So after my other thread. What is a feminist?

[ByThePowerOfGreyskull]

what are the desired goals?

feminism = v useful pretext for people who want to attack Muslims. If you say you are doing it to support feminism it makes out you are actually v liberal and progressive instead of racist and bigoted. It's what the Daily Mail and their commenters do; wouldn't be surprised if it worked exactly the same in Switzerland. And of course ironically it's the least feminist people who do it.

and it has the useful byproduct of putting people off feminism. Win win!

Wow, I am really shocked that women can justify being anti feminist, seems really odd.

It's quite understandable that some women despise femininsts when you think that the concept of women doing something for themselves (in a political sense, not in an 'I'm worth it; I'm going to buy XYZ' sense) is despised by society in general.

I read on here somewhere 'Ironically, some women hate feminism because men hate feminism'

I think the trouble is education - that it's so easy to be manipulated by the media that feminism is a dirty word and the movement filled with hippy-ish man-hating women who never shave their legs and cause oppression in other parts of the world due to their radical ideas.

The way to get around this is to educate women and girls (and to be honest men who balk at the idea of their wives, mothers and daughters being feminists because they think it means they will turn against them just for being men). The education is needed not just to stand up for the equal rights of women but to stand up for the movement as a whole. I think.

I will hold my hand up to educating myself around my suppositions of what feminism is and is trying to do, despite having gone to the 2nd school set up by the suffragettes which above anything upheld our rights and women and girls to be individuals and have choice (our 'leader' being an oxford educated classics tecaher who was male but the biggest feminist I've known in many ways), and despite my mother expecting the same from myself and my brother - it's still too easy to fall into the roles patriarchy has set and easy to use the term feminism as an insult. We have to change it within ourselves to use it properly to fight the cause.

Again - I think. I'm feeling very green to all of it, have always believed in fighting for the rights of women in the far east, africa etc but never properly looked in my own back garden. This thread is fascinating and very educational.