So, Shannon took me to task for my hedonism post and holy shit, it hurt my pride. I thought I was being all brilliant and eloquent, but I guess not. I about wrote her two book’s worth of words in the comments over at her place, but then realized that I don’t quite have it all worked out for myself, so maybe I need to come back here and think things through before I go running at the mouth over there.
I do believe in the transcendent power of pleasure. As I’ve said before, I believe that we live in a system that thrives on the suffering of a large amount of people so that a very few people can live very well. Therefore, any act that reduces suffering and increases pleasure is a revolutionary act.
Pleasure–and I’m not just talking physical pleasure, I mean all sorts of pleasure, but the pleasure one takes in whatever task one enjoys–is so revolutionary that the system recasts pleasure as frivolous and selfish, not something good folks do for its own sake, in order to strip it of whatever power the system cannot co-opt.
Often, we can’t even be honest with ourselves about what brings us pleasure. Look at how many women, even many feminists, who won’t leave the house without make up and heels. Look at how many of us do incredibly painful things and say that we like it. In general, we don’t really like it, but we take pleasure in the validation we get when we do those painful things well.
So, I’d like to make a distinction between types of pleasure. There is the pleasure one takes in doing something one enjoys. And there is the pleasure one takes in receiving outside validation for our efforts. The first type can be transformative in a positive sense, because it nurtures one’s sense of self and gives one a sense of her own worth. But I think Shannon is rightfully suspicious of pleasure in its second form–when one receives outside validation for her efforts–because women will do a lot of stuff that is no good for them in order to receive positive attention from others.
I hadn’t made that distinction. But I think it’s an important one.
Update on Saturday, October 21, 2006 at 10:50AM
Turns out that Winter is mulling over this stuff from a middle-class white perspective, and getting at some of the stuff I was trying to get at in my comments, but from that direction.
Tiny Cat Pants 
I think you were just expressing pure Epicurianism as opposed to Skinnerism. You embrace pleasure as a mode of existence, not a dictate for conforming behaviour.
Gee, I have no idea what Katherine just meant, though I know who both Epicuria (sp?) and Skinner were.I think you both (you and Shannon) have valid postions, but can’t the truth lies somewher in between, a happy medium? So if I wear makeup, I can’t be feminist? If I exercise to look good, I can’t be a feminist?How about if I exercise (and yeah, sometimes it does hurt, because my knees are not what they used to be) because it makes me feel good, and not just about my body as men see it, but because of my health, both physical and mental? And the makeup? Yeah, totally about others’ perception, but dammit, I’m a girl and I like looking nice, even if it is based on the MAN’S rules. Pretty much my entire life, I have done everything, and sometimes more, than any of my three brothers have done for themselves. IS that not feminism, albeit on a small and personal level? And I like to think I have given my two sons a fair example of what a woman can do. When I was much younger, and thinner, and cuter, and blonder, I like to think that I changed a lot of men’s perceptions (at least the ones I worked with) about women in the workplace (it was the early 80s, and everyone thought that I was a hire for who-knows-what-reasons), yet I kept on getting promoted over men (who then hated me, yet begrudgingly admitted I had merit. I worked in the IS department for Amoco in Chicago). I had to work harder, do more, and ultimately was rewarded for my efforts, to overcome those perceptions. So can I not be a feminist, even though I dressed nice and wore makeup and had to do my job even better than the men, just because I was a woman, to prove myself? I maybe wasn’t first or even second wave, maybe second-and-a-1/2th-wave, but I saw evey woman I worked with doing the same thing.But then I quit when I had the first kid, so I guess I suck at being a feminist, fulfilling all those perceptions in the end, after all.
I mean that Epicurus’ philosophy of pleasure was that pleasure was an elevatory experience and should be enjoyed as long as one didn’t burn out on a specific form of pleasure. i.e. Eating is good because it is pleasurable, but gluttony is bad because it will lead to obesity, which limits pleasure. Skinner’s philosophy of both pleasure and pain were that they were merely tools for behaviour modification and not useful in and of themselves to elevate the human experience.From what I read, B. was saying that she was all for Epicurian pleasure, but it appears that Shannon inferred that B was also endorsing the Skinner view of pleasure.
