This so resonates with me, especially your observation that abortion either breaks your heart or hardens it. And your charity in your approach to the "patriarchy vs. feminism" school of thinking really dissects that ugly binary in the best way possible. We are indeed all made in God's image, and must remember that He wants ALL of us to be saved. Thank you!
Your path to seeing the validity of radical feminism is so similar to mine. As a Christian young woman, I abhorred feminism...especially radical feminism until I actually listened. I learned that I actually agreed with them and that I was one of them. My Christianity informs my radical feminism.
If i may speak narrowly to the anti-suffrage sentiments on the right.
They have a point. Men exclusively having the vote made the fundamental political unit the family rather than the individual. The destruction of this concept has been a disaster. I would go further, the feminizing of the state has similarly been a disaster. Female power, most functionally and more healthily exercised, is soft power - the matriarch who sees all, knows all, is revered, and works behind the scenes. It is embodied well in the character of the grandmother on Downton Abby.
That said, this cannot overcome the fundamental libertarian critique. Women, being subject to laws and the violence necessary to enforce those laws, must have a say in their creation. Many of the worse fears of the anti-suffragettes have come to pass but this cannot change this ground level truth.
There is an additional issue on suffrage, which is another reason why it was only ever men who voted. Expressed in modern form in the US, it's registration with the Selective Service. Historically, it has been almost exclusively men who paid with life and limb for their governments' decisions to wage war.
If American women had to register with the Selective Service in order to vote, I suspect most would opt to forego the vote. Men don't have that luxury.
The asymmetry is not lost on me but it's not something I'd advocate changing.
A society that sends its women to die in war is not a society that will survive. Additionally, the men who do go to die in war, whether they realize it consciously or not, do so primarily to keep the women from the war and to return from war to the women.
The issue is that if men engage in folly in their political choices, they are the ones who will end up paying the ultimate price for their folly - death, dismemberment, survivor's guilt, etc. Women may pay a price for folly as well, but it will never be the same price that men pay.
My abortion didn't break my heart at 17. The cause of the heartbreak is that no one cared enough to educate me about coercive men, my right to withhold consent, and birth control.
What has now broken my heart is that the son I had while in a catholic marriage and for whom I've busted my back providing for now chooses to blame me for every hardship we had.
30 years of love and sacrifice for nothing. Actually, having nothing would be better than receiving the raging abuse from my son.
Although not a Christian, I am coming to believe that most of our social ills are signs of a deep spiritual crisis. We are disconnected from nature, from physical reality, from community, and from each other. I think the disagreements around feminism revolve much more around words and less around ideas. The terms patriarchy and feminism are loaded terms that pack as much baggage as meaning. Clear communication and persuasion require an awareness of the impact of words on imparting concepts. Language that puts the other person on the defensive or implies guilt for the sins of others is not effective at building consensus.
I think most men for at least a couple of generations sincerely believe in and strongly support equal rights and opportunity for women, and many women don’t know of this, either because of the experience of abuse by brutes or by ideological brainwashing. Most of the men I know also have a strong innate drive to protect women and have a deep contempt, and indeed hatred for abusers. Healthy men also have a tenderness and sense of awe towards women that our culture requires us to hide, but any woman who has been very close to a good and decent man will have seen that.
Ultimately men and women need each other and to flourish we all need to stand together against the forces and ideologies that seem determined to alienate us all. We are awash in toxic ideologies that seek to diminish humans, divide us, and keep us at war with one another. Our way out of the trap is to think deeply, speak clearly, and stand by each other.
One of the reasons I like my Every Man's Bible is because it does not take that barbarically chauvinist approach to male-female relations. A lot of the sidebars and interpretations in it are about working together and honoring each other, and as I read through it I can't even imagine interpreting it any other way. I'm not here to dominate some poor girl. I love my wife and our daughter, and I love my mom and I want them to live in a world where they can make their own choices and pursue their own happiness.
"Men and women, patriarchy and feminism created the beast of the culture wars. Men and women must work together as equals to fix it."
"Amen" to that. Far too much "four legs good, two legs bad", too much "my tribe, right or wrong". Not enough, "we have seen the enemy, and he is us": 😉🙂
Though not sure I'd agree entirely with your conclusion -- "the answer to both extremes is freedom in Jesus" -- except maybe metaphorically as there are some durable principles in the religion and its antecedents.
