Feminism:
Activity or theories concerned with the interests of women. There
are, and have been, many kinds of feminism. One convenient starting point for
feminist theories - though she had precursors - is the 18th Century Mary
Wollstonecraft, who wrote an admirable 'On the Rights of Woman'.
Since then there have been many feminists, of many kinds and motivations,
although in Europe and the U.S. one historically understandable reason for
women to be interested in furthering the rights of women is that women for a
long time had fewer rights than men, and were also, for example for Biblical
reasons, considered to be inferior to men, and to be divinely ordained to be a
man's 'helpmeet' rather than equal, both in law and in religion.
Though I can sympathize with quite a lot of the earlier feminism and
feminists - such as Emma Goldman, who was an admirable and brave
character and also a prominent anarchist - I can not sympathize with
the modern feminism that arose in the late 1960-ies, and soon turned into a
combination of theoretically very woolly and confused
postmodernism and a practical
totalitarianism, rather reminiscent of
racism or George Orwell's sheep in 'Animal Farm': 'Two feet bad!
Four feet good!' or in modern feminist terms as I experienced them 'Cunts and
tits good! Cocks and balls bad!' ('you macho patriarchical pigs!'), and also
often an adjunct to political lesbianism, at least in the academic and
university circles where I met these crusaders for a career in the name of
feminism.
And as I indicated: Two things which really apalled me in much of modern
feminism, and convinced me that women on average are neither more intelligent
nor more moral than men (whereas I, being a male hetero-sexual, tend naturally to
admire and like women more than men, all on average, and with personal
exceptions), are the incredibly fanatical
totalitarianism of much of modern feminism, and the fact that the whole
movement has panned out to help a small percentage of women, usually
already descendant from privileged upperclass families, to get some privileged
job males had, and forced a large percentage of lower- and
middle-class women into becoming wage-slaves under capitalist working conditions,
supposedly 'to emancipate' them, though it factually worked out so as to
divest them from rights they had, such as being able to take care properly of
their own children, instead of having to work as wage-slaves in factories or
menial jobs for meagre payment, and to earn money to send their children to
care-takers, so they might work and be 'emancipated', say as a seamstress or
cleaner.
Also, it is a sad comment on the average intelligence of female feminist
academics (though it is undoubtedly neither better nor worse than the also far
from perfect or enlightened average male academic intellect) that so much of
modern feminist theory ended up as some form of highly pretentious utterly loony
Postmodern 'Theory' - and whoever can
swallow that and believe it, might as well have a prefrontal lobotomy, for
this stuff is both incredibly boring and unreadable; extra-ordinarily
pretentious; and without the least intellectual or indeed emancipatory merit.
Though yes: It has helped a few
postmodernistic mystery-mongering women - say: Ms. Judith Butler - to highly paid academic
jobs. And that is the only 'good' postmodern feminist 'Theory' has done, besides intellectually
darkening and confusing the minds of many well-meaning but none too bright
female followers of the postmodern nonsense.
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