I think that would about do it for me.

I thought what was proposed was women also having to sign up? Not women having to and men not, which is the reverse situation I was referring to. The latter would defo cause a stir IMO. Feminists get enraged about much smaller sexual inequalities.

But most women have left. The men can't do that.

You've explained this much better than I could and I agree.

But most women have left. The men can't do that.

Left with their children fgs, what are they supposed to do send their babies, toddlers and children out of the country alone?

To think I never knew that slave traders used Twitter 300 years ago! You learn something every day.

Of course not. I'm just saying I'd rather be staying with a volunteer in the UK than dodging bullets in Ukraine.

I was mainly talking about the gender stuff in my internet comment.

Vast majority of women aren't really worrying about all the trans stuff, and the number would be vanishingly small without Twitter. There are some legitimate concerns like self ID IMO, but a lot of it is just posturing and arguing online.

Most women are just getting on with their lives oblivious to it. Same with all the woke/canceling stuff. It relies on the internet for coordination and would be near impossible otherwise.

No I’m not.
Trans is obviously nonsense, but you don’t need to be a feminist to think that.

@YesJess
Vast majority of women aren't really worrying about all the trans stuff, and the number would be vanishingly small without Twitter. There are some legitimate concerns like self ID IMO, but a lot of it is just posturing and arguing online.

Your ignorance is staggering. There have been years of huge effort by women to get to the point where the Tavistock has been closed.

God, can we talk about women's needs instead of this trans nonsense? It has sucked the life out of feminism for best part of a decade and I am sick to death of it.

You can't use the word woman to define woman. That's not how definitions work.

I'm sick of it too, tbh. But honestly speaking, most women I know would probs think the Tavistock was a hotel.

@Whatiswrongwithmyknee I wasn't describing my sex though. I was describing who I am as a person. I wouldn't define every woman ever by just our reproductive system (yes amazing, but we're so much more than adult female). I wasn't born a woman. I'm an adult woman now who was born female, a tiny baby with no clue of the life to come. But my experience of being a woman and how I define it is of course different than anyone else's and that was my point.

Well, your suggestion would be ridiculous because you would simply be replacing an inefficient system with another inefficient system that's just the mirror opposite so in that sense there would probably be some pushback but not in the sense that you are predicting. The younger generation seems to be pretty chill about being signed up for things online and this is just another form of data mining. The SSA is just not that big of a deal.

We do data mine for information that helps to track females who might be pregnant. Which is something that we don't do to males in this country and there is relatively little outrage about that so I find it hard to believe that anyone would get all that worked up about Selective Service since it's not even the draft, and it would take an Act of Congress to reenact the draft. And if we did that they would just waive anyone who wasn't poor, like they have always done. And there wouldn't be all that much outrage about that either.