Because both Ilyka and I are masochists, she has created Blog Against the Strawfeminist Week, and I intend to promote the crap out of it.
First, go here: Click on all the intro screens at least once, because they’re effing hilarious as well as informative. (Just click on the bottom line of each screen.)
When you’re done, or if you’re one of those freaks that likes to read the last page of a mystery novel before you read the book, you can start here.
What is a Strawfeminist? Well, Rush Limbaugh calls her a feminazi (a word I loathe). Sean Hannity calls her a radical feminist. Jeff Goldstein says she’s an identity politician. Most conservative bloggers call her a cap-F feminist. Conservative female bloggers insist they are not, have never been, and will never be feminists — even while they enjoy the fruits of feminism’s struggles, and take for granted the rights that were handed to them by their older sisters and mothers. In fact, when you point out to conservative anti-feminists that they wouldn’t be lawyers or doctors or the professionals they are without feminism, they tend to change the subject rather abruptly. Or simply not reply.
None of these descriptions resemble feminists or feminism. Conservatives take the fringe and use them to tar all feminists with the same brush. They go on and on about how the fringe is not the fringe, because it’s leading NOW or some other women’s organization. They say that feminists never protested radical Islam’s treatment of women, when a simple look at feminist websites would have found dozens of articles against the Taliban, against the treatment of Muslim women, against the treatment of women in Bosnia, in Darfur, in Afghanistan, in Iran, in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia — but it’s a lot more fun to build a Strawfeminist and say she has never protested the Muslim world’s mistreatment of women, because then you can bash feminists with your Strawfeminist argument. Never let the facts get in the way a good rant, eh?
So, fellow feminists: Feel free to join us in our Blog Against the Strawfeminist Week. Great idea, Ilyka.
I’m in.
And the first entries: The opening salvo. Strawfeminists I have known. Expect much gnashing of teeth from the usual suspects in the comments to Ilyka’s posts.