In any case, some reason to throw some stones at both sides of the conflict, to say "a pox on both your houses". As you suggest, Walsh and company are to be faulted for some rather "regressive" stereotypes, and "feminism" for some questionable dogma of its own, yet both sides have some valid points.
Not sure if you follow Kara Dansky's Substack or not, but she's more or less a going concern in defending women's rights -- particularly against the depredations of various transactivists -- yet she too seems to be starting off from some questionable feminist dogma and toxic and largely untenable folk-biology of her own. For example, see this recent post of hers and the Amicus Curiae Brief brief she's filed in the L.W. v. Skrmetti case:
But of particular note is this bit from the summary of her brief:
Dansky: "Gender identity advocates and the lower court are confusing the public by conflating the words sex and gender, and this Court should correct that. Sex and gender are different things; sex is grounded in the material reality of biology and gender is the set of stereotypes imposed on people on the basis of sex, i.e., on the basis of being male or female. 'Gender identity' is directly grounded in sexist and regressive stereotypes."
Whole concept of gender and gender-identity is a dog's breakfast with virtually every last man, woman, and otherkin having different and quite antithetical definitions for both sex and gender. No wonder that everyone is riding madly off in all directions -- hardly conducive to much in the way of social progress.
But it's not just "Gender identity advocates and the lower court" who are conflating sex and gender -- a great many people, particularly on the right -- including Walsh & Jesse Singal -- who do so. Though the latter at least may be changing his tune somewhat:
However, many doctrinaire feminists -- like Dansky herself and feminist "scholar" Sheila Jeffreys who she quotes extensively -- are rather dogmatically attached to the idea that gender is "purely a social construction", one presumably hatched in the inner sanctums of "The Patriarchy (!!11!!)" for the sole purpose of "oppressing" women:
Dansky: "In contrast to sex, 'gender' refers to a set of stereotypes imposed on women (and girls) and men (and boys) on the basis of sex. It is, in the words of feminist scholar Sheila Jeffreys, the 'foundation of the political system of male domination.' ...."
Kind of think there's something of a "half-way house" there, some compromise position that might provide a path forward, a way off the horns of that dilemma. At least if there's any willingness to actually listen to the other side, a willingness which seems rather thin on the ground at best.
Moot of course what the dimensions and scope of that compromise position might be, but I think some feminists -- more or less echoed by the late Justice Scalia -- have provided an avenue that seems worth developing. From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP]:
SEP: "2.2 Gender as feminine and masculine personality ... Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices."
By which "gender" is just a rough synonym for personalities and personality types, but those types are not at all just "socially constructed". Those types, in particular, are generally founded on or derived from two profoundly different types of "bedrock", something which most feminists -- apparently including Dansky & Jeffreys -- seem bound and determined to not give any credence at all to.
But given that premise, it is not a major stretch to see "gender identity" as analogous to "personal identity" on which SEP has an illuminating article giving weight to the idea. Paraphrasing them:
SEP: "Outside of philosophy, [gender identity’] usually refers to [sexually dimorphic personality traits] to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. Someone’s [gender identity] in this sense consists of those [feminine and masculine personality traits] she takes to 'define her as a person' or 'make her the person she is', and which distinguish her from others."
The conflation of trans-genderism with feminism has been extremely damaging. Trans-genderism is actually destructive of feminism, and of women and men generally.
My beef with feminists is that they pretend they had no role in creating trans ideology, when in fact they were major players. Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler wrote foundational articles, while feminist thought in general denies biology and claims that there is no difference between the sexes. It wasn't until men entered women's sports that feminists realized they'd pushed their claims too far. Much of what is presented as women's history is fantasy. For example, feminism probably delayed the granting of women's suffrage in the UK, yet they're now presented as heroines.
There is a problem here. I greatly respect your views, your ability to communicate them and your willingness to come together with feminists on this issue. Real discussion is greatly needed - but you (and they) are missing a major point to frame this issue as simply one of protecting females from males. There are boys who are made to undress with girls in their locker rooms, too, and they're also hugely distressed by it.
This simply isn't an issue of females being delicate, innocent and vulnerable vs males who are inherently predatory and aggressive. The fact also remains that most of the youth caught up in this trans delusion are female. Something we're teaching them about sex is fundamentally misguided - and this did begin with feminism.
