What is a feminist?

[Josefstalin]

I’m not sure whether I’m a feminist or not. Could someone give me the most commonly accepted definition for a “feminist” so I can figure this out?

You weren't an idiot. Like me you had been brought up to believe that the battles of feminism were all won and in the past and that we could let our guard down now. It's not idiotic, it's part of trying to be the change you want to see in the world to give young women the confidence that they can be anything.

Every teen/20-something trans ally who spits vitriol on feminists who are standing up for women's rights is under the same misapprehension and hasn't yet encountered the sexism that will eventually unmask itself.

I suppose it wouldn’t do to upset the poor dears too much.

So, women historically, and currently across the planet, being the property of men isn't oppression? Women being denied basic education wasn't/isn't oppression? Women being barred from university wasn't oppression? Women being denied the vote wasn't oppression? Women being denied bank accounts and mortgages wasn't oppression? Legalised rape within marriage wasn't oppression (only became illegal in the UK in 1991!). Modern day so called honour killings - are they not oppression? Sex trafficking of women all over the world - is that not oppression?

How do you think Women and girls living in Afghanistan would feel about you denying female oppression exists?

Men oppress women - always have and always will if they can get away with it. Women's rights to the above were fought for by women, not men - they were enjoying and benefiting from the status quo. They've never given us anything we haven't had to fight tooth and nail for.

Do you still seriously think the patriarchy isn't about oppressing women the world over?

I've always struggled with the term 'patriarchy'. Because it seems quite vague. I've not understood really exactly what is meant by it.

Also, OP, I think 'feminist' is one of those terms that is perhaps more useful to use to define oneself when discussing with people who are avowedly not that thing. Like many other terms - 'Catholic' or 'British' or 'disadvantaged', as soon as you start looking into them it can get very complicated, very quickly. It's a very broad term indeed, and means different things in different contexts.

I use it sometimes to signal that I don't believe in 'genderism'. I use it other times to signal that I care about women's rights. Among other women who might loosely call themselves 'feminists', I probably wouldn't even use or bother with the term at all.

I personally am not much interested in 'identity', but in actions.

So, feminism should be a verb, rather than a noun.

The idea that the world is set up for the benefit of men. It’s true.

Does Caitlin Moran know the difference between a vagina and a vulva? And male and female?

So, fighting the idea that the world should be set up for the benefit of men is what one would be fighting, I assume?

I think I struggle with the idea of fighting an idea. 'Smashing' the patriarchy never sat well with me, either. Attacking in violent terms seems too much like using the master's tools.

And how is it manifesting, what does it actually mean in concrete terms?

It means that most structures, policies, laws, government, administration, healthcare, social policy etc are constructed through a male worldview.

Some laws have been changed by the continued activism of women, women’s suffrage and the Equal Pay Act for example or the recent Supreme Court judgement on gender. Hard fought wins against misogyny. And it is a fight. No two ways about it.

You don’t like the term fight for its violent connotations but In the case of gender, women are still fighting for their jobs, their credibility, and if women congregate on this issue, they come across aggressuve masked idiots loudly threatening death and harm. Women were forcibly dragged from some peaceful assemblies by police who have completely sided with violent masked thugs. JKRowling said she could paper her house with the death threats she’s received. All for supporting biological reality!

I don’t think the world has been set up for the benefit of men. I think that is stupid interpretation of existing systems within society

I would say that I believe that women should not be put at any avoidable disadvantage by being born female and that society should continue to change until they are not. I would call that feminism.

I don't find "the patriarchy" a very useful concept; it's at once too vague and general, and too reified. Better to look at specifics that need to be "dismantled", and at categories of specifics, which perhaps divide into two main ones:

• things that are quite deliberately done to women because they are not men (eg the laws in Afghanistan).
• things that are inadvertently done to women because men don't realise that the default picture in their mind is male ( eg PPE that doesn't fit as well on female-sized medical staff).

@Josefstalin the fact that you have named yourself after Stalin suggests you don’t really have a good insight on social and political issues, so it’s difficult to take your statements seriously

There have been, and continue to be, many different types of human society, some matriarchal.

Please don't assume that our western industrialised model is universal, inevitable or immutable.

Okkkaaay then… it may not have been intentional but that’s certainly how much of the world has turned out. But perhaps I’m too ‘stupid’… 🙄

Thinking again about this, I'd probably add a middle category:
-Things done to women because they suit men's convenience and although they know that women will be worse off by it, they think their convenience is more important than women's needs.

In other words, "the patriarchy" isn't a monolithic conspiracy or system. It's multiple acts and omissions based variously on thoughtless ignorance, a selfish assumption that men are more important, and deliberate, contemptuous cruelty. In certain times and places, these ways of thinking crystallise into theoretical systems that attempt to justify treating women as inferior, and are codified into law. Sometimes they are just the acts and omissions of individual men or groups of men (and, not infrequently, of their female enablers too).