[Cathryn Crawford]

Let's keep it civil.

[Cathryn Crawford]

Your input would be appreciated.

[Arpege92]

Feminist organizations such as NOW serve no useful purpose what so ever! Women in organizations like NOW do nothing but use their politicall correct attitude as a bat to beat those who's opinions differ from their opinions.

[Mr. Mojo]

First, exactly what is the feminist ideology?

It posits that there are no differences between men and women other than reproductive ones. ...And it is wrong, of course.

[strela]

Here's my take:

First, exactly what is the feminist ideology?

In a nutshell, women are always perennial, innocent victims of the evil that men do.

Does it degrade women?

Sho nuff.

If so, how does it degrade women?

By spreading propaganda that women are some sort of special personages who cannot take care of themselves and will invariably be insulted, discriminated against, assaulted, or even killed by some man somewhere UNLESS they give a lot of money to the organizers of the feminist movement. (For their own protection, of course).

How (if at all) is it unfair in its treatment of men?

"Potential rapist"

"Guilty until proven innocent"

Those are two that come to mind.

[Lorianne]

Which feminist ideology and which branch? And which country? Feminism is not a univerasal monolith and it varies from country to country.

IWF, NOW and ifemenists are but a few of the various branches of feminism.

Feminists have a lot of diverse views. Some are pro-censorship, some are staunchly anti-censorship. Some are pro-2nd Ammendment, some are anit-gun. Most are pro-abortion but not all. Some are separationists (from men) but most are not.

I think you'd have to narrow your questions dowon considerably for a worthwhile conversation.

Likewise, here on Free Republic you people who's views range from feminist conservatives and moderates to people who believe the 19th Ammendment should be repealed and other extreme views.

Just like Conservatism and Liberalism, Feminism has its moderates and it's extremists.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

At the 1997 World Women's Conference the first speaker from England stood up: "At last years' conference we spoke about being more assertive with our husbands. Well after the conference I went home and told my husband that I would no longer cook for him and that he would have to do it himself. After the first day I saw nothing. After the second day I saw nothing. But after the third day I saw that he had cooked a wonderful roast lamb."

The crowd cheered.

The second speaker from America stood up: "After last years' conference I went home and told my husband that I would no longer do his laundry and that he would have to do it himself. After the first day I saw nothing. After the second day I saw nothing. But after the third day I saw that he had done not only his own washing but my washing as well."

The crowd cheered.

The third speaker from Australia stood up: "After last years' conference I went home and told my husband that I would no longer do his shopping and that he would have to do it himself. After the first day I saw nothing. After the second day I saw nothing. But after the third day I could see a little bit out of my left eye."

[gcruse]

When I see brilliant, highly placed women like Camille Paglia, Condoleeza Rice, and Justice O'Connor, I find it hard to believe feminism had anything to do with these women getting to where they are. But when I look at the roster of CEOs in American industry, the dearth of women there tells me the feminists may have a point.

Government (politics, really) has a way of doing things industry cannot because government needs the woman's vote, so it makes an effort to be more inclusive. Industry is a harder master, with ingrained prejudices. The Augusta hoo-ha and the PGAs shudderingly divisive inclusion of a female golfer provide plenty of fodder for the feminists.

The feminists, for their part, lost their credibility by embracing the demeaning oral onanism of a Democratic president simply because of his politics.

A pox on their house, but they are not totally wrong.

[William Terrell]

If so, how does it degrade women?

Feminism encourages women to more like men rather than more like women. The latter is natural and the former is impractical. To dilute what one is, with what one is not, is to degrade her.

[Long Cut]

If we are referring to the facet of feminism propounded by such rocket scientists as Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, and carried on today in the political arena by NOW and other radical groups, here's what I see:

They seem to absolutely HATE the fact that they were born female, with all the attendant features, and spend much energy attempting to deny that any difference between males and females exists, therefore;

They are as obsessed with abortion as any prolife zealot. The reason, as it does with the prolifers, escapes me.

They simply swoon over lesbians;

They are frequently shrill, annoying, and unnatractive in the extreme, which leads to...

They despise women who use their natural (and sometimes unnatural) beauty to advance themselves.

