When I originally wrote this page in 2009/2010, I spoke of using “Feminis[t/m]” to imply “gender Feminis[t/m]”, arguing that gender Feminists formed the most vociferous, influential, whatnot, group within Feminism, and the one that dominated in both politics and public debate. This is not wrong and much of the criticism on various pages (e.g. in this category) is largely directed at specifically gender Feminism. (And note that most of the contents in this category arose around 2009/2010.)
While this take, then, matches most of the contents in this category and other earlier writings, it might not be a correct description when we look at later writings. Here, it might be more justified to say that I use “Feminism” to imply “Feminism as it actually is” and as opposed to “Feminism as it presents it self in propaganda”. (Also see a below addendum.)
Two particular observations is that Feminism was never not rotten and has never been an equality movement. (I was not sufficiently aware of either at the time of original writing.) Yes, many individual self-proclaimed Feminists actually do want equality and/or propose some variation of “equity Feminism”; no, they have never, or only very rarely, set the tone on more than a fellow-traveler basis.
Feminism, plainly and simply, is a one-sided women’s interest movement—not an equality movement. This has been demonstrated again and again over decades, e.g. in that Feminism has fought to extend the rights and privileges of men to women, but not to extend the duties of men to women or the rights and privileges of women to men. A particular telling issue is how calls for quotas tend to be formulated in terms of a minimum percentage for women, as opposed to each sex, so that a 60–40 dominance of men in some area is deemed unacceptable, while the same numbers for a dominance of women do not raise a single eye brow. Ditto that calls for quotas come only when women are “underrepresented”, in the first place, not when men are so.
Where this “underrepresented” should usually be seen with great scepticism, as it usually does not consider factors like interest in a field, life priorities, actual suitability, etc. We must, in particular, never forget that it is equality of opportunity, not outcome, that matters. Ditto the right to choose one’s own road in life—not a “duty” to replace the “traditional” road with whatever road the Feminists dictate. (Say, that a woman is not allowed to be a housewife, even should this be her own preference.)
Depending on context and time, I might then imply either specifically gender Feminism or Feminism as this one-sided, often outright anti-equality, movement.
In a bigger picture, however, the main problems with Feminism is not that it is a one-sided women’s interest movement. (After all, such one-sided interest movements are not unusual.) The issue, as described in many other texts, is the despicable methods used by Feminists, including outright lies, grossly distorting half-truths, defamation and ad hominem against non-/anti-Feminist, attempts at censorship based strictly on opinion, etc. Most of this is unrelated to the word “Feminism” and my use thereof (the actual topics of this page), but one thing is very important to these topics: The single greatest lie of Feminism, and one of the greatest in politics/society anywhere, is the claim that Feminism would be exactly an equality movement.
However, gender Feminism is often a greater evil than regular non-equity Feminism, through the types of explanations that are proposed, an often fanatical belief in the long disproved “nurture only” take on human development, a common prejudice that men are deliberately out to oppress women, etc. We might e.g. have situations where an equity Feminist is happy when men and women have equal opportunities to gain a certain position, a non-gender and non-equity Feminist is happy when women have sufficiently equal or superior outcomes with regard to that position, and a gender Feminist remains unhappy because women have a lesser interest in gaining that position, which is viewed as proof of society-enforced gender-stereotypes, nefarious “structures”, that all-governing “Patriarchy”, or similar. (But, of course, with great variations in detail even among gender Feminists, including what level of fanaticism they move on and what exact explanatory models are used.)
A key mistake in my 2009/2010 take was to over-estimate the historical importance of equity Feminism, to the point that I spoke of the low hopes of “regaining” an equity Feminist meaning of “Feminism”. However, this misses the point in as far as equity Feminism never appears to have been the dominant streak within Feminism. (And the term is a comparatively new one, having arisen, maybe, in the 1980s and as a reaction against other brands of Feminism.)
Something that I did get right, however, is that if the meaning could have been shifted towards something equity Feminist, this might also have lead to further misunderstandings and a legitimization of the current Feminist movement in the eyes of history—something not only karmically unfair, but also something that risks both the resurrection of gender Feminism (and/or some other evil version of Feminism) and that later historians blunder into faulty analyses. Note a similar problem in the now, where current Feminists try to appropriate many pre-Feminist women as alleged Feminist on very weak grounds, e.g. that they supported the right for women to vote or, even, that they merely were successful women. (I am anti-Feminist and I still support women’s right to vote on the same terms as men.) Ditto, how the current U.S. pseudo-Liberals, whose ideas are often outright antithetical to true/classical Liberalism still draw on the reputation of classical Liberalism as a movement of enlightenment, progress, human rights, whatnot.
