Feminism was invented because it was recognised that women, as a sex class, faced discrimination.
Women couldn’t vote, marital rape wasn’t recognised as a crime, women were denied opportunities to thrive and excel and learn. Men took credit for women’s achievements. Women were silenced and kept in the kitchen.
Nowadays, in the UK at least, women are faring better. We have the vote, we have women in boardrooms, women going to university, women making decisions, women playing football for England, we’ve even had female prime ministers. There’s still a long way to go. Workplace discrimination, misogyny and domestic violence are continuing. Healthcare still centres men and often fails to recognise women’s pain as valid.
Women are more likely to die if a male surgeon operates on them than if a female surgeon does the honours. But we’ve still got it good, when you consider that women in Afghanistan are living a new dystopian version of A Handmaid’s Tale.
Kathy’s feminism is for all sexes, all genders. That’s not a feminism I recognise. Black Lives Matter got angry when people started saying “ah yes, but all lives matter”. That’s how I feel about my feminism. Of course, men are important, and of course, men matter. I care about men and I love men. But my feminism centres women, unapologetically. It recognises that women have been crapped upon by men since the dawn of time, and women have been fighting for their rights ever since.
My feminism recognises women, transmen and non-binary females. All have lived experience as female people. My feminism does not extend to transwomen. Genuine, dysphoric TW may well have their own battles to fight, and their own struggles, and I can sympathise with that. However, my feminism does not include male people. Feminism that includes males just becomes a gender-neutral human rights movement, unable to focus exclusively on the disadvantaged sex class it was first set up for.