Cats, sleep, Dragon's Ring.

[davefreer]

Barbs has been with my mum for a few days (back now, TG) and the furkids have been rather all over me. So when La Duchesse was conspicious by her absence last night (and she does things HER way, so this is not surprising, really) I got my nickers in a twist and didn't do a lot of sleeping going out looking for her a couple of times etc. Of course

Comments

[alphastk]

Thanks for the reminder, Dave. Dropped by Amazon to pre-order Dragon's Ring and Sorceress of Karrs.

Can't think of much to add to your view of feminism since I share your viewpoint on the issue. Obsessive feminazi zealots who go way off the deep end strike me as narrow minded folks that can hold only one issue in their head at a time and thus end up seeing "oppression" in everything. This, of course, simply leads to another kind of bigot. Pathetic examples of human bias and stupidity, in my opinion.

[unixronin]

Unfortunately a lot of the "feminazis" seem to be about finding someone THEY can discriminate against, and, like all bigots, are totally blind to their own bigotry. I've run into self-professed "feminist" zealots who I've found to be every bit as repellent as the most fervent skinhead neo-Nazi or Klansman-wanna-be.

(Ironically, one of these was a post-op transie who actually made a point of explicitly declaring that she despised men so much because she was quite certain every male just HAD to be every bit as much of a total asshole as she had been before she decided to go the transgender route. Gotta love that logic - "I'm a raging asshole, therefore you must be an asshole too." The only part of the train of logic I agreed with her on was that she was, indeed, a complete asshole.)

[reverancepavane]

Feminism still hasn't won it's fight, even in the so-called West. [As for elsewhere... ] As with most forms of discrimination, there is still an awful lot of innate prejudice left to overcome, but a lot of the radical feminists actually make the situation worse with their own prejudices. For instance at a local University the entire Department of Women's Studies went rather ... insane ... when a man tried to enroll in a subject (he was apparently honestly interested in the topic offered). Then again, until this actually blew up I never realised we had an actual Department of Women's Studies (they were, shall we say, rather insular and self-reinforcing in their viewpoint).
One of the reasons I like SF so much is that the "us vs them" mentality tends to concentrate on humans vs aliens (and the better SF usually wants to hurry up and include the aliens with the us ASAP and then go off and find new aliens to become us as well).

[unixronin]

As with most forms of discrimination, there is still an awful lot of innate prejudice left to overcome, but a lot of the radical feminists actually make the situation worse with their own prejudices.
My point exactly. As in almost any controversial cause, there's always that subset of people "supporting" it who make you want to say, "Hey, do me a favor and get offa my side, willya? You're not helping."

[davefreer]

fanatics tend to become so absorbed in their agenda that it DOES affect their whole lives, and everything is viewed through that lens. "Can I give you a cup of tea?" becomes a slur on their independence, an insulting trivialisation of years of bondage etc... instead of something I'd say to my brother, the electrician, my partner etc. Like crying wolf too often, it doesn't help. And the trouble is after a while it taints the entire group. As you say, it is something that people who want the ideals of femininism to succeed ought to get rid of. It harms much more than helps.

[davefreer]

Hmm. Woman's studies -- was that where they put on an interesting display of 'we can be pre-1910 MCP-clones with vaginas' - where they refused to let the guy in, went on strike and eventually had apartheid-style classes. I thought that was in the US.

[davefreer]

Never let an agenda - any agenda - totally take over your life. That way lies madness. The trouble is such people often rise to the top of any movement or organisation -- be it ever so good in origin, and can actually make others dissociate themselves. I've seen it here with ANC - who started with a quest for racial equality, and had my and lot of other solid folk's support. Now...only the fanatics and their cronies remain, and corruption has come with it.

[ext_64262]

One particularly nasty manifestation of this is the bitter, hateful idealist who embraced his -- or her -- ideals so tightly that somewhere along the line, "That Which Could Be" became "That Which Must Be." Naturally, the idealist ended up repeatedly frustrated (and increasingly embittered) at every turn because the world just wouldn't pull its head out of its arse, see his Inevitable Logic, and start living up to his ideals. The only people this person hates worse than the ignorant masses who rejected his logic are the people on his own side, who he feels let him down somehow. He's convinced his fellows bear the bulk of the blame for things not working out because either they lacked his specific level of commitment to the Cause, or they "betrayed" the Cause in some way, shape, or form.