There are a lot of reasons why someone would say, "I'm not a feminist, but". Foremost among those reasons would be the historic imposition of coverture. The vast majority of us have been raised with no idea of what coverture means. We simply learn that Patriarchy meant that men owned women as slaves. Women couldn't work or study, they couldn't get credit in their own names and, throughout history, the number one cause of death and injury for women was men.
Of course, most women did work outside the home prior to feminism. For women, not having to work was a symbol of status that most (but not all) women desperately sought out. Coverture laws differed by jurisdiction but on the whole they worked to ensure that husbands were responsible for their wives' protection and provision. It also ensured that husbands were responsible for their wives' debts and for most crimes their wives committed. For this reason, women could not be employed as bank clerks or lawyers but they were still employed in many other fields. Wives could not apply for credit in their own name because it was their husband who would be liable for the debt.
During this time of coverture, many men did not have the right to vote. It was considered fair that taxpayers got to vote on how their taxes were spent and taxes were levied from property. This worked to ensure that many men simply had no vote - including most of those who were drafted to fight and die in war.
With wars becoming increasingly deadly for the lower classes, it was decided that all men should have the right to vote *in exchange for the draft*. This led to many opposing the issue of women's suffrage when it was first raised. People opposed the idea of women being drafted and understood that voting was tied to the draft.
If we return to this point in history, we can see that the path the Suffragettes (and thus feminists) took was only one option. We did not need to demonise masculinity nor place women in the oppressed victim role in order to abolish enforced coverture laws. We could recognise the sacrifices made by men while still working out a system that removed imposed barriers for both women AND men. In short, people could have rights and responsibilities *regardless of gender*.
The 2nd wave of feminism focussed instead on gender roles, claiming that men oppressed women in order to extract their labour and reproduction. A radical overturning of existing systems was then proposed and rapidly implemented, tilting the playing field to get women into roles where men had historically excelled. This led to a lot of men on the lower rungs of society sliding even lower. They found solidarity by pointing out that women oppressed men in order to extract their labour and resources. This was shouted down by feminists who made fun of men's misery with memes of male tears, thus sparking the MGTOW movement that further drove a wedge between the sexes. Some men were struggling so much that they wondered, if gender was simply a social construct, why not switch teams in order to gain advantage?
Of course, gender itself is not a social construct. Gender is simply a word to describe "type" (as in genre or genus). Gender roles exist in all cultures on Earth, however, and they don't strictly align with sex. They are simply the ways in which women and men have worked in partnership towards common goals for most of history. Gender roles are only a problem when they are forced onto others, stripping them of agency, or where they are used to deny certain people their human or civil rights.
We could undo the madness of the trans issue if we let adults work out their own gender roles for themselves, free from imposed barriers, while recognising that sex still matters and plays a crucial role - especially in areas of health, sport, education and privacy. Moreover, we could all agree that men and women are created equal in human rights and dignity - but that we are indeed created as we are. No one has their sex assigned at birth.
Apologies for the long reply but your article inspired me. I truly believe that women like you will be instrumental in helping men and women to hear each other again so that we can all have the difficult conversations that lead to healing.
You’re making a semantics argument. Never a strong start in my experience. Most “liberal feminists” think they are “radical feminists” because it sounds cooler and more authentic to who they think they are in their overly dyed heads. There is also no clear cut line. Here you truly do have a spectrum, unlike gender. So thusly most of humanity attributes radical feminism to the “bad feminism.” They are all synonymous now, and frankly I prefer the shorthand. The alternative is a lengthy nuanced explanation of why this feminism is ok and this one is not - according to different people.
The point is, making this distinction is bookkeeping. It’s an asterisk with a correction. You want to change language for the layman, which as evidenced is generally unwelcome by most of polite society. If you don’t believe me let me tell you about my pronouns and ability to chestfeed once my prolactin levels spiral out of control.
You have a branding issue. The facts about radical or liberal or Keynesian feminism (that’s not real, don’t look it up) essentially don’t matter because the damage to our society from whichever one was the bad one is far too great.
This so resonates with me, especially your observation that abortion either breaks your heart or hardens it. And your charity in your approach to the "patriarchy vs. feminism" school of thinking really dissects that ugly binary in the best way possible. We are indeed all made in God's image, and must remember that He wants ALL of us to be saved. Thank you!
Your path to seeing the validity of radical feminism is so similar to mine. As a Christian young woman, I abhorred feminism...especially radical feminism until I actually listened. I learned that I actually agreed with them and that I was one of them. My Christianity informs my radical feminism.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for writing this. It's a sorely needed message right now.
