Am I a feminist now?

[vera16]

I have always defined myself as 'not a feminist'. However I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the pressure to accept gender idealogies which has spurred me into a bit of research on the subject. I have come to the following conclusions in my own mind:

• I class myself as a liberal person, believe in equality, and don't care how other people label themselves, but I do not want to or see the need to change how I identify. I am a woman and a mother and do not want to labelled otherwise.

• I don't believe self-ID should become law as I don't believe biological sex can be changed. Leading on to...

• Biological sex classifications is important in protecting women's safe spaces and also for creating fairness e.g. in sports. Leading on to...

• Women require safe spaces because they are not on an equal footing with men with regards to strength and tendancy towards physical aggression

• I don't want to tell people what my preferred pronouns are. To me the whole thing is an idealogy in the same was as religion, and not one I believe in, so I don't feel I should even be encouraged to participate. I work with many foreign colleagues and sometimes need to ask how I should refer to them. No problems so far.

And, perhaps more controversially, I myself do not always fit a standard family structure when it comes to medical records, form filling etc. But hey ho, I know it is difficult to account for everybody, so I just get on with it. I don't ask for the forms or the systems to be changed to make me feel more comfortable.

There must be many others like me? i.e. women who do not label themselves as feminist, or who just haven't really thought whether they are or not, but who would support the gender critical argument if the facts were put before them.

Language evolves over time to fit society's need and understanding of itself. I don't think anyone is seriously trying to remove terms such as women, men, etc but add to them with additional inclusive language. Which to my mind is a good thing.

Just out of interest, why did you previously define yourself as not a feminist? It just means equality for women.

But yes, I would say you are a feminist now

Me too. I'd never especially labelled myself a feminist, and a lot of the feminist topics and figureheads of recent years didn't hugely resonate with me for various reasons. I'm not saying that was right or wrong (I think some of it I'd now be able to describe as an aversion to chattering class lib-fem ideas, but I don't necessarily agree with everything that comes under rad-fem either), but I don't think I was unusual in that regard.

This topic has really, really resonated with me, and made me think. It's challenged a lot of my lazy assumptions, and given me a clear passion for the protection and dignity of women, children, truth, reality and so on.

I still don't particularly go about calling myself a feminist, as it's a term that can mean so many different things to different people, and I'm not interested in getting drawn into arguments about what a feminist should or shouldn't think. I'm much more interested in learning about (reality-based) feminism though, and women's experiences throughout history and the world. And I've so much respect for the feminists on this board and elsewhere.

I teach students who say they're not feminist. I ask them "so you would be happy for the male student sitting beside you to be paid more than you for the same work?" And bam, suddenly they are feminist.

You may think ‘I’m not a feminist’ but do you believe that women are weaker and inferior? That they should defer to males on al things? That their lives are less valuable that the penis peoples? They women have less potential and should have fewer opportunities?

I believe you can call yourself whatever you like but that you cannot control how other people perceive you. I find this applies many walks of life.

@MishyJDI

Language evolves over time to fit society's need and understanding of itself. I don't think anyone is seriously trying to remove terms such as women, men, etc but add to them with additional inclusive language. Which to my mind is a good thing.

No one is trying to change the language to do with men. The one and only example of this is Prostate Cancer UK who give a list of 'those with a prostate' but then use men throughout the rest of the website.

The fact that it's only women's language being forcibly changed shows gender ideology up for the misogynistic, sexist movement it is.

If you need a label, then feminist would of course cover every point you've made @vera16. I agree with all your points and would be happy to call myself a feminist, I've no problem with wanting fairness and equality for women.

We live in a male dominated, patriarchal world delineated by the class of sex, so of course my version of feminism would be drawn according to the difference of sex. If you can't name it, you can't fight against it.

Sexism and misogyny in all its many forms oppress women, not "menstruators" or "people with cervixes". I don't find that kind of language evolution inclusive at all. Lesbian women aren't allowed to "reduce" people to their bodily parts and have "genital preferences" but TRAs are allowed to reduce the whole class of women to our bodily parts?? Right... there's no inequality or misogyny to see, move along...

^^missed a bit
According to TRAs lesbian women aren't allowed to "reduce" people to their bodily parts and have "genital preferences" but TRAs are allowed to reduce the whole class of women to our bodily parts??

@ListeningToSnow all of that too. I am coming from a very similar angle.

I have no issue at all with being called a feminist. It has just never struck a chord with me previously.

I'd be interested, @vera16, in your previous thoughts that led you to conclude that you didn't support/agree with or identify with the concept of feminism? Could you explain which aspects you disagreed with or were opposed to?

You don't have to accept any label that you don't want to, of course. Your thoughts on gender ideology are what is generally described as "gender critical" these days and for that you would be no doubt be labelled by genderists as transphobic, exclusionary and so on.