Most importantly, however, is the fact that they seem to align themselves with every socialist/leftist cause which comes down the pike, such as environMENTALists, race warlords, and gungrabbers. They also never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity to criticize the enemies of the very country in the world in which their craziness was born...America. Their silence about the ravages of the Islaminazis, for example, is deafening. And damning, IMHO.

[dandelion]

Feminism in it's original form is a far cry from what we call feminism today. In it's early days, feminism valued the life-giving and civilising qualities of women, and it played heavily in the reform, abolition, and temperance movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Those early women would be horrified to hear what "feminists" today espouse - for today's "feminists" hate all things female. They devalue the life-giving nature of females, they denigrate the commitment and devotion of family, and they espouse a completely misogynistic viewpoint regarding sex, marriage and abortion. Sex? Do it. Marriage? Forget it. Children? Kill them.

The early feminists celebrated women; today's feminists hate women, and everything that women ever represented. NOW wishes the destruction of women themselves; after all, they espouse the complete erasure of gender, and the wholesale destruction of female preborn children. ,

It is the ultimate irony that early feminists considered homosexuality to be a threat to women's rights by virtue of the devaluation of women as partners in life; now, the biggest supporter of homosexual men are the women of NOW. These so-called feminists of today would be immediately disowned by the true feminists of yesteryear, for they would see them as they are; woman-hating, woman-killing, chauvinistic pigs.

[Sparta]

As I heard Rush Limbaugh say one time, feminism is just to ensure that ugly women get the same opportunities as beautiful women.

[Luis Gonzalez]

[Dan from Michigan]

Feminism was created so unattractive women and lesbians can have an advantage in life.

I'm only Half-joking.

[Quix]

HEY SUPER ESTEEMED WRITER . . .

Will give it a quick best shot . . .

First, exactly what is the feminist ideology?

DOUBT I'M THE ONE TO ANSWER THAT--but my impression of it is that poor neglected, abused, maligned, sidelined women are outraged at centuries of such and feel it their duty as women to rise up and make things right for women. And such goals and doings have also come to mean--doing virtually all the things to men they originally most hated about men doing to women.

Also, in the process, children have been tossed on the trash heap of inconvenience. And anyone or anything questioning the new female gestapo is immediately screamed at by all the media forces in society as demonic, hideous, beneath contempt; deserving of prison or nonexistence.

Does it degrade women?

WELLLLLLLLLLL, women--the best of them--around the best of men--were queens treated as queens. They had enormous clout, influence and other tangible benefits. They tended to get what they wanted when they wanted it how they wanted it. They were shining examples of their man's competence, survival skills and wealth acquiring skills. And they were also prime display cases for same.

They had quality jobs overseeing various household turfs as well as the rearing of children with the values of the household.

Now, the value is SELF, SELF, SELF and to blazes with all else and all details. ME, MY, MINE is the name of the game and the only game for any woman worthy to be called a woman.

When a woman turns all of life's relational transactions into business transactions--and then bitches to high heaven because she's 'still' being treated like an OBJECT--there's something dreadfully absent, nonexistent about her sane reality testing.

WOMEN STILL CANNOT SEEM TO GET IT THROUGH THEIR HEADS that THEY cannot have their cake and eat it too any more than men can. And, under the 'old system' they succeeded a LOT MORE in coming close to having their cake and eating it too.

Now, they have only themselves to blame for turning into shrewish objects held in contempt by virtually one and all--lonely, combative, competative, brittle, gritchy MOST DAYS OF THE MONTH etc.

If so, how does it degrade women?

THEY HAVE BECOME SCREACHING, whining, banshee COGS IN THE MECHANIZED MACHINE OF MORE OR LESS PURE BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS whether it's for sex, income, creative work, influence, whatever.

How (if at all) is it unfair in its treatment of men?

Men have become neutered wimps scarcely able or allowed to lick their own wounds, much less stand up and be and act like men in protective, leadership, providing sorts of ways.

Sorry--running out of gas and energy. It's a topic I could pontificate on for hours, otherwise. So, just as well!

Thanks for asking.

[stranger and pilgrim]

I saw a bumper sticker recently that said: "Feminism -- the radical notion that women are people."

[jmc813]

In a nutshell, it is a noble goal which has been hijacked. I compare it to the civil rights movement. Obviously, almost everybody wants to see equality for the races, but the majority in this country have a negative opinion of the NAACP. Same with the NOW hags. They're their own worst enemies.

