Have you ever noticed that feminists try to give feminism far more credit than its due? Ever see one make completely out sized claims that basically lay credit for every good thing in the twentieth century at the doorstep of feminism?
Well if not run over here, where Emodulanda roars. Now at first blush this awesome array of aggressive arrogance may strike you as little more than another woman "defiantly" standing up strong and proud to roar her worth from the rooftops. And for the most part it is nothing more than self affirming literary masturbation masquerading as an act of assertive self identification.
But take a gander at this passage madmaniancs.
Here's why: because feminists fought to permit women to attend schools, to
get a full education, to be acknowledged as minds as well as bodies. Because
feminists worked to get women the vote, the right to stand for election, the
right to self-government that we didn't necessarily have even in a democracy.
Because feminists toppled the effects of two thousand years of misogyny in the
West in a mere two hundred.
I mean WOW.
Feminism did all that?
Well no actually it didn't.
Most of feminism's gains actually had little do with the efforts of feminists at all. Even where feminist worked tirelessly for a specific cause they did not work alone, and they stood on the "shoulders of giants" The basic arguments they used to defend their point of view, as well as the legal, social, and moral framework under which they argued, and without which they would have been spinning their wheels for another 2000 years, was created (here in the US) by the founding fathers, who even then were arguing among themselves as to the rights of woman. Those arguments were themselves the children of arguments made by men generations earlier. In point of fact much of the "women's movements" successes owe themselves to the earlier successes of completely sexless causes, such as the first legal female voter in America being given said right NOT due to feminism, but due to one of Americas founding precepts, that there shall be no taxation without representation. In point of fact New Jersey gave women the same exact right using the same exact reasoning (taxation/representation) as early as 1776. This wasn't a victory of feminism, it was a victory of property rights. Granted it wasn't universal woman's suffrage, and it was limited to property owners (as all voting rights were at the time, be they men's or women's) and it was revoked and limited to white males about 30 years later, but the point stands. The earliest arguments used for women's suffrage in the US were based in the idea that those who were taxed deserved to be represented.
Furthermore much of the social change needed for women's suffrage to gain traction were a direct result of the ongoing debate in American society that eventually lead to the civil war. In fact the women's movement, the civil rights movement, and the anti-slavery movement, all influenced each other and society to the point where its damn hard to really figure out where one ended and the others began. The same arguments only slightly modified were brought into play by all of the above and they all owed their very existence to a habit of self criticism and idealism that dated back at least as far as the enlightenment. Far from "causing" all these victories that Emodulanda tries to claim for it, when feminism is viewed in the context of the massive changes in thinking that swept Europe and The US in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we see that in fact, feminists, and feminism, were birthed by, and owe their very existence to, the overwhelming wave of liberty and reason that swept the west post enlightenment and to all those men and women who argued the revolutionary and dangerous idea that all humans are created equal. Now Emodulanda may wish to go back and try to claim Frederick Douglas, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, the Quakers, and every enlightenment thinker who postulated the innate dignity of humanity, and try to claim them as Feminists; but much like Mormons converting 10 generations of your family to Mormonism retroactively ain't no one gonna buy it who ain't already drinking the Kool-aid.
America is a nation which has, since its birth, been engaged in a vigorous and brutal battle with itself over its own nature. We were founded by men who wrote language into our constitution they knew that we, as a society, would be unable to live up to for years, if not centuries. Our very creation was rooted in the wildfire of new ideas which swept the world during those years, and in so doing, managed to enact more change on a greater scale than had ever been seen before. Feminism was not a cause of this, it is merely one minor symptom of this.
I cant even comprehend the level of Arrogance it takes to look back upon the sweep of history and to ignore the innate interconnectedness of the enlightenment, the abolition movements, the emancipation and colonisation movements. I can't even begin to conceive of the sheer gall it requires to look at the wildly diverse contributions of the American Colonisation Society, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the Magna Carta, The US Constitution, The Bill Of Rights, The French Revolution, and somehow come to the conclusion that feminism was anything other than the child of the previous movements and in fact a direct descendant of the overall change in thinking over a 200 year period.
