The title and some comments read like a revelation of people who, without looking into it, assumed feminism is for women or is anti men and are surprised that the movement actually wants to free everyone from the cycle of abuse.
assumed feminism is for women
It’s because of the name and history of fighting for women. The movement should have gone for “egalitarianism” if they didn’t want people to think of women first/exclusively.
It’s why I’ve vehemently rejected the label of feminist even when I’m in feminist spaces with feminist friends: I’m here for everyone, there’s a word for that, use it.
Except movements are often named after the oppressed group. Black Lives Matter, for example, doesn’t really want cops to only stop killing Black people. Black people are just disproportionately impacted.
Feminism is about raising up women’s status in society. That benefits men in the process though.
Except movements are often named after the oppressed group
That’s nice, but I don’t care. Doing things in a stupid way because “that’s how we’ve always done it” is literally conservativism, which I’m not really for.
This thread originates from a comment surprised that people would look at a gendered term and assume actions done in that name are for said gender, this should be an obvious and predictable outcome, one that’s been seen countless times, and has a simple and easy fix
Every movement has a canon: the core principles behind it, a mythology about its history, and the textbook statement of its objectives.
Every movement also has a reality. Thousands or millions of people with their own ideosynchratic beliefs forming a complex social web. Within this web, a vibrant biosphere of memes [0] develop, spread and evolve on this social web. A movement is simply a name we give to a cluster of memes within this complex web. It is not any of the myths we tell about it; those are merely particular memes holding the cluster together.
The author of this article is a self described liberal feminist. She identifies a change that occurred within her bubble of feminism, where it became increasingly anti-man.
To be clear, that is not all the author says. Once she gets to the “Let’s talk about how the patriarchy harms men and boys” section, she stops the meta conversation about the movement itself, and spends the rest of the article discussing mens issues directly.
However, to your comment, and the first part of the article, maybe we need to stop hiding behind the mythology we tell ourselves about feminist; and start recognizing that the “feminist” portions of the social web are still susceptible to anti-feminist memes.
[0] in its original sense; as a direct analog to the genes of biology.
The patriarchy says it’s weak to cry.
Try crying on a date, she won’t give you a 2nd date
