| Jaicee said: I've dialogued with enough men on the topic of women's lib enough times over the years to know this much: we are kidding ourselves if we believe that most men are ever going to be feminists. At the end of the day, relative to women, men are a privileged social group and privileged groups don't give up their privileges voluntarily or happily. That's why the women's movement has be a women-centered movement. There's no ill will toward men implied in saying that. I've just come to believe that it's naive to think otherwise. We cannot compete with what the men's movement can promise men. They can offer men all of our money, all of our property, and of course our bodies. We, in contrast, can offer men social permission to cry and cross-dress and become nurses and join the cheerleading squad; you know, just the sort of freedoms you hear most man clamoring for all the time. You see my point here? We can't out-offer the men's movement. We can't compete on their terms, so we'd better not count on attempts to working out. We have to be our own movement, not just an appendage of their's. This is a bit of pet peeve of mine; an issue I have with modern, "third wave" feminism. It's too compromising and men-centered and it's not working out. By most measures, we are tangibly losing ground as a class. |
Yes, but not all men are enemies, there are feminist men too that can really help advance the movement and it's important not to alienate men that are sympathetic to the movement. However, I do see a problem in making feminism a gender-neutral movement, as it ignores the fact that women are typically at a bigger disadvantage than men, so it's a balancing act that I don't exactly have the answer to.