Maybe I’m not as smart as some of these other commenters (here and at the link) but I’ll be damned if I’ll agree that feminism doesn’t (or can’t) encompass the work done to allow women to enjoy being sexual. Or am I missing the point?
Didn’t Epicurus also deny the immortality of the soul?* Not that that’s exactly a feminist issue, but the idea of Epicureans as being concerned only with their own pleasures leads me to suspect that they weren’t much on giving back to the community.*I have NO first-hand knowledge of his works, but during the middle ages "Epicurianism" was a euphemism for rejecting the idea of immortality, just as "Averroism" was a euphemism for hyper-rationality.
If I’m not mistaken, I believe Coble is merely trying to say that, if food appears in front of me, I will eat it, but that I will not press a bar to get it.Kate O’, if you’re on the side of the damned, then I think we all are.
Well, then does Skinner deny the immortality of the soul? I know that he denies the reality of the unconscious. And his mentor, John Watson, considered thought to be "subvocalizing." I’m not sure what the implications of either of those positions is for immortality or feminism.I’m having a rough day today, and if I could get food by pressing a bar, I would definitely do so.
Pegg: you raise an interesting point, I reckon. Working out to make yourself attractive to others isn’t necessarily all about Skinner pleasure. If others find you attractive (for whatever reason, of course), you’re more likely to get laid. Hence, the Epicurean thingie. Also, working out (if not overdone) will put you in better physical condition to enjoy getting laid.If it’s true that we are social creatures, and that we generally need each other to live as such, I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with gaining pleasure from outside validation. I agree with Aunt B., though, inasmuch as I believe that one shouldn’t suffer (or even sacrifice too much personal pleasure) in service of attracting outside validation.
OK, Secretary, I think I understand now…some of it is coming back to me. And I’m thinking I would be on the Epicurean side of things… All things in moderation, right? But is it because it would get me laid? Eh, not so much. It’s because I want to live the longest, healthiest life I can, for MYSELF, with or without getting laid in the process (though that’s a fine thing too. This is venturing into anthropological territory, another discipline that I love.) This all reminds me of how much I loved my all those philosophy classes in school, as I am a natural-born argue-er. I remember REALLY liking Descartes. Is that wrong?God, I’m SO CONFUSED now!And round and round we go…
I think you helped her out by clarifying her statement to her advantage. You’re a nice lady.
There’s nothing wrong with feeling good as long as it doesn’t get in the way of being happy.The Dalai Sharon
Skinnerism works on the principle of reinforcement. Adding something good(like social praise, a prime reinforcer in the operant system) can increase behavior, but also taking away something bad can also increase a behavior- if you stop making fun of a woman because she has adhered to feminity, she may increase that behavior. I wonder if people start to internalize this and believe that these things are pleasurable in themselves…Anyway, I don’t mean you can’t wear lipstick, it’s just that if I wear lipstick and think looking good! the woman across the city whose baby died because of a lack of prenatal care isn’t being liberated because of that. I’m just not doing anything feminist there.To use a less charged example, if I play a game of Ogre Battle, and am like woah! fun! a woman who needs drop in child care isn’t going to be like, wow, Shannon had fun! This is totally liberating! If I have multiple orgasms, that doesn’t stop rape or help a rape victim recover.
