Elisabella
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quote:
ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
quote:
ORIGINAL: Elisabella
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
Elisabella,
I was wondering, do you agree with the general thrust of the arguments stated on this webpage?
http://degreesofmoderation.blogspot.com/2008/04/conservative-feminist-defined-holds.html
It's a site that tries to define 'conservative feminism'.
Yes, definitely. There are a few points that I'm iffy about, but the vast majority of their beliefs are mine as well.
Thanks for the link BTW. 
Then, you are a feminist, Elisabella. You're not an anti-feminist, though you may well be an anti-radical-feminist. Your blog focuses a great deal on radical feminists and this branch is a long way from mainstream feminism. To exemplify feminism as a whole by citing the likes of Andrea Dworkin is like lumping Gordon Brown, or the average trade unionist, in with Karl Marx.
Points three and four on that site state that a conservative feminist:
Demands equal pay for equal work.
Understands there are differences between genders. To deny biology is inherently imbecilic. Men are able to do many things that require strength that women either cannot or prefer not to do – Women are able to do many things given their biological make-up that men are incapable of doing. Celebrate who you are.
Those are very widely accepted by mainstream feminists. Re point four: Few are willing to state that everything, absolutely everything, about the differences between the sexes is down to nurture and not nature. It'll generally only vary in the matter of degree. On the other hand, re point three: the demand for equal pay for equal work still hasn't been satisfied and white, middle class, educated women may well be in a better position to know this than others. This is why such women, when they fight for equal pay may - completely legitimately - call themselves feminists. They can trace a very clear line from themselves right back to the Pankhursts and the other suffragists (who themselves were mainly white, educated and middle class).
As I said earlier, feminism is about women being able to be who they are and doing what they want to do. In setting up your blog, in writing here on this forum, you've benefitted from feminism. Yes, I know we owe the existence of computers and the Internet to a few men. Yet the problem's more fundamental. For instance, I know of schools in the UK that have only recently extended teaching of computing to girls. Without recent feminists doing their stuff, you may not now be typing on this forum nor, for that matter, even know what a forum is; or - perhaps more importantly - care.
In general, I don't believe that you're at all clear about who you're attacking when you set yourself against feminism as a whole!
It would be nice if that were true, but there's really nothing I've posted on this thread that would be contrary to anything listed on that site, so either everyone on this thread is a radical feminist or there isn't much place for conservative feminists under the general 'feminist' umbrella.
I also identify with plenty of things written by self-identified antifeminists:
quote:
Antifeminist writer Jim Kalb describes the stance thus:
To be antifeminist is simply to accept that men and women differ and rely on each other to be different, and to view the differences as among the things constituting human life that should be reflected where appropriate in social attitudes and institutions. By feminist standards all societies have been thoroughly sexist. It follows that to be antifeminist is only to abandon the bigotry of a present-day ideology that sees traditional relations between the sexes as simply a matter of domination and submission, and to accept the validity of the ways in which human beings have actually dealt with sex, children, family life and so on. Antifeminism is thus nothing more than the rejection of one of the narrow and destructive fantasies of an age in which such things have been responsible for destruction and murder on an unprecedented scale
I don't really see much difference between conservative feminism and antifeminism, except perhaps in degree. I don't think any mainstream antifeminists want to overturn legislation giving women equal legal rights. To me, antifeminism is anti-modern-day-feminism, not anti-all-feminism-throughout-history, because the feminism that Shakti and Lucienne and Aynne have defended on this thread seems to encompass the beliefs shared by most modern self-identified feminists.
Most women my age don't identify as feminists, which goes back to what I said earlier about the work of first-wave feminists (voting, working) and the work of second-wave feminists (equal pay for equal work) having been acutalized. Women do, on average, make less than men do but that's a reflection of different career choices for women. If you compare men and women in the same profession, same location, same education and same experience, that difference disappears. Honestly if you could hire a woman for 77% of the cost of hiring a man, who would hire men? It would be bad business.
So those women who do identify as feminists identify as active feminists - women who want to change our current society into a more feminist one. Antifeminism and conservative feminism both seem opposed to modern mainstream feminism.
I guess it's just a matter of terminology.
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