Posts by Deborah
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Muse: Shelf Life: The Dying Elephant in…, in reply to Islander,
that Chinese contract
Oooh.
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Um…. Bart… best not to tell people how they should be doing their feminism. We each work on what we can. I’m not in there setting boards of directors to rights because I happen to spend most of my time child rearing (raising three gorgeous young feminists) and earning a coin to feed them. A few years back I heard a wealthy white man telling some Maori women that they shouldn’t be worrying about Te Tiriti because global warming was the biggest problem we were facing and that’s what they should be working on. Marginalising Minorities 101, delivered by a man who had flown in from overseas in a jet plane.
Good point that it’s a huge issue, ’though, and that as usual, it’s the activities engaged in by the less powerful that get cut first.
ETA: Oops, sorry, just saw your response to Danielle, Bart.
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Sadly the blogoshpere doesn’t tend to allow for any kind of thorough explication of actual substantive ideas but elsewhere I have published about 100,000 words in a PhD thesis that does attempt some kind of amplification of my feminist politics and ideology in the form of actual ideas.
I guess the >100,000 words of feminist analysis on my blog just doesn't count as 'actual ideas'. That's one hell of a put-down to the women here who write their own blogs, exploring feminism and what it means for them, and how feminist ideas are manifested in, and are informed by, their lived experience.
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to giovanni tiso,
I've had her as a Friday Feminist in the past, and I keep on meaning to get around to writing a post about her. An amazing woman.
ETA: 'her' being Christine de Pizan.
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And what about Mary Astell?
If all men are born free, how is it that all Women are born slaves? as they must be if the being subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary Will of Men, be the perfect Condition of Slavery? and if the Essence of Freedom consists, as our Masters say it does, in having a standing Rule to live by?
Written in 1700.
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Feminism is a broad church, Bart. There’s room in it for lots of variations. A long long time ago, nearly four years ago in fact, I wrote a long comment here about feminisms: comment on feminisms. It covers quite a lot of the ground that we’re covering here today, though there are some things that I wrote back then that I wouldn’t write again today, because my thinking and approach has moved on a little (as it should).
I think that part of the difficulty may be that you are looking for one meaning for feminism, ‘though I may be mistaken about that. If I am, I’m sorry for attributing views / concerns to you that are not your own.
I don’t think that there is a single meaning of ’feminism’, other than the broad one of assuming that women are, and should be treated, as social, economic, legal and moral equals to men. In that regard, if you have time, then the link that Megan posted earlier today is really worth taking a look at: Yes you are.
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I think that it's simply polite to refer to people using the labels which they assign to themselves. So once I was apprised of Emma's (former) preference not to use the label 'feminist', I tried not to use it in respect of her. Given that I happily use it to describe myself, then it would be at least polite of you to describe me as a feminist, even if you want to add 'self-proclaimed' to it. Though I think that 'self-proclaimed' soubriquet is more usefully applied to people who don't really seem to be feminists at all i.e. there is no external validity to their claim to be feminist (for example, I would be confused and disbelieving if Tony Veitch described himself as a feminist).
Also, what Danielle said just above.
My name is Deborah and I am a feminist.
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"Feminism" and "feminist" work for me.
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to Islander,
I was thinking that my reference to non-standard sexualities was inclusive of asexuality, but thinking about it again, I realise that it wasn't. I'm sorry.
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I’m sorry to be so late to this discussion, but paid employment has put paid to my blogging / commenting time. So I was finally getting to this after the whole after school / evening routine to make exactly the point that Giovanni made just a few minutes ago w.r.t. men being feminists. In short, they can be feminists, but it’s bloody hard.
By analogy, I find it hard to be a fat acceptance advocate. I understand the arguments, I can imagine what it might be like to have a body that is socially unacceptable, I can notice that it’s hard for women and men who have large bodies to find clothes that fit. But I’ve never experienced it from the inside, because I am (or have been) skinny all my life, because that’s the genetic pattern in my family. I can be an advocate for acceptance of bodies of any size, but I really, really, don’t understand it from the inside. It’s just not my experience. And that means that I don’t have the experience to draw on.
Mutatis mutandis for living with a disability, or being someone who has a non-standard issue sexuality, or having to deal with racism. Or for men being feminist.