"If I have multiple orgasms, that doesn’t stop rape or help a rape victim recover."Along the same vein, if I have multiple orgasms it doesn’t oppress anyone or set back the sisterhood, either. Neither does my getting a pedicure, coloring my hair, tweezing eyebrow hairs, or wearing lipstick. I don’t think that Aunt B. was implying that enjoying pleasurable things is equivalent to a surgical strike at the heart of the oppressive patriarchy.I bristle when self-described "real" feminists tell me that my enjoyment of stereotypically feminine things is merely a product of centuries of oppression, and that I’m so blighted by it that I’m not even aware that I’m nothing more than a pawn for the patriarchy. It’s condescending as hell, and frankly, I find it anti-feminist. I shave my legs and tweeze my eyebrow hairs because I like to have smooth skin and non-shaggy eyebrows. I wear makeup because I enjoy buying it (it looks cool and it smells good, for the most part) and I feel prettier when I wear it. I like feeling pretty. What the hell does any of this have to do with my being a feminist? Nothing. To quote Sars of Tomato Nation fame: "If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist."(http://www.tomatonation.com/youare.shtml)Wearing stilettos, choosing to be a stay-at-home mom, and/or enjoying giving head doesn’t change any of that.
Let’s get to the root of this. Let’s say your worst scenerio had happened. Me, the big mean real feminist has told you that wearing makeup is not feminist(not in the way I mean it in real life which is that it doesn’t help the feminist cause but by which I mean you’re thrown out of feminism if you wear it). Would you stop doing insert what your feminist work is here?If so, why. If not, why not.
I don’t see that as a "worst-case," I don’t really see that as any case. I mean… if a feminist wears lipstick in a forest, does anyone care? I’d probably tell you to go fuck yourself, and then march off to insert-my-feminist-work while applying my fabulous new Urban Decay "Gash" Lip Gunk (which tastes like apple, yum!).But to play along… any feminist movement that tells women what they can and cannot wear (or do, think, or say) is not really a feminist movement at all, so I’d be perfectly content to carry on with my insert-feminist-work, "big mean real feminists" be damned. At that point, I’d be the "real" feminist in that scenario.
So if it can’t affect you, so why do you worry about it? Not to mention, so if a feminist movement educated girls in the 3rd world, provided good prenatal care to mothers, and had a drop in daycare co op, but didn’t allow makeup, you wouldn’t want to be part of that?Or to flip the script, if a feminist movement revolved around wearing expensive lipstick, thus excluding the poor, most women of color(because we need to feed our families,etc), and did nothing else, you’d be for that? I have to put it in terms that I understand before I can get your argument.
I don’t really understand what you’re trying to get me to say with these hypotheticals… and I’m starting to feel like a cat chasing her tail. So I’m going to stop now. But thanks for the dialogue.
I’m trying to get what your priorities are. The way a lot of white feminists talk, you’d think they decided to be feminists because they thought it was a PJ party. Like when you say a feminist movement isn’t one if they say X, but does that mean the heart of a feminist movement is in class based consumption patterns? Or is the heart something different.
"…any feminist movement that tells women what they can and cannot wear (or do, think, or say) is not really a feminist movement at all,"Bingo. Meet the new boss (lady), same as the old boss.Every revolution evolves into the new liberators becoming oppressors."Down with you men for telling women how to behave! They should behave THIS WAY!"
"Wearing stilettos, choosing to be a stay-at-home mom, and/or enjoying giving head doesn’t change any of that."Call me!
"Like when you say a feminist movement isn’t one if they say X, but does that mean the heart of a feminist movement is in class based consumption patterns?"What does this sentence even mean? You’re setting up straw men (pun intended) all over the place. As for my priorities, I’d never put lipstick (or even multiple orgasms) ahead of education for girls in third-world countries if that’s what you’re worried about. But fortunately for me, one has nothing to do with the other.If I’m reading you right, you deem as non-feminist (and even anti-feminist) anything that doesn’t take a direct step towards promoting the liberation of women. I give a lot more credibility to feminist attitudes as well as actions. And to circle back around to the topic, it’s the attitude expressed in Aunt B’s hedonism post that I find uplifting. It might not be a direct or literal step towards liberating women, but I believe that reveling in the freedom we have to enjoy pleasurable things can only be a positive thing.