[dark_lord]

I would argue thusly....

When there is a strong need, people will ban together for social change. In the case of feminism, it originally meant that women should have the right to vote, to run for political office, to compete in the job market for jobs, to own property in their own right, and to control property in their own right. This battle was fought right up through the '70s and won.

Here is the interesting point. Once an organization succeeds in its original goals, it either becomes morbund or it becomes infiltrated by radicals. In the case of feminism, as more and more of their goals were won, the mainstream women drifted away because there was no longer a need for organized lobbying and activism. They had won. But as they drifted away, the radicals (leftist man hating lesbian eco terrorists) took over the leadership positions in the feminist organizations. And thus we see what we have today.

Those of us who are old enough remember when feminism was simple: women should have the right to vote, to run for office, to get a job, to own and control property. Feminism today is all about pushing the homosexual leftist anti-Christian anti-conservative agenda.

[Abundy]

Re: Feminism -

For the most part the movement has lost all touch with reality. (see below) During a discussion in Constitutional Law II we were discussing the equal rights cases out of Mississippi involving using one physical standard for fire and police tests. After listening to several of the "spoon-fed" liberal females, who had never held a full-time job while attending their posh private schools, talk about how there is no difference to the sexes I raised my hand and requested all of their mailing addresses so I could invite them to my baby shower as I was going to run out and start trying to get pregnant.

After the uproar died down I then requested that the very liberal professor who weighed about 105 lbs. either drag or carry me across a 90 foot room (I weighed about 210 lbs) She advised she couldn't and I then explained that is the reason there was one physical standard and she had no business working in either law enforcement or the fire department.

After that uproar died down I requested someone to direct me to the clause in the Constitution that said everyone was allowed to hold whatever job they wanted. I further requested what Consitutional Authority stood for the proposition that an individual could tell a prospective employer what job the applicant is qualified to perform. After the shouting and name-calling stopped I requested that someone explain to me how equal rights can be interpreted to be equally qualified.

Needless to say I was not a very popular guy in my law school with the liberals...

___

In General:

There was a time when any number of non-male, non-caucasian groups/individuals did not have equal access to the machinations of power in this country.

Groups that came together to rectify that situation were needed at that time.

Individuals that wound up leading such groups came to love the power and access such leadership afforded. Now they must create issues in order to artificially sustain the groups in order to maintain their access to power.

An ugly undercurrent during this time is that these groups have become infested with individuals that, knowingly or not, espouse a desire for some variation of a Socialist, re-distribution of wealth, style government.

JMHO.

[wbill]

Good to hear from you again! How's the writing going?

A few questions about the feminist ideology - First, exactly what is the feminist ideology?

I think that it depends on who you ask. I think that the basic tenet originally could have been summed up with one word: "Equality". Personally, I think that many, if not most, women (for instance the IWF) still think that way - they acknowlege that there are differences between the sexes and ask to be treated separately but equally. Unfortunately, NOW has corrupted that message into "anything you can do, I can do better" and that's not always the case.

Does it degrade women? If so, how does it degrade women?

Going back to my first answer, feminism degrades women when "leaders" (or, I'd call them 'enablers') find out that in some (usually physical) cases, women, on average, cannot compete with men and demand that the current standards be lowered. Not only does this dilute the pool of people that are qualified to accomplish a task, but it also cheapens the success of the women who could compete on an even footing with men.

Fred Reed has done several excellent columns on women in the military. Fred tends to be fairly opinionated, and I don't always like what he has to say, but I think that he gets his facts right. This one might be worth looking at..... http://www.fredoneverything.net/MilMed.shtml

How (if at all) is it unfair in its treatment of men?

I think that the above-mentioned double standards are unfair. I also think that all of feminism is a pendulum - it was far in favor of men, then over-corrected in favor of women, and should eventually swing back.

Finally, I think that society changes by generations, not by laws and protests. By way of measure - my wife has her Masters and is thinking about her doctorate. My mother did not go to college, because "girls in her family didn't go to college". She went to business school, instead, and learned to be a secretary. My mother's mother didn't work because "Women in her family didn't belong in the workforce". It took WW II to change that attitude. Finally, my great-grandmother came to this country to escape an arranged marriage and worked as an indentured servant - two concepts that are fairly inconceivable today.

Change happens. Ya just gotta be patient. :-)