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First of all, I wanna put down the argument as to why we need feminism and identity politics currently. I spend a lot of time in my own progressive-leftist bubble so I do often forget there are people who equate feminism to some sort of bizarre man-castrating secret order. I do genuinely understand why some men get this idea; for instance with the "Hugh Mungus" incident, where a woman willfully chooses to be upset by this man's fairly innocuous comment that--according to him--was referencing his weight. It was a stupid over reaction.
Moving on from that, I'd like to put it to the forum that 'feminism' has a definition. There is this argument from MRAs that feminism exists to make men subservient. This is of course bollocks, and to just clarify what feminism is, here's the dictionary definition:
***Put_definition_here***
I think this lays it down fairly clearly and simply; feminism is simply the want and fight for equality between the sexes. It is not a crusade against men, it is not even a binary argument. All feminists want is for women, men, intersex etc. to be equal in society and economically. It's a fairly specific definition, it leaves little up for debate. There's no ulterior motive, no subtext, just plain and simple, "we want gender/sex equality".
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For many, the definition of feminism is different than yours, and quoting the simplest one (which, I agree, should be the standard) might not give you the results you want. Those people like the aforementioned Zarna Joshi and other less mentally stable do call themselves feminists, yet they fight for superiority, not equality.
Equality is also a word that can be described in almost any way. For me the true equality is cloning. Clones are equal, more or less.
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So, I'm hoping that will allay the go to 'argument', "but but, I've seeeeeen femiNAZIS on the internet," because I think it clearly shows that if a woman on a shaky youtube video is screaming 'death to men', she's not a feminist.
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That's funny, because the woman on a shaky youtube video screaming 'death to men' does consider herself a feminist. Maybe she doesn't even consider *you* as a true feminist.
Jokes aside, there's a reason for the recent heck-ton of intellectually dishonest feminists start popping up in America saying things they say.
That is, the situation where there's no need for feminism in America.
There's no real wage gap between men and women, women can vote, they can run for presidency (and lose, if they're morally bankrupt puppets of big corporations) be astronauts, millionaires, go to war,
do mass presentations about how being morbidly obese is not a bad thing and you should just accept it, pretty much do anything.
That situation causes problems. There are many, many employed people that get paid for fighting inequality among men and women. What do these people do when all the major problems have been resolved? They try to grasp to their jobs as long as they could, desperately attempting to justify their employment with more and more bullshit reasons.
Same applies with other, more developed countries. Meanwhile, numerous women get beaten by their husbands on a regular basis in Saudi Arabia, and Turkey
is planning a bill that a man gets cleared from statutory rape if he marries the victom. Those issues are what will never be mentioned by the people in previous paragraph, because there's no money in trying to fight it for them.
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With that in mind, can anyone say feminism is a bad thing?
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In the same way as someone can say communism is a bad thing, despite being so great in theory for many people.
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Now then, 'identity politics' have been turned into a buzzword, with the fascists (and I refuse to call them 'alt-right' just like they refuse to use G/N pronouns) and Breitbart/Fox listeners using the term to discount the trend for politically conscious minority groups to form their own blocs. It's the same way the term, 'triggered' has been hijaked and normalised by the right
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It wasn't exactly 'hijacked' by the right. It was being used by
this clearly over-exaggerating woman (I think she considers herself a feminist, but I'm not 100% sure on that), and people thought the sole idea of comparing shell-shock to just being fat is so ridiculous they started mocking it by using the word the same way. It's not the right who came with the original comparison.
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Unfortunately, the hardest thing to do when someone gets upset when their pronouns are misused, or when minorities fight their corners so hard, is to be understanding. I'm lucky in the sense that I am a white woman, so therefore I have an inbuilt sense of 'privilege' (groooooan I know, but just hear me out) which sometimes makes me naive to the struggles of other people. For instance, a black Xhosa speaking lesbian woman in England will face more adversity than I do. So will a trans-woman undergoing gender reassignment, who has had to repress who they are for years because of their religious parents. Some people on the left often try to turn people's problems into a hierarchy, but there's such a danger of simplifying and trivialising people's issues by doing this, you're only gonna make people side against you.
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I do understand the people who aren't willing to learn
at least 50 new words just to be able to refer to that person, it's ridiculous. I don't, however, understand the people who get instantly pumped up when a stranger uses a non-bullshit one, while the stranger didn't even know they're trans and
just assumed their gender.