Oh, whatever, Boyscout. Look how cute I am and you resisted my charms. Don’t be trying to break my readers’ hearts the same way.Shannon, you bring up an interesting point, which I’m not sure how to get at, which is how much class intersects with feminist goals. It’s something I have trouble figuring out how to negotiate when we feminists have these sprawling blog to blog fights, but I think it’s important.I think a lot of white women like myself grew up with working moms (and even, in my case, working grandmas). This idea that dad could support the family on one income just wasn’t true (and for women who’s parents were divorced, it is even more true). I always knew I would work. I just figured that I’d have some shitty, thankless, underpaid job, like the mothers of my friends had.But there’s always the promise of the better job, if only you have the right look, the right education, the right magic something.Dressing like you aren’t poor, like you deserve to be paid more for better circumstances, is a survival technique (even if it’s one that can backfire). It’s a way to stay sane and a way to embody the kind of life we wish we had.And sometimes, it works. Sometimes, you manage to pull all the right things together and you luck out and, voila, you have an okay job and have precariously moved yourself up into the lower middle class.But it takes a lot to be able to move yourself up a class as a woman–in general, you’ve got to be able to put off having kids, you’ve got to go to school, you’ve got to have a wardrobe appropriate for the new life you want, you’ve got to learn to navigate a culture hostile to women and to poor people.In other words, there are concerns you identify as feminist (reproductive rights, equal pay issues, access to education, etc.) and concerns that feel feminist to us (class mobility, the ability to look "nice," the freedom to fuck who we want) but from the outside probably don’t look particularly feminist.But for me, at least, they give me access to power and having access to power makes me feel powerful.Don’t get me wrong, I’m not under the illusion that there’s anything particularly feminist about wearing a nice skirt. But if wearing that nice skirt as opposed to ratty shorts and a t-shirt makes a difference at a job interview, which means I have a job that lets me travel and meet people and form my own opinions about things, well, that feels pretty damn feminist, because the women I come from don’t often get to travel or meet new people or form opinions that they then have a forum for stating.Yes, there’s a lot of patriarchal bullshit bound up in all that. How could there not be?But I think you’re still mistaking what I think is a tool of liberation–pleasure–for a goal.I’m not saying that the goal of feminism should be for every woman to feel good all the time, no matter what. I’m saying that women who feel good, who know what brings them pleasure and feel they deserve it, are women who can and do fight for feminist goals.And the truth is that such a worldview might be incompatable with upper-middle and upper-class white feminism. But I’m not clear how many white feminist bloggers fit that demographic.I think the internet appeals to a lot of poor and semi-poor women because it’s a forum for having our voices heard.And, frankly, I think the reason these kinds of discussions are so difficult is that we feel what we’re doing is very feminist–we’re told to shut up and not make waves; we’re being loud and making trouble. We’re told to be good girls and to subsume our own desires for what men want; we’re fucking because it feels good. We’re told that good girls don’t stand out; we paint ourselves up and draw attention to ourselves.To me, if you grow up in a society that says "Here’s all the things women can’t do" and you do them, that feels feminist. That feels like saying, "There’s nothing I can’t do, just because I’m a girl."And to be doing that, to be putting ourselves out there every day in ways that challenge and threaten what the people around us think are the proper roles for women in ways that cost us, sometimes dearly, and to have other feminists turn on us and say "what you’re doing isn’t feminist" is damn frustrating.I grew up being told "you can’t trust your own judgement because you’re a woman. Because you’re just a girl, what you think is true and right probably isn’t. There’s probably some better explanation for it."And now, I turn around and hear the same stuff from other feminists, that I can’t trust my own judgment about what is feminist, because what I think is true and right isn’t.Well, then, it does feel just like what Exador says, when he quotes the Who, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.I’m still being told the same shit about me, just now from different folks.
