Common Responses to Feminism and Some Comebacks

Common Responses to Feminism and Some Comebacks – by Wemoons Army
wemoonsarmyandfringe@yahoo.com

FEMINISTS HATE MEN:

People hate to be called on their sexist shit. When challenged, they often mistake their own discomfort for being hated. They may hate the confrontation and even hate the person who is challenging the sexist prejudice, hate the feelings of defensiveness-and PROJECT their own hatred onto the other.
It’s much easier to shrug off responsibility, defend privilege, and put it back onto feminists that it is to examine one’s programming, to admit ignorance, and be willing to change.
Most feminist have men in their immediate lives who they are friends and/or lovers. Even if they don’t, this is certainly not evidence of hatred. Even IF hatred was involved, feminists filled with hatred rarely, if ever, strike out. Many men, on the other hand, feel and show hatred through violence. Men often strike out at women. It is part of men’s training. Its called misogyny.
FEMINISTS WORK TO HEAL MISOGYNY.
FEMINISTS ARE HEALERS, NOT HATERS.
SOME MEN ARE FEMINISTS TOO.

FEMINISTS ARE ANGRY:

A LOT OF FOLKS ARE ANGRY – and should be! Women (there’s over 1/2 the population right there), blacks, browns, indigenous people, lesbians, gays, animals are RIGHT to be angry. Anger at Systematic oppression, brutality, neglect — misogynist, racist, capitalist brainwashing, destruction of the earth for profit of a few is valid. Many people mistake anger and passion for change as hatred. ANGER IS NOT THE SAME AS HATRED.

FEMINISTS ARE UGLY:

This insult is used because it really works – it scares many women into buying the theory that a woman’s worth is related to her attractiveness to others.
They call us ugly and this is a threat. They are threatening to withhold love, affection, acceptance, basic needs, sex, until we conform, look pretty, flirt. They do withhold it, too.
If you stand up for women’s right to thrive, and believe a woman should be valued deeply, beyond the surface, then you risk being the boogey woman.
Beauty has been defined by the elite while UGLY has become the norm in this world. Bashed bodies of women, girls puking up food into toilets, bald clear cut mountains and brown lifeless waters are UGLY. The BEAUTY of the natural world and the BEAUTY of a warm heart is what is being destroyed.

FEMINISTS ARE HAIRY:

People are hairy, except maybe children. Why are women expected to remain childlike?
Hair??? Why must we be so SHALLOW?
Lets go deeper…

FEMINIST LOOK LIKE MEN:

Feminists come in all shapes and sizes and colors. Butch women, women who resemble the male gender, live complicated lives because they make a giant step outside the NORM, the prescribed costume and behavior for the female gender. This is a challenge to gender stero types. Challenging rigid gender guidelines helps to destroy our sexist limitations.

FEMINISTS ARE MALE BASHERS:

Interesting choice of words, “basher”. It conjures up a vision of rowdy women cruising the streets with baseball bats, hunting for male victims. Not reality at all!
Bashing is what happens to a women, in her own home, by the hands of her own man. That is reality – and that is the reality that feminists aim to TRANSFORM through direct confrontation, cultural reform, education, creating alternatives and creating awareness.

FEMINISTS BRING THINGS TOO FAR, THEY’RE TOO RADICAL:

Without radical women pushing forward we would have stagnation in old, repressive traditions. Without radical feminists we wouldn’t be able to ride bikes, wear pants, wear our hair short, work for money, live single and unmarried, fuck who we want, when and how we want.
Give us some credit and get out of our way.

FEMINISTS THINK WOMEN ARE BETTER THAN MEN:

Feminists I admire agree that all hierarchy is oppressive and we should transform this entire idea structure. No one is better than any one-else. We are all unique biological and social creations. Everyone has the right to pure food, clean water and air, shelter, health care, affection, validation, love. Everyone has a right to think freely, gather information to make good decisions, and everyone has the right to make life choices which are not predetermined by sex, or race.

FEMINISTS ARE WHITE. FEMINISM IS IRRELEVANT TO PEOPLE OF COLOR:

Equal rights, sexual stereotyping, childcare, abortion rights, equal pay, sexual harassment, sexual violence, health care, self-defense, physical safety, and deconstructing patriarchal death culture concerns ALL.
Sexist oppression effects brown women and white women differently. Our femaleness can still be a strong bond. Working on racist and classist oppression is essential within feminism.

FEMINISTS HAVE NOTHING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT–OUR SOCIETY IS PRETTY MUCH EQUAL NOW:

Violent and sexist imagery bleeds into our consciousness incessantly! There is sexist propaganda on TV, in magazines, on billboards, on the radio. We experience violence at home, and violence and threat of violence in the street. Women have a curfew of dark, just like in a war zone. All men are potential cops policing us. Let us not forget about Bulimia, Anorexia, Sexual abuse, Rape, Unequal $$$, Poverty, Exploitive Sex Industry.
We live in a divided world. Women are not living in a reality where we can thrive. We are being used and abused, in the U.S. – everywhere. Many men in many countries consider women property. Third world women are working as slave labor for corporations, making profit for the greedy earth-fuckers. Women have so far to go before we are free, before all people are free. No one is free until we all are.

FEMINISTS ARE HUMORLESS:

Feminists would have all committed suicide if they didn’t have a sense of humor, for the reality of sexism is grim and serious, not funny.
But we continue on…

ALL FEMINISTS ARE LESBIANS:

Some are. Some are not. Big fuckin deal. Feminists value women. Feminists are women who love women. Some have primary emotional, political bonds with women. Some feminists are women who love women sexually. Some feminists love men sexually. Many love (in any/all of these ways) both, and love folks who are neither.
Love is Love is Love.
Sex is nobody’s biz except the consenting adults.

FEMINISTS ARE SELF-LABELED:

Many radical women dislike the term “feminist”. Many do not feel represented by the media’s portrayal of feminism. The word’s meaning is broad, somewhere on the scale of meaningless to derogatory. Usually others label you a feminist, like it or not. If you love women, see injustice, act out, then you will probably be labeled, so might as well claim and embrace it. FEMINIST.

FEMINISTS ALL AGREE ON WHAT THEY WANT:

There are many feminist theories. One strand that weaves us together is that we strive to think critically about our predicament, about our social training, about our future. We work for change.

PRAISE AND THANX FOR RADICAL FEMINISTS:

People say to me, “You should be thankful! Women here in America have it better than women anywhere else in the world!” This only makes me more determined to work for change.
I think of all women as sisters. I don’t want ANY one of my sisters being raped , slaved, snuffed, stoned, stunted, chopped up, burnt up or ignored.
I say, yeah, I’m thankful- thankful to the women in the past who have worked and sacrificed and put all of their energy into recreating women’s roles. Human rights were not given to us, they were fought for. Radical women took them, and they were punished. They have been ostracized, murdered, raped, humiliated, jailed and burned. Our ansisters fought on. We must remember them, thank them, and bring their work forward. Feminists must continue to fight. WE must work to keep the ground we have already won, and to forge ahead, until every woman is born free, with choices. We must work together, and work to understand each other’s complex and layered lives.
We will work until every woman is nurtured into a free thinking being, acting and growing up to be a valued, healthy, thriving, individual, developing passions and talents according to her own unique being.
Women make up the bottom of the PATRIARCHAL-HIERACHAL pyramid. If we walk out, the whole thing crumbles.