If i may speak narrowly to the anti-suffrage sentiments on the right.
They have a point. Men exclusively having the vote made the fundamental political unit the family rather than the individual. The destruction of this concept has been a disaster. I would go further, the feminizing of the state has similarly been a disaster. Female power, most functionally and more healthily exercised, is soft power - the matriarch who sees all, knows all, is revered, and works behind the scenes. It is embodied well in the character of the grandmother on Downton Abby.
That said, this cannot overcome the fundamental libertarian critique. Women, being subject to laws and the violence necessary to enforce those laws, must have a say in their creation. Many of the worse fears of the anti-suffragettes have come to pass but this cannot change this ground level truth.
There is an additional issue on suffrage, which is another reason why it was only ever men who voted. Expressed in modern form in the US, it's registration with the Selective Service. Historically, it has been almost exclusively men who paid with life and limb for their governments' decisions to wage war.
If American women had to register with the Selective Service in order to vote, I suspect most would opt to forego the vote. Men don't have that luxury.
The asymmetry is not lost on me but it's not something I'd advocate changing.
A society that sends its women to die in war is not a society that will survive. Additionally, the men who do go to die in war, whether they realize it consciously or not, do so primarily to keep the women from the war and to return from war to the women.
The issue is that if men engage in folly in their political choices, they are the ones who will end up paying the ultimate price for their folly - death, dismemberment, survivor's guilt, etc. Women may pay a price for folly as well, but it will never be the same price that men pay.
So good!
My abortion didn't break my heart at 17. The cause of the heartbreak is that no one cared enough to educate me about coercive men, my right to withhold consent, and birth control.
What has now broken my heart is that the son I had while in a catholic marriage and for whom I've busted my back providing for now chooses to blame me for every hardship we had.
30 years of love and sacrifice for nothing. Actually, having nothing would be better than receiving the raging abuse from my son.
I’m genuinely sorry for the pain your son is causing you. No mother deserves what you’re going through .
Although not a Christian, I am coming to believe that most of our social ills are signs of a deep spiritual crisis. We are disconnected from nature, from physical reality, from community, and from each other. I think the disagreements around feminism revolve much more around words and less around ideas. The terms patriarchy and feminism are loaded terms that pack as much baggage as meaning. Clear communication and persuasion require an awareness of the impact of words on imparting concepts. Language that puts the other person on the defensive or implies guilt for the sins of others is not effective at building consensus.
I think most men for at least a couple of generations sincerely believe in and strongly support equal rights and opportunity for women, and many women don’t know of this, either because of the experience of abuse by brutes or by ideological brainwashing. Most of the men I know also have a strong innate drive to protect women and have a deep contempt, and indeed hatred for abusers. Healthy men also have a tenderness and sense of awe towards women that our culture requires us to hide, but any woman who has been very close to a good and decent man will have seen that.
Ultimately men and women need each other and to flourish we all need to stand together against the forces and ideologies that seem determined to alienate us all. We are awash in toxic ideologies that seek to diminish humans, divide us, and keep us at war with one another. Our way out of the trap is to think deeply, speak clearly, and stand by each other.
One of the reasons I like my Every Man's Bible is because it does not take that barbarically chauvinist approach to male-female relations. A lot of the sidebars and interpretations in it are about working together and honoring each other, and as I read through it I can't even imagine interpreting it any other way. I'm not here to dominate some poor girl. I love my wife and our daughter, and I love my mom and I want them to live in a world where they can make their own choices and pursue their own happiness.
"Men and women, patriarchy and feminism created the beast of the culture wars. Men and women must work together as equals to fix it."
"Amen" to that. Far too much "four legs good, two legs bad", too much "my tribe, right or wrong". Not enough, "we have seen the enemy, and he is us": 😉🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comic_strip)
Though not sure I'd agree entirely with your conclusion -- "the answer to both extremes is freedom in Jesus" -- except maybe metaphorically as there are some durable principles in the religion and its antecedents.
In any case, some reason to throw some stones at both sides of the conflict, to say "a pox on both your houses". As you suggest, Walsh and company are to be faulted for some rather "regressive" stereotypes, and "feminism" for some questionable dogma of its own, yet both sides have some valid points.