Diva: "As for my priorities, I’d never put lipstick (or even multiple orgasms) ahead of education for girls in third-world countries if that’s what you’re worried about. But fortunately for me, one has nothing to do with the other."B.:"But for me, at least, they give me access to power and having access to power makes me feel powerful. <snip> But I think you’re still mistaking what I think is a tool of liberation–pleasure–for a goal."Diva, I think that Shannon is asking where our energies and resources–not just our good thoughts or wishes–go. If we have a limited amount of energy, and a limited amount of resources, and we put them to the service of personal pleasure (lipstick or whatever), then no matter how personally empowering those pleasures may feel to us, we are not in fact doing shit for feminism (e.g. education of girls in third-world countries) unless we define feminism solely as "doing what the fuck I want."B. responds that some of these seemingly merely-self-oriented behaviors are actually tools to get more power (including, I suppose, time and resources to devote to feminism). I agree with B. about that, but I agree with Shannon that all the talk in the world about how one supports this or that feminist cause is meaningless unless one actually does something, contributes something, to act on that (idea of) support.I think you are both being too all or nothing. I mean, sure, if I can’t dance I don’t want to belong to your revolution (and if I can’t dance it may damage my personal energy and personal resources so that I have nothing to contribute anyway), but Emma Goldman wasn’t suggesting that dancing is in and of itself revolutionary. We owe it to ourselves, and to our sisters/communities/however one chooses to define the larger sphere to pay attention to both.No one ever said it better than Hillel: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, when?"
Aw, NM! I am loving any conversation that can bring in the inventer of the sandwich. God, I love my readers, so smart and thoughtful.
"I mean, sure, if I can’t dance I don’t want to belong to your revolution (and if I can’t dance it may damage my personal energy and personal resources so that I have nothing to contribute anyway), but Emma Goldman wasn’t suggesting that dancing is in and of itself revolutionary. We owe it to ourselves, and to our sisters/communities/however one chooses to define the larger sphere to pay attention to both."This is exactly what I was trying to say earlier (and apparently failed spectacularly!). Wearing lipstick (metaphorically speaking) is not revolutionary. But neither is it counter-productive or anti-revolutionary. In fact, it’s so far out of the sphere of revolutionary that I have to wonder why it’s even being compared. Realistically, wearing lipstick does not impact one’s ability to devote time and resources to the cause.This is not a zero-sum situation. It truly is possible to have your cake and eat it too, if you like cake and want to have some. I can both enjoy nail polish and volunteer at a women’s shelter without either taking away from the other.I have a hard time dismissing as unfeminist any person who doesn’t devote herself 100% to directly advancing the feminist cause. Not to keep harping back to the essay I linked above, but I truly believe any person who agrees with feminist principles is in fact a feminist, regardless of whether she (or he) ever directly contributes on a larger scale. Who are we to define what does and doesn’t count as "doing something" anyway? If a woman never raises a finger to advance the feminist cause, but she always votes for woman-friendly political candidates (surmising that such a thing exists somewhere in the world… I live in Virginia and they don’t really make those here), is that doing nothing? Obviously it’s crucial to have the people who do take action, and they’re more active and probably more effective feminists, but isn’t there a role within feminism for the women who are supporters but not necessarily doers?Confidential to Exador: That was a hypothetical… I don’t have kids. Heh.
"I have a hard time dismissing as unfeminist any person who doesn’t devote herself 100% to directly advancing the feminist cause."So do I, but that’s not what Shannon is doing. Shannon is saying that devoting most of one’s energy to lipstick or dancing makes a person a lipsticker or a dancer much more than a feminist.* It’s an existential way of summing things up: you are what you do. It says that if feminism isn’t the first thing you do (not the only thing, but the one at the top of your list) then you are not a feminist. "Not to keep harping back to the essay I linked above, but I truly believe any person who agrees with feminist principles is in fact a feminist, regardless of whether she (or he) ever directly contributes on a larger scale."I could not disagree with you more. I grew up in St. Louis and I followed the Cardinals with passion. I went to a couple of games a month, every month, year in, year out. This made me a fan. (During most of the ’70s, it made me crazy, too, but that’s another question.) But it DID NOT make me a professional baseball player. Voting for the candidate who’s the least dreadful for women means you’re not an anti-feminist, but sitting around nodding your head at others’ actions does not make you one of the actors.*Shannon is making other arguments, too. I’m just not going into them now.