@AssassinatedBeauty OK I'll be very honest and say that I previously associated the word 'feminism' with a degree of negativity as a movement which put women's rights above those of others. Of course I know now that not to be the case (hides under the covers).

I also incorrectly assumed that my day to day life had not been affected by sex-based biases. Also not the case.

You can call yourself a feminist or not depending on what resonates most with you. At the end of the day what matters most is whether your actions reflect the values you claim to live by.

I used to think of myself as a feminist, and maybe I still am in some ways, but it's not a term I would use for myself these days.
It doesn't really matter and doesn't change what I do and say regarding women's rights and protections.

The patriachy has a vested interest in promoting negativity towards feminism.
Racism and sexism are both equally bad but anti racism gets a far better press than feminism. People tend not to scoff or say it isnt for them.

Boys in schools nowadays are deeply offended by the concept that that sexism is as bad as racism. But what is worse is that so many many girls are encouraged to be actively anti-feminist. "What, youre not one of those (said disgustedly/alarmingly questioning) 'feminists' are you miss?!?"

'anti-sexism' is a likely a more palatable term.

[quote vera16]**@AssassinatedBeauty OK I'll be very honest and say that I previously associated the word 'feminism' with a degree of negativity as a movement which put women's rights above those of others. Of course I know now that not to be the case (hides under the covers).

I also incorrectly assumed that my day to day life had not been affected by sex-based biases. Also not the case.[/quote]
That's such an interesting insight.

And I don't personally think the label matters much - just common goals. I love the idea of the sisterhood, whatever we prefer to call it.

OK I'll be very honest and say that I previously associated the word 'feminism' with a degree of negativity as a movement which put women's rights above those of others. Of course I know now that not to be the case (hides under the covers).

I also incorrectly assumed that my day to day life had not been affected by sex-based biases. Also not the case.

I think this is a very common position. I felt like that when I was in my 20s (I'm 50). There have been several recent threads about 'not being a feminist'. It occurs to me that making women feel uncomfortable about the idea of being a feminist is quite a good way of keeping us divided and less cooperative with each other in resisting things like gender ideology. I sometimes wonder what men generally think when a woman says 'I'm not a feminist'.

@MishyJDI

Language evolves over time to fit society's need and understanding of itself. I don't think anyone is seriously trying to remove terms such as women, men, etc but add to them with additional inclusive language. Which to my mind is a good thing.

Sadly but unsurprisingly you are mistaken.

In Ireland a trans activist had the Health Service Executive (Irish NHS) remove the word woman from the provision of Cervical Cancer screening

This was while they had admited that the testing system missed women's positive cancer results.
They had instructed Doctors not to inform the women whos cancer was missed.
They were including non disclosure agreements in court settlements to prevent women from warning others of what happened.
One woman refused to be silenced.
They had to fund thousands of extra smear retests for women who lost trust in the testing system
They are still actively fighting the court cases for women who had died or are in the process of dying from cervical cancer.
Most if not all of those women had their cervix removed as a life saving operation
The legislation for the provision of Cervical Cancer is sex specific for women.

Yet the consensus was that it was appropriate to remove the word woman and replace it with person with a cervix

So yes it happens.

A woman decided that the term for adult human female should not be used in a State funded sex specific cancer screening programme.
Only women can develop cervical cancer yet a whole group of State employees in charge of that programme removed the word woman and inclusively excluded women who's cancer treatment involved having their cervix removed

Yes, I think many of us have been along a more or less similar path. For me, I realised when I was a PhD student that while to that point in my life I'd not been unduly affected by sex-based biases, that was just luck and the same did not apply to many other women and girls.

. I don't think anyone is seriously trying to remove terms such as women

Yeah... some of them seem to be doing it pretty flippantly and thoughtlessly tbh. No serious thought at all. But doing it they are, lots of examples. Utterly disgraceful and showing complete disregard for the real harms it is likely do.

The Lancet recently used the term 'bodies with vaginas'.
You are 100000% wrong @MishyJDI - are you mistaken or disingenuous?

Scottish Parliament have done so - were advised by stonewall. Did you not read the papers last week?

I don't think anyone is seriously trying to remove terms such as women, men, etc but add to them with additional inclusive language. Which to my mind is a good thing.

But by doing so they are changing the definition of the words, and therefore imposing a different identity onto the original members of that group.

If you changed the definition of the word ‘French’ from people who are from France to people who wore berets and acted in a stereotypical ‘French way’ don’t be surprised if some of the people from France get a bit pissed off.
It’s not the ‘feeling French’ (whatever that means) that makes someone French but actually being from france.

This example isn’t perfect because the cultural definitions of nationhood are actually a lot more woolly than the biological categories of sex.

Not everything needs to be inclusive. How on earth can we communicate if every word has to include everything else.

Distinctions aren’t judgements, you can say x is x and y is y, without any judgement about either category.