It is quite common to see definitions of or implications about Feminism that are highly misleading, often entirely devoid of reality. The likely most common, in my observations several years after writing the original text:
Feminism is about equality, including variations like “You want equality—then you are a Feminist!”:
Feminism is not now and nor has it ever been about equality. It is a one-sided women’s-rights movement (with a number of other, unrelated, aspects). It is true that the goals of Feminism and “equalism” had some considerable early overlap, but (in the Western world) that overlap has since become severely diminished and quite often turned into conflict (since basically all non-biological disadvantages women ever had are gone, sometimes even turned into advantages, while their privileges and the men’s disadvantages have been diminished to a far lesser degree).
Similarly, it is quite common that equalists, classical Liberals, whatnot of old are given a stamp of “Feminist” in a blanket manner—and often contrary to what these people, themselves, would have considered true.
Feminism is about strong women, female empowerment, “girl-power”, the belief that a woman is as good as man, whatnot; usually with formulations implying that those who believe in strong women are Feminists and those who do not are not:
Complete and utter bullshit. Such beliefs can be held by Feminists, anti-Feminists, and those neutral alike and without any restriction. Indeed, Feminist rhetoric is often based on an explicit or implicit premise of women being weaker or less able than men, with a corresponding need for extra protection, special treatment, a leg-up, ... anti-Feminist and equalists tend to have a far greater focus on equal opportunity and equal obligations, based on a principle that it is the individual’s capabilities that should decide—those who are capable, be they men or women, should have their chance to succeed without interference.
For that matter, I am very, very clearly anti-Feminist (“I am pro-equality; ergo, I am anti-Feminist”); yet, Buffy is the TV series with which I have spent the most time—by some distance. (Assuming that the various Star Trek and Stargate series are counted separately and not as two accumulated series with totals of 28 resp. 17 (?) seasons to Buffy’s 7 ...) More generally, I have often had a strong attraction (not necessarily romantic or sexual) to other capable fictional “power-girls”, like in Star Wars, Alias, or Dark Angel. Meanwhile, Caroline Klüft is the athlete who has meant the most to me.
(And, if possibly somewhat less relevant for this topic, several of my favorite authors and musical artists are female.)
Where I do become turned off, is when do-not-like-women caricatures are put into exaggerated abuse-women situations and then get their “just deserts” at the hand of a power-girl—this is usually nothing more than misandry thinly disguised as anti-misogyny. Of course, this is symptomatic for much of the movements relating to women (not necessarily restricted to Feminism). Instead of showing a positive “women need not be passive damsels in distress” message, they show a negative message of “men are evil” or “women are better than men”.
Another irritant is the often unrealistic depictions of physical ability:
Yes, a slip-of-girl with super-powers (e.g. Buffy) could legitimately defeat almost any opponent. Yes, a woman with an elite physique and years of martial-arts training would defeat the average male couch-potato. However, TV and movies regularly show women easily dispatching considerably larger men who have similar or better martial arts training/fighting experience and a considerable physical advantage. Worse, it is quite common to see a 100-pound girl receive some basic instruction in one episode and suddenly have turned into a first-rate fighter just a few episodes/weeks later.
This is not only entirely unrealistic and detracts from the respective show, but could also give women dangerous ideas and lead them to make disastrous errors, should they ever be in a situation where physical violence is likely to follow: If Laila Ali went up against one of the Klitschkos in an all-out fight over a doomsday device, she would be knocked out cold, possibly dead, within minutes—the time frame being mostly determined by how long she could avoid her opponent...
A good example of such misstatements (and what originally prompted me to write this addendum) is the Wikipedia article on the movie Sucker Punchw (retrieved on 2012-07-10), which says e.g.
Critics have also argued that the movie pretends to a Feminism which in fact is a trope for misogyny: Monika Bartyzel of Moviefone writes, "The women of Zack Snyder’s ’Sucker Punch’ are not empowered. Though they are given vicious snarls, swords and guns, the leading ladies of Snyder’s latest are nothing more than cinematic figures of enslavement given only the most minimal fight. Their rebellion is one of imaginative whimsy in a heavily misogynistic world that is barely questioned or truly challenged." Michael Phillips of The Chicago Tribune stated that "Zack Snyder must have known in preproduction that his greasy collection of near-rape fantasies and violent revenge scenarios disguised as a female-empowerment fairy tale wasn’t going to satisfy anyone but himself." [...] O. Scott of The New York Times described the film as a "fantasia of misogyny" that pretends to be a "Feminist fable of empowerment" [...] Peter Debruge of Variety argued that the film is "misleadingly positioned as female empowerment despite clearly having been hatched as fantasy fodder for 13-year-old guys"[...]
(Note that not all of these critics need underlie the discussed misconception: A non-trivial amount of the blame could reside with the Wikipedia editor. Further, on a different issue, that if the critic’s statements about misogyny were correct, then “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” would be misandrist; however, most likely, their claims come from another direction, namely the absurd belief that attractive women in revealing clothes is a sign of misogyny—one of the greatest and most baseless propaganda tricks of Feminism.)