A favour...

[deepheat]

Howdy. I'm a bloke wo has posted on a couple of threads here, got interested and then lurked on a few more to try and get an idea of what views might be expressed on a feminism messageboard.

And I'm none the wiser as to what feminism is. I figure that this is pretty understandale bearing in mind that I'm guessing every person on this messageboard will have different opinons anyway.

But its an odd thing. Feminism is a massively loaded term and yet would appear to encompass so much. People have talked about radical feminism, but what is that? What was radical ten years ago would no longer be radical now. Is it a standalone ideology or one that responds to the culture of its age?

It also seems like it is quite a politicised ideology, e.g. the threads about Assange and football are full of people trying to turn them into issues of sex/gender rater than addressing the issues on the terms as they present themselves (I accept that this may be to be expected on a feminism messageboard).

I'm not a troll. I am genuinely curious and genuinely eager to understand more. I wouldn't call myself a feminist (partly because I don't know what one is) but I am keen to address issues of discrimination in my sphere and have done so. But I do want to celebrate the difference between men and women, and I believe that those differences are fundamental. By the same token, I also believe that there is still a massive cultural inheritence for women that does disadavantage them in many aspects of daily life and that this is willingly perpetuated by men (and women) to their own ends.

For what its worth, I'm 31, very happily married with one kid and another on the way. In our house every decision is discussed and each other's views respected but... the final decision is mine. And it is because I'm a man. My wife believes that it is important for a man to be the 'leader' of the household. We talked this through at length and I wasn't fond of it (lots of responsibility!) but it has worked for 12 years. BUT... it only works on the basis that I am a model husband who gives her absolute respect at all times. And I do.

Basically, I would like to ask everyone on this board to reply, stating what feminism is to them. If feminism is a cause, then what is the final destination people are aiming for?

People born with ambiguous genitalia (intersex) are male

It is very annoying that people who are not intersex disingenuously use the medical condition of intersex people to pretend that a person can cross over and become a member of the opposite sex.

The problem I have with this idea that women who don'T see themselves as female don'T have to be, is the millions of foetuses that have been aborted because they were female, the women stoned in IRan, the FGM victims, the women trafficked into the sex industry, the anorexia victims. I loathe this quackish notion that nowadays women can choose not to belong to the oppressed sex if they would just "open their minds"

LIke Simone de Beauvoir said "WOmen are still the second sex but they have now earned the right to disassociate from it"

It's not all either-or. All foetuses are female at first. The quantities, proportions and the order of hormones it's exposed to during development determine the outcome. There ARE women who have male chromosomes. But they're still women. One cause of this is foetal androgen insensitivity syndrome; there are others. This isn't about mindset, politics, or genitalia.

Obviously I don't disagree with you that women have a raw deal, Sakura. But I do mind your potentially dismissing a person's identity as a misinformed political choice.

Going off track a bit. I raised that purely because I was concerned about Sakura's attack on rinabean, who may have meant her gender is not the same as her sex.

AgeingGrace wrote - "women in matriarchies still have children"

Which matriarchies would those be?

I meant to use the past tense. Though I believe there ae one or two small matriarchies left, in remote places.

NO, AFAIK there are matrilineal societies, where the husband goes to live with the wife's family and takes her name (this exists in Japan where a powerful family only has daughters) but they are not matriarchies

NO rinabean didn't mean her gender was not the same as her sex. I have no problem with people whose gender is different from their sex. That's what feminists would like to do with society: make gender irrelevant.
(it never fails to shock me how many people think radical feminists want to keep gender roles in place when feminists have always fought for the oppposite. IT's the patriarchy that believes gender should be set in stone i.e feminine = woman and masculine = man. THat's got nothing to do with feminists)

What she said was that she was female and that people would assume she was female and that this wouldn't offend her, but that she didn't see herself as female. I may have got it wrong, but if people assume she's female then she's not a FTM transexxual and she actually "looks" like a woman, but that she belives she's not.

when I say make gender irrelevant, I meant the gender constructs . Radical feminists would like to eliminate this idea that wearing a skirt, or having breast implants or wearing make-up or "doing" femininity has anything whatsoever with being a woman- female- because it doesn't