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.
I would consider myself conservative, and probably “mainstream” conservative, but I’ve never considered all feminists the same. I always thought the terminology “radical feminist” or “feminazi” was to make a distinction between feminists who simply support womens’ rights, and those who try to mingle radical ideas with the rest of feminism. I’m sorry to hear that female conservatives might have a problem with the term feminist — I would consider most of them feminists as I assume they expect the same social and political rights in general as any man would receive.
Thus I wouldn’t know the point of the term “strawfeminist,” unless I actually am out of touch with the mainstream conservative crowd (and perhaps out of touch with my out-of-touchness). I don’t listen too often to Limbaugh or watch Hannity (I guess that might qualify me as out of touch), so perhaps they do set up “strawfeminists” in arguments against feminism in general, but it would be quite shocking to me if I were to find out that such ideas were widely accepted…
Click on the links, Jeremiah. Read the blogs that Ilyka is linking to.
The point of the term “strawfeminist” is that conservatives deliberately misrepresent feminism, and then use their own made-up strawfeminist arguments to say “See? Toldja they’re all man-hating lesbians!”
Again. Read the links. And the posts. You want information? Get some.
Reminds me of a woman in a class I take at the JCC. She’s a psychologist, very active in the community, with two kids at home, clearly leading a life she would not be able to lead without the efforts of Betty Friedan, Steinem, et al. You might say she has it all. And she won’t keep quiet about how feminism has destroyed society by giving women the “false expectation” that they can “have it all.”
Talk about self-hating…
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