"I could not disagree with you more."Good thing I’m not asking you to agree with me."It says that if feminism isn’t the first thing you do (not the only thing, but the one at the top of your list) then you are not a feminist."So… how is that not "dismissing as unfeminist any person who doesn’t devote herself 100% to directly advancing the feminist cause"? I am a feminist, but I am also many other things. I just don’t see feminism as an all-or-nothing situation. "I grew up in St. Louis and I followed the Cardinals with passion. I went to a couple of games a month, every month, year in, year out. This made me a fan. … But it DID NOT make me a professional baseball player."Of course it didn’t. But you’re not making an equivalent comparison. If you had never attended a game but had listened to every single game on the radio, would that make you not a fan? Are you only a fan if you go to the games and buy the foam finger?Both are fans, just different degrees.
I don’t see feminism as an either/or thing. It’s more of a way of being than a label. I don’t think anyone who says that they believe some feminist thing is a feminist or a woman who fucks who she wants is feminist or a woman who takes pleasure in her own beauty is feminist. Let’s take the example of the woman who has her own bank account, is single at 35(and lives in a apartment in her name), fucks whoever she wants, and wears all the typical beauty ritual crap but has a job trying to make it illegal for women to teriminate pregnancies and always badmouths poor black women for being sluts. Is that feminist? Not to me. She’ll probably declare herself a ‘real’ feminist, unlike us scary man haters who kill babies. I don’t think her saying that nullifies her actions. I think the whole access to power thing is more like going along to get along. It’s not liberatory in itself, it’s just our stop gap in an inperfect world. That’s what I mean about the whole makeup thing in general. I don’t think doing the same thing you could do without a social movement is a social movement. Girls who hook up a lot often don’t report rapes or think girls who got raped are stupid or wear t shirts supporting frats that showed video tapes of frat boys screwing girls to pledges without the girls’ permission. And yea, I’m sure those girls have a lot of fun too.I tend to judge support on what you do, because I find actions to be the true judge of support and committment. You can be a less committed feminist than other people, but don’t declare the status quo to be real feminism, and femininsm that tries to change society and fix the system as not real,ok? Ok, I think I actually do have a way to make this understandable! (I’m not good at communicating). Today I wore lipstick. But if some feminist said that lipstick is part of how our society is set up to make women pay more money to be acceptable, I wouldn’t consider myself bashed, or cry that that feminist has banned lipstick from the feminist movement or say that this is totally feminist because my mom was shocked at me coming home with lipstick on in 7th grade, or any of those things. Nor would I pretend that in a vaccuum I decided that I should wear lipstick or that oppression is someone being uneasy with the status quo
Diva, I know you weren’t asking me to agree with you. But since you were saying that you and I were in agreement, I wanted to point out that we aren’t. One can devote, say, half (or even less of) one’s time and resources to a single thing, which would put it at the top of one’s list, and divide the other half (or even more) among the couple of dozen other things one cares about. That’s not at all asking someone to devote him/herself to that single thing 100%. And as for the foam finger, my point is that cheering from the sidelines or having thr radio on in the background doesn’t make someone a player.I’m not criticizing you. I’m not even criticizing myself (since I also fail most of the time to make feminism my primary focus). I’m just saying that feminism seems to suggest that some changes need to be made, and to the extent that one is involved in working towards making those changes happen, one is a feminist, and to the extent that one isn’t so involved, one could better be described as a friend to feminism.