Not sure if you follow Kara Dansky's Substack or not, but she's more or less a going concern in defending women's rights -- particularly against the depredations of various transactivists -- yet she too seems to be starting off from some questionable feminist dogma and toxic and largely untenable folk-biology of her own. For example, see this recent post of hers and the Amicus Curiae Brief brief she's filed in the L.W. v. Skrmetti case:
https://womensdeclarationusa.com/wdi-usa-files-amicus-brief-in-lw-v-skrmetti/
https://karadansky.substack.com/p/wdi-usa-files-amicus-brief-in-lw
But of particular note is this bit from the summary of her brief:
Dansky: "Gender identity advocates and the lower court are confusing the public by conflating the words sex and gender, and this Court should correct that. Sex and gender are different things; sex is grounded in the material reality of biology and gender is the set of stereotypes imposed on people on the basis of sex, i.e., on the basis of being male or female. 'Gender identity' is directly grounded in sexist and regressive stereotypes."
Whole concept of gender and gender-identity is a dog's breakfast with virtually every last man, woman, and otherkin having different and quite antithetical definitions for both sex and gender. No wonder that everyone is riding madly off in all directions -- hardly conducive to much in the way of social progress.
But it's not just "Gender identity advocates and the lower court" who are conflating sex and gender -- a great many people, particularly on the right -- including Walsh & Jesse Singal -- who do so. Though the latter at least may be changing his tune somewhat:
https://substack.com/@humanuseofhumanbeings/note/c-20956985
However, many doctrinaire feminists -- like Dansky herself and feminist "scholar" Sheila Jeffreys who she quotes extensively -- are rather dogmatically attached to the idea that gender is "purely a social construction", one presumably hatched in the inner sanctums of "The Patriarchy (!!11!!)" for the sole purpose of "oppressing" women:
Dansky: "In contrast to sex, 'gender' refers to a set of stereotypes imposed on women (and girls) and men (and boys) on the basis of sex. It is, in the words of feminist scholar Sheila Jeffreys, the 'foundation of the political system of male domination.' ...."
Kind of think there's something of a "half-way house" there, some compromise position that might provide a path forward, a way off the horns of that dilemma. At least if there's any willingness to actually listen to the other side, a willingness which seems rather thin on the ground at best.
Moot of course what the dimensions and scope of that compromise position might be, but I think some feminists -- more or less echoed by the late Justice Scalia -- have provided an avenue that seems worth developing. From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP]:
SEP: "2.2 Gender as feminine and masculine personality ... Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices."
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/feminism-gender/#GenFemMasPer
By which "gender" is just a rough synonym for personalities and personality types, but those types are not at all just "socially constructed". Those types, in particular, are generally founded on or derived from two profoundly different types of "bedrock", something which most feminists -- apparently including Dansky & Jeffreys -- seem bound and determined to not give any credence at all to.
But given that premise, it is not a major stretch to see "gender identity" as analogous to "personal identity" on which SEP has an illuminating article giving weight to the idea. Paraphrasing them:
SEP: "Outside of philosophy, [gender identity’] usually refers to [sexually dimorphic personality traits] to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. Someone’s [gender identity] in this sense consists of those [feminine and masculine personality traits] she takes to 'define her as a person' or 'make her the person she is', and which distinguish her from others."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/#ProPerIde
You might have some interest in my latest elaborations on that theme:
"Is Nothing Sacred? Looking into the abyss?"
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/is-nothing-sacred-looking-into-the
Wonderful!
The conflation of trans-genderism with feminism has been extremely damaging. Trans-genderism is actually destructive of feminism, and of women and men generally.
https://danmaiullo.substack.com/p/you-can-call-me-terf
My beef with feminists is that they pretend they had no role in creating trans ideology, when in fact they were major players. Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler wrote foundational articles, while feminist thought in general denies biology and claims that there is no difference between the sexes. It wasn't until men entered women's sports that feminists realized they'd pushed their claims too far. Much of what is presented as women's history is fantasy. For example, feminism probably delayed the granting of women's suffrage in the UK, yet they're now presented as heroines.
There is a problem here. I greatly respect your views, your ability to communicate them and your willingness to come together with feminists on this issue. Real discussion is greatly needed - but you (and they) are missing a major point to frame this issue as simply one of protecting females from males. There are boys who are made to undress with girls in their locker rooms, too, and they're also hugely distressed by it.
