My brain just exploded.

[grimreaperkitty]

Phew. Earlier, LJ didn't want to post this for some reason and I was afraid I'd lost it. Hooray for saving drafts!

A long ramble on subjects such as these: literature, feminism, the ness-es of the experience of writing, my self-orientation in my contexts, introspection, speaking out, acting out, reading and book-vampirism, and unpacking.

Comments

[grimreaperkitty]

Aha! 'Feminist' is a dirty word, isn't it? Nobody wants to be called it because it seems to mean 'man-hater'. The more I get into the history of it all, the more I'm finding that that characterization is wildly unfair and unproductive. It's supposed to be that middle point you're talking about -- every self-identifying feminist I've ever heard from says the same. Otherwise it's back to sexism.

And I think I'm at that middle point with you, and it's highly connected with the causes and results of my atheistic views. But I might be more radical in the fact that I think, for now at least, that 'roles' are a crap idea. But, basically, it's this: men, women, people who identify with neither specification -- we're all individuals who deserve respect and opportunity, but (white) men have held the privileged positions in society for so long that it's going to take some uphill work for that 'equality' to get spread out to everyone.

And I currently feel informed because in the last class meeting we watched a video about the roots of the feminist movement in the Midwest US and it was really eye-opening. I identified hard with the ladies who started things, and I won't argue that there aren't extremists but I'll always be looking to yank 'feminist' back into polite society where anybody can call themselves that and not be characterized as sexist towards men.

I can't imagine how much crap you get to deal with from some men with Bibles. And I really hate when enough of that trickles into government to affect me and women I know. That's a nice thing for atheism: I encounter far fewer guys who really think that women are inferior, but it's still a male-dominated philosophy publicly and they're still to different degrees steeped in the rest of society's bad attitudes. Happily, when we call them out on it, they don't have any higher authority to selectively interpret back at us, but some of them still react badly. My friend Jen just recently had a run-in with a guy who thought that a bikini contest was an appropriate activity for a conference of atheist/skeptic women.

Oof. I need to get to class. I meant to comment back on the first half of your post but that'll have to wait until later. (Thanks!)