Today’s laughable celeb story in Britain concerns a woman TV
magazine presenter who tweeted a picture of herself wearing no make up. She has
been accused by newspaper columnist Liz Jones, a journalist with a fashion
background, of being ‘anti-feminist’ and ‘betraying all womankind.’
Well now, I haven’t read the newspaper article so I can’t
comment in detail, but it does raise the odd question like ‘is Liz Jones maybe losing
the plot here?’ But the bigger question it raises with me is ‘so what’s wrong
with being anti-feminist anyway?’
Please make no mistake: the Suffragettes are among my
historical heroes. I greatly respect the feminine principle. I fully support equality
and women’s rights (as long as they don’t irrationally hijack greater
humanitarian principles, as they occasionally do.) I regard sexual offences
against women as being among the very worst of crimes. I’m not even strictly
anti-feminist. The problem for me is what happens when a movement becomes an ism.
At that point it takes its seat on the board of the Liberal Mafia. It becomes
myopic and totters uneasily astride the line separating reason from hysteria.
It takes on the guise of a religious sect, declaring ‘we are right, and if you
disagree you are definitively evil.’
I suppose it would be true to say that my attitude to the
wilder end of Feminism is similar to the view a Humanist might hold of an
extreme religious sect – tolerant until the bigotry begins to hurt the
innocent.
And whatever happened to Post Feminism?
3 comments:
As a teenager I was a militant everything, it was all unfair, someone was to blame and it must be men, white men most of all. As time went on I grew tired of scapegoating and realised that I am responsible for my life, we are responsible for our own lives. That's why I don't like the isms and feminism is one of them.
Feminism has for the most part become a characture (I know I spelled that wrong) of itself and all the original reasons for equality have vanished. It makes me the saddest when women bash each other forgetting that having the right to be a certain way is more important that how one does it. I am certainly for equal rights, although that has become such a buzz word and kind of lost it's meaning and turn away from any hard core feminists.
I think any comment from me would be redundant. Thank you both.
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