This simply isn't an issue of females being delicate, innocent and vulnerable vs males who are inherently predatory and aggressive. The fact also remains that most of the youth caught up in this trans delusion are female. Something we're teaching them about sex is fundamentally misguided - and this did begin with feminism.
There are a lot of reasons why someone would say, "I'm not a feminist, but". Foremost among those reasons would be the historic imposition of coverture. The vast majority of us have been raised with no idea of what coverture means. We simply learn that Patriarchy meant that men owned women as slaves. Women couldn't work or study, they couldn't get credit in their own names and, throughout history, the number one cause of death and injury for women was men.
Of course, most women did work outside the home prior to feminism. For women, not having to work was a symbol of status that most (but not all) women desperately sought out. Coverture laws differed by jurisdiction but on the whole they worked to ensure that husbands were responsible for their wives' protection and provision. It also ensured that husbands were responsible for their wives' debts and for most crimes their wives committed. For this reason, women could not be employed as bank clerks or lawyers but they were still employed in many other fields. Wives could not apply for credit in their own name because it was their husband who would be liable for the debt.
During this time of coverture, many men did not have the right to vote. It was considered fair that taxpayers got to vote on how their taxes were spent and taxes were levied from property. This worked to ensure that many men simply had no vote - including most of those who were drafted to fight and die in war.
With wars becoming increasingly deadly for the lower classes, it was decided that all men should have the right to vote *in exchange for the draft*. This led to many opposing the issue of women's suffrage when it was first raised. People opposed the idea of women being drafted and understood that voting was tied to the draft.
If we return to this point in history, we can see that the path the Suffragettes (and thus feminists) took was only one option. We did not need to demonise masculinity nor place women in the oppressed victim role in order to abolish enforced coverture laws. We could recognise the sacrifices made by men while still working out a system that removed imposed barriers for both women AND men. In short, people could have rights and responsibilities *regardless of gender*.
The 2nd wave of feminism focussed instead on gender roles, claiming that men oppressed women in order to extract their labour and reproduction. A radical overturning of existing systems was then proposed and rapidly implemented, tilting the playing field to get women into roles where men had historically excelled. This led to a lot of men on the lower rungs of society sliding even lower. They found solidarity by pointing out that women oppressed men in order to extract their labour and resources. This was shouted down by feminists who made fun of men's misery with memes of male tears, thus sparking the MGTOW movement that further drove a wedge between the sexes. Some men were struggling so much that they wondered, if gender was simply a social construct, why not switch teams in order to gain advantage?
Of course, gender itself is not a social construct. Gender is simply a word to describe "type" (as in genre or genus). Gender roles exist in all cultures on Earth, however, and they don't strictly align with sex. They are simply the ways in which women and men have worked in partnership towards common goals for most of history. Gender roles are only a problem when they are forced onto others, stripping them of agency, or where they are used to deny certain people their human or civil rights.
We could undo the madness of the trans issue if we let adults work out their own gender roles for themselves, free from imposed barriers, while recognising that sex still matters and plays a crucial role - especially in areas of health, sport, education and privacy. Moreover, we could all agree that men and women are created equal in human rights and dignity - but that we are indeed created as we are. No one has their sex assigned at birth.
Apologies for the long reply but your article inspired me. I truly believe that women like you will be instrumental in helping men and women to hear each other again so that we can all have the difficult conversations that lead to healing.
Thank you.
Everyone is against abortion. But we have the choice of bleach, coat hanger, poison, or safe and legal methods. I am also adopted.
You’re making a semantics argument. Never a strong start in my experience. Most “liberal feminists” think they are “radical feminists” because it sounds cooler and more authentic to who they think they are in their overly dyed heads. There is also no clear cut line. Here you truly do have a spectrum, unlike gender. So thusly most of humanity attributes radical feminism to the “bad feminism.” They are all synonymous now, and frankly I prefer the shorthand. The alternative is a lengthy nuanced explanation of why this feminism is ok and this one is not - according to different people.
The point is, making this distinction is bookkeeping. It’s an asterisk with a correction. You want to change language for the layman, which as evidenced is generally unwelcome by most of polite society. If you don’t believe me let me tell you about my pronouns and ability to chestfeed once my prolactin levels spiral out of control.
You have a branding issue. The facts about radical or liberal or Keynesian feminism (that’s not real, don’t look it up) essentially don’t matter because the damage to our society from whichever one was the bad one is far too great.