Feminism's Big Tent

So in my post on the seemingly contradictory relationship between bondage and feminism,  I said that feminism has been good for bondage, helping create the necessary freedom of choice that makes bondage a fun game for everybody.

"But," some of you may be thinking, "I hate feminism and feminists. They are always going down on men and calling porn a bad thing and trying to make us feel bad for being sexually attracted to women, or this or that sort of woman. WTF?"

It's a fair question, and the apparent difference between me and those who think like that feminism is bad is a product of a different vision of feminism I think.

Feminism is a big tent. There are hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of women who identify as feminists. Many women identify as feminists for very shallow reasons, just as many people identify as Republicans or Democrats for very shallow reasons. A lot of moms buy their daughters Wonder Woman underoos and cheer on equal pay for equal work and are against rape and more access for day care for working mothers, and that's about the extent of their feminism. This is probably (I don't really know, but it seems a reasonable guess) the majority of self-described feminists.

Somehow, I don't think these are the women whom you were thinking of, when you thought, "I hate feminism and feminists."

The ones you were thinking of, I suspect, were the more extreme feminists, perhaps academics who say things like "All men are rapists" and calling just about everything that happens between a man and a woman rape, and for outlawing porn. Those feminists.

What you need to know is that those feminists constitute a TINY portion of women who think of themselves as feminists, and that they fucking LOVE it when you conflate the two. They love it when people think they speak for all women who consider themselves feminists, even though the Wonder Woman mom feminists might not agree with most of what the extremist feminists have to say.

They love it of course because if the extremist feminists positions are uncritically accepted as the position of feminists as a whole then that amplifies the extreme feminists' voices enormously. They speak for multitudes!

They also love it because when you say, "I hate feminism and feminists" you are punching yourself in the face. You are picking a fight with every woman that thinks of herself as feminist, which means you will almost certainly lose. And you're doing it by opposing people who might find your ideas agreeable, and who might dislike the extreme feminists as much as you do. Congratulations, you're doing just what the extreme feminists want you to do.

Remember, feminism is a big tent. Don't fight the whole tent if you don't have to. I would say, oppose the feminist policy, not feminism. For example, I'm down with equal pay for equal work, opposing rape and sexual harassment, better and more child care for working women, and equal opportunities for women generally (i.e., opposed to the glass ceiling).

But I'm also opposed to letting transgender athletes compete in sports where the layout of their bodies because of the gender they were born with gives them a large advantage over people who are not transgender. I'm against assuming a man is a rapist because he is a man. I think some women can and will make false rape allegations against men, and that this needs to be taken into account when a woman accuses a man of rape or sexual harassment. But I also think that many claims of rape and sexual harassment do have something real to them, and should be investigated thoroughly. Some guys have gotten away with too much shit in real life for too long. Jeffrey Epstein is not alone.

These are nuanced positions, not easily encapsulated by "I hate feminism" or "I am a feminist." But they're mostly me trying to go with evidence and scientific proof, and trying to be fair.

But overall, I'm very comfortable saying that I am a feminist, and generally sympathetic to feminism, even though I know that SOME women who describe themselves as feminists and have leadership positions within the feminist movements would despise me just for having a sexual kink for maledom/femsub. It's a big tent, I feel comfy here.

As for those extreme feminists, I will go with trying to minimize them and discredit their ideas, where appropriate. I'm far from the only self-described feminist who doesn't care for them.