I don't want to believe its arrogance, I really don't. But the alternative is even worse. Because if its not arrogance that causes such a colossal misread of history, then it can only be ignorance. Gross ignorance at a level I dare not even consider for fear that my belief in the basic competence and intelligence of the average person will evaporate like so much morning dew. How could anyone educated in our time and our civilisation be unaware of the revolution in thought that swept the west during that short period? How could anyone be clueless as to the way the various segments of the universal rights position influenced and birthed each other? To claim Women's suffrage is the result of the actions of feminists is to ignore the precedent created by the Emancipation Proclamation, which in turn fueled the Women's Suffrage movement of the early twentieth century, which in turn allowed the civil rights movement of the 60's. From the signing of the Magna Carta to the present day there has been constant if irregular increase in the freedoms of all, and every victory for one person or group influenced and allowed the victories of all the others. Feminists didn't cause these victories my dear Emodulanda, and they aren't "responsible" for "toppling of two thousand years of misogyny". We all did it. The abolitionist, the suffragettes, the founding fathers, the enlightenment thinkers and poets, the great orators and legislators, the rabble-rousers and the trouble-makers, the Bostonian tea partiers, the french mobs, the Shakers, the Quakers, John brown, Thomas Paine, Susan B Anthony, George Washington, Johnathan Mayhew, Lydia Taft, James Otis, and everyone else who helped to create an framework that allowed the idea that ALL are created equal to be articulated, argued, expressed, and actualised. Im sorry, but to try and claim that the idea that men and women are equal was revolutionary, or had a revolutionary effect, is to completly ignore the fact that sexual equality is a subset of overall equality, and that the true movement wan't for sexual or racial, or economic, or democratic equality, but simply for equality itself. Again, I'm sorry to burst your bubble dear, but feminists, and feminism were nothing more than a tiny part of an overwhelming tide of liberty.
I will not throw my history away.
You already have darling. You've thrown your true history and true legacy away voluntarily in favor of a fiction
I will not cease to
acknowledge what was done for me by women who died long before I was born.
Yet you will cease to acknowledge all that was done for you by men who died long before you were born? You cease to acknowledge all that was done for you by blacks who died long before you were born?
I won't let the label be taken from me, as if I have no link to them at all. I am
egalitarian.I am also a feminist.All right, you say. Fine. You admire these
women, fair enough. But what's the point of being a feminist now? These are all
worthy causes, you could say, but they're also old ones. Complete. Women are
educated. Women do have the vote. You won already, Em, so what are you still
fighting for?Well, some of it is little things. There are a lot of little things
There always are. But I'm not a guy who concerns himself with the little things.
I'm trying to make a very simple point here folks. From the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, to the 1960's civil rights movement, the west has undergone a trend which pretty consistently increased every ones rights. That trend unfortunately began to wane in the early twentieth century with the advent of new deal style liberalism (as opposed to classical liberalism). It finally crested and began to recede in the late 60's when our notion of equality was changed from " giving everyone equal right to be who they are", to "In order to improve the freedom of some it is necessary to reduce the freedom of others" We went from understanding that, as Kennedy said "a rising tide lifts all boats" , to believing equality is a zero sum game. It's not. The more free one of us is, the more free we ALL are. And the more we reduce, classify, segment, segregate, and divide our rights based on sex, color, creed, or religion, the more oppressed we all become.
America is a promise, not from the government to you; but from ourselves, to ourselves. It is a standard we are obligated to keep as a tribute to the men and women who shed the rivers of blood necessary to create the country we live in today. When we segregate laws and rights based on sex, giving some a hand up while others are held down in order to "level the playing field" we don't just betray the country, or the men and women who died to make it great, we betray ourselves as well.
Join me as an anti-feminist, anti-minoritist, anti-preferenceist, anti-racist, anti-classist. Because at the end of the day there are only three kinds of people in this world, and these are the only labels that truly separate us, or should. There are Americans, those that want to be Americans, and those who lie about wanting to be Americans.
Thus endeth the lesson.
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