I’m just in love with this discussion, so many eddies to get your brain caught up in.One thing I’m hung up on, though, is that I don’t believe feminism is a moral position (though even I fall into the rut of acting as if it is). One of the ways we’ve been kept out of things is by being told that we’re too good for public life, too delicate, too moral.If feminism is about getting women recognized as full and autonomous human beings, part of that is going to be about recognizing and responding in an appropriate manner to the shitty things women do.So, I guess that I do believe that a woman could be a feminist and work at denying women their reproductive freedoms. I mean, I think that happens on both sides of the aisle right now. Think of how many conservative feminists want to ban abortion. Now think of how many liberal feminists will sit around and talk about how to make sure poor women have fewer kids.It just makes them shitty people and hypocrites, too, and maybe even bad feminists, but I’m not sure it means that they aren’t feminist in some sense.And I’m not sure that there being hypocrites and evil people sets back feminism. It might set back humanity, but feminism?It makes me think that there either needs to be two different words or we need to be more clear by context what we’re talking about.Because if all one has to do to be a feminist is believe that women are autonomous beings equal to men, then anybody who does any little thing to help bring that into reality is a feminist.But if there’s also a clearer political agenda that one must work towards–reproductive freedom, an end to violence against women, social justice, the active dismantling of patriarchal institutions (and not just subverting them), etc.–then some women who are feminists in the previous paragraph are not in this one.And Shannon, I see what you’re saying about those girls who hook up with whomever they can and undermine other girls and so on. But do you really think those girls feel real pleasure in doing that? I don’t mean the pleasure they feel in being recognized by others as being one of the gang, I mean that good internal pleasure one feels when everything is aligned in good and holy ways?I think that, when you look at the amount of eating disorders and other fucked-up behaviors among large groups of girls (such as sororities), the truth is that they aren’t happy. The things they’re doing aren’t bringing them sustainable pleasure. Most of the people I know in the world who are not actively trying to cultivate a little happiness and pleasure for themselves are pretty damn miserable.
I personally believe they only think they are happy. But many women believe that sort of happiness is the only kind, and don’t understand what you are talking about about good holy stuff and all that. That’s why I think women believe that pleasure is in consumerism and pleasing others because the culture says that women don’t have real fun. They may be miserable, but they keep telling everyone and even themselves that they are happy.I think feminist is a social movement with goals. We may all have different goals, but they tend to cluster together in a certain region.It’s also political as well. I don’t put much stock in beliefs as I grew up in a mileu where people were all like, I’m not racist but…
"I personally believe they only think they are happy."Well, then, that would be the definition of happiness, I guess. I suppose I’m too libertarian for this brand of "true feminism" that some of you are advancing, because it seems like this feminism requires any woman to subsume her desires and actions to the Good of the Cause. I consider Feminism, in the main, to be about women’s rights to be self-determining. Pure and simple. Sure, there’s all the detail stuff about ending rape, assuring decent working conditions and a living wage but those are all merely signposts on the road to the root goal of Feminism. For Women to be self-determining. If you ask a woman to subsume her desires and feelings and goals to the Larger Cause of Feminism, you are committing the ultimate feminist crime. You are robbing that woman of her self-determination. And you are therefore working at cross-purposes with yourself.
Well said, Kat. I can’t help but see it in the light of "The Ends Justify the Means".By that, I mean it’s as if <generic feminist> is saying, "Sure, we’re controlling these women by not allowing them to make their own decisions about what makes them happy, but it’s a small sacrifice on the road to the greater goal of achieving our vision of feminist Valhalla."
Tertium quid, people.
Now we’re bringing Jesus into it? ;-p
Actually, no you’re not, because you have no power to make them do what you want. You can say "hey, it’d be better if you didn’t support rapist frat boys" but they can support rapists if they want to. I just don’t agree that they are feminists if they do that. Like, not everything under the sun can be feminist. I think you guys should make up a new word and leave us out of it.
So, let me get this straight, regardless of the work I do–the committment I’ve continually shown both in body and in wallet–to support feminist causes, I’m getting kicked out of feminism because I also believe in the importance of pleasure and that feminism in and of itself is not a moral position? Because I believe that the transformations feminism must enact in order to be effective must happen at both an individual and a communal level, I’m no longer a part of "us" and now I’ve got to leave you out of it?Fine, then. You just give me a list of things you guys have a good handle on and don’t need any more help with–you know, the problems you have under control–and I’ll gladly leave you to your successes.
Welcome to the dark side, sugartits. Let me smack you on the ass on your way to the kitchen.That’s a good girl.
Shoot, darlin’, if I had known that getting kicked out of feminism would cause you to want to put your hands on me, I would have lied and told you I was kicked out of feminism months ago!Now, be a dear and change my oil for me.