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yes, she’s talking about feminism again.
If you’re my friend on FB you’ll know I’ve been ranting about this topic a lot lately.
And then my friend posted a link to this blog post (not hers) and honestly, I just cannot take this sh*t anymore. Not another second.
My comment in response was this:
“Just the first sentence is utterly ridiculous. Feminism is a load a crap because her fragile belief system couldn’t relate to the idea of the word womyn? Because one woman wrote an article about how SAHMs can’t be feminist? I suspect she wrote this for attention, for traffic. If her idea of feminism is so easily shaken, she doesn’t have a clue what feminism is. As long as she or any of us believe that women should have the right to determine our own lives, careers, whether or not to have children, whether or not to marry, to get an education, to earn the same as men in similar professional positions, to work or stay home and raise kids (and I believe that men should also have the choice) she (and we) are feminists. That’s the core. Around that core are many different opinions and schools of thought. Some extreme, some less so. As long as we believe in the core, we are feminists. Like I said, TIME writes an article about mothers and she’s all crying into her latte cause she can’t be a feminist anymore? Give me a break.”
And then I stopped. But I want to go on. I want to go on and on and on. I want to give these women and men a good hard shoulder shake and say “really? really?”. Because if we’re not feminists, we have no business voting, or working, or doing pretty much anything other than living in the roles prescribed us by a patriarchal society.
Women went to prison in the early 1900’s so we could have the right to vote. Women were ostracized, bullied, threatened and hurt for the freedoms that we take for granted.
Yes, there are different schools and movements and theories and controversies within the feminism movement. But at its core, it’s about the struggle for women’s rights and equality.
Unless we are willing to go back to the way things were, none of us have the right to renounce feminism.
Categories: Uncategorized
feminism
justanothergirlinisrael 
I think you may have misunderstood my meaning when I said I wanted to renounce feminism. I’m making a figurative statement about a word and manner of identifying — not the concept of equality behind the movement — which has been appropriated and represented in a way I don’t want to align with: I don’t think that women should be excluded from believing in their own equal rights because they choose (and/or have no choice BUT to) devote their time and energy to raising their children. [Personally, I do work but that doesn’t change my belief that women who don’t can be just as devoted to equality as those of us who do.]
My belief system isn’t particularly fragile nor has it been shaken, only my vocabulary has been affected. And it’s hardly in response to a single article (which, for the record, ran in The Atlantic, the TIME article I mentioned was in reference to an earlier post I wrote) it’s in response to an ongoing and relentless pattern of what I would consider anti-feminist scribblings, thus my rhetorical threat to renounce the word (and therein the movement as laid out by these various self-described “women with a y”).
Thanks for your comments. Would have loved for them to have been on the post itself.
Thanks for responding (and sorry for my late reply). I don’t think that feminism has been appropriated at all – from the beginning of the movement there have been different schools, some of which are extreme. It doesn’t change what feminism is at its core – a belief in equal rights for women.
It’s one thing to take on the content of those ridiculous articles, it’s another to threaten to reject feminism itself (throwing said baby out with the bathwater)…no?
Thanks again for responding on my blog – I’ll be sure to respond on yours from now on 🙂
People who attack stay-at-home mothers are just jealous. Let’s face it, some working people are miserable in their so-called wonderful careers, and they see those who don’t have to work, and they are resentful. If anything, working women should be glad that some people choose to stay home, because it makes more jobs available for those who really need to work.