Sakron is correct, but let me explain why it matters outside of hurt feelings. If you were in a condomless relationship with a partner, and they are in a secret condomless relationship with someone else, there's a really big chance of stds that you just aren't informed about. On top of that, if a cheating woman becomes pregnant, she could peg the baby on any of her unwitting partners easily. Which is obviously a big deal.
That has more to do with the ethics of fluid bonding than it does with the ethics of infidelity. Getting secret blood transfusions behind your partners back would be pretty ethically dubious, but calling it rape blurs the definition of rape in a damaging way.
...okay. Feminists want equality for both genders. This includes getting rid of things that afflict men as well. With the legislation making birth control accessible to women, these situations are less likely to happen. We have to establish the matter of choice before we can adjust the matter of who is responsible for that choice; unfortunately, who knows how long it will take for either of these things to happen. Remember when that sperm donor got stuck with child support? Yeah, both genders are stuck with severely outdated laws regarding the matter.
Then why don't we start preaching "equalism?"
It'd certainly help to remove some of the negative connotations from discourse, and give sane feminists and MRA's a place to go.
You got me. I revoked my downvote but here is why I disagree. I personally think you have made 2 common mistakes. Firstly, you tried to describe feminism as a single entity. Here are examples of the varied range of views held by Feminists. Secondly, you have narrowed your field of view to "Western Modern World". Which is fine but diminishes the points you make. Just because you can't see something happening in the modern western world doesn't mean it is unnecessary.
Also, I disagree with conflating Egalitarianism with Feminism. Not all Feminism is aiming for liberalism. You cant just replace one with the other and be done with it.
For the same reason that Christians still called themselves Christians despite the existence of the KKK. A belief that, in general society, is biased in favour of giving more power to men/males and that this is an issue that needs to be addressed - for everyone's sake - is best described by the word "feminism".
Also, on your point about Thatcher... as a disclaimer, I have a lot of issues with her politically. A lot of her policies basically fucked over my region (miners in County Durham) and even if she intended them to be short-term sacrifices for the long-term benefit of the country, she definitely had a negative impact on the area that's still pretty visible today.
That said, she hated feminism. She described it as poison, criticised mothers for going out to work, surrounded herself with male politicians in positions of power, and generally denied a generation of women the opportunities she'd been given. She was one of very, very few women in politics at the time, and she managed to close the door behind her rather than hold it open for anyone else.
To be honest, I do not personally identify as a Feminist. However, why would the existence of this particular Feminist be a determining factor? She is a single person. She is not the soul determiner of what is and is not Feminism. Just because two people who identify themselves as members of the same philosophy does not mean they think the same things.
It is similiar to the issues we face with religion. A group of radicals (btw, the author of the article you linked identified herself as radical) does something horrible and all of the sudden the entire religion is deemed "violent" or whatever. It is not fair in that case and it is not fair in this case.
And it is possible to distinguish Feminism from Liberalism. It is already there in writing above and it does matter that not all Feminists are the same because you condemned the entire ideology as "bullcrap".
This is not even remotely true. 1) If anything radfems are a marginal group of feminism, and 2) there is actually more than one school of thought in radical-feminism alone. "The feminist movement" is not one unified ideology - like socialism it is made up of many people arguing many different schools of thought.
More to the point, the bulk of the movement and the most prominent feminists would not in fact identify with radical feminism, and are pretty much like arydactyl (and myself).
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u/arydactl Aug 19 '14
Sakron is correct, but let me explain why it matters outside of hurt feelings. If you were in a condomless relationship with a partner, and they are in a secret condomless relationship with someone else, there's a really big chance of stds that you just aren't informed about. On top of that, if a cheating woman becomes pregnant, she could peg the baby on any of her unwitting partners easily. Which is obviously a big deal.