I don't even know anymore. There are many feminists who are good people, and many feminists who are unbearable. Oftentimes I find third-wave feminism to be quite petty and infuriatingly Amerocentric. So many different feminisms to choose from, too. Many of them where "the belief that men and women are equal and should be treated that way" has very little to do with the things that motivate them on a daily basis. There are plenty of double-standards that contradict that, too, from the way men can be objectified, but women cannot be, to defending Islam while loathing Western Christianity.
Of course, it's really impossible to hash these contradictions out, because every other feminist has a different idea of what the word means to them.
I stopped calling myself a feminist when it became clear to me that feminism was not being used by the ones with the megaphones as a way of empowering all women to do and say what they please, because empowering people to think and act freely is not a good way of perpetuating a movement. That kind of thing disperses pretty quickly. Instead you want people to think exactly like you. So it morphs into an ideology, with a strict dogma of its own. It develops specific moral codes and recommended behaviors. Suddenly you don't want women to choose whatever they want to do, you want them to choose what you want them to do. You want to build political power and influence when given opportunities, so naturally you defend people who you perceive as on your "team" like shameless hacks. And so it all snowballs into something very uncomfortable and weird that I want nothing to do with. Statements like "
feminism is not about personal choice" really put me off, even as someone who understands where the sentiment behind that statement is coming from. At times it's really made me do some serious introspection on my identity as a Socialist.
There are so many feminists who have been enabled by the internet's ease of access who say and do bats**t things and you can't call them out for it. It's almost impossible. Disagreement is frequently perceived as attack (often because they do receive unfair attacks, and so they group them all together in their mind) and feelings make reality. Unfalsifiable social theories masquerade as hard science and suddenly we're talking about shaming undesirable media out of existence. I didn't sign up for a new moral majority, I wanted a skeptical, free-thinking, self-determining rallying cry. That's what feminists often say it is, and many probably sincerely believe. But this is often not how those with the influence express their positions.
I don't know. It's a weird thing. I will say that Crabcake makes a good point, if not necessarily intended to be the direction the point was going for. First and Second wave feminism are both vastly overrated. This is often done by MRAs in particular as a rhetorical device to talk some stupid nonsense about how "feminism has lost its way" or whatever. In reality, all waves of feminism have been infested by the classists, the racists, the hysterical, the warmongers and the peaceniks, the rabidly anti-sex, and so on. In comparison to those waves, I do agree the current wave is much preferred. But even so, there are aspects of it that I find troubling and conflict with my inquisitive nature.
I will always support the equality of the sexes. By which I mean, I will interact with and judge people irrespective of their gender, and advocate for equal protection under the law, as well as equal opportunities for both in all fields. I don't think of my position on gender rights as really being "left" or "right." Embellishing statistics, regulating personal relationships, criminalizing words, shaming media you don't like out of existence, it's just not my thing. As a baby liberal teenager I was always told that was what the authoritarian Right did, and us liberals wouldn't let that happen. I was very naive.
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