Do you consider yourself to be a feminist, and why?

[Conserative Morality]

Only in a monetary sense though. The father can't be forced to actually be a parent to the child if he doesn't want to. And if the father is raising the child, the mother is forced to provide financial support.

A monetary sense is still a sense, however distant from physical parenthood.

[Cosmopoles]

Only in a monetary sense though. The father can't be forced to actually be a parent to the child if he doesn't want to. And if the father is raising the child, the mother is forced to provide financial support.

A monetary sense is still a sense, however distant from physical parenthood.

Indeed, I just wanted to clarify what you meant. But in this case women can be forced into such a situation through the choices of the father. It works both ways.

[Conserative Morality]

You're muddling your terms, and you're entirely unclear what exactly you're asking. are you asking:

1) if I support requiring pregnant women to give birth?
2) if I support requiring women who have given birth to take an active maternal role in raising their offspring?
3) if I support requiring women to financially support their offspring?

Clarify your terminology, then I'll answer your question.

Apologies for being unclear. I'm asking a pure hypothetical with no basis in reality, for one. I'm asking, disregarding the issue of birth and pregnancy due to the fact that those blur what I'm trying to ask due to issues of bodily autonomy, would you support forcing a woman to become a mother against her will if she decided to have sex with a man? I'm asking, in a very roundabout and completely unnecessary manner, now that I sit and think about it (I've been up for far too long, I apologize) if you believe that the necessary consequences of having sex should apply to the woman universally as well, disregarding the issue of abortion.

[Conserative Morality]

Indeed, I just wanted to clarify what you meant. But in this case women can be forced into such a situation through the choices of the father. It works both ways.

But safe haven laws provide a way out, thus providing a manner in which they can avoid being forced into such a situation only available to the mother?

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding here, I'm in that odd state where I'm not tired at all but I'm half-asleep.

[Cosmopoles]

Indeed, I just wanted to clarify what you meant. But in this case women can be forced into such a situation through the choices of the father. It works both ways.

But safe haven laws provide a way out, thus providing a manner in which they can avoid being forced into such a situation only available to the mother?

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding here, I'm in that odd state where I'm not tired at all but I'm half-asleep.

In 46 out of 50 states the father can relinquish the child to a safe haven. He can't do this if the mother refuses to acknowledge him as the father, but if she refuses to aknowledge him as the father he isn't required to provide support anyway and thus cannot relinquish a right/responsibility that he doesn't have.

[Neo Art]

You're muddling your terms, and you're entirely unclear what exactly you're asking. are you asking:

1) if I support requiring pregnant women to give birth?
2) if I support requiring women who have given birth to take an active maternal role in raising their offspring?
3) if I support requiring women to financially support their offspring?

Clarify your terminology, then I'll answer your question.

Apologies for being unclear. I'm asking a pure hypothetical with no basis in reality, for one. I'm asking, disregarding the issue of birth and pregnancy due to the fact that those blur what I'm trying to ask due to issues of bodily autonomy, would you support forcing a woman to become a mother against her will if she decided to have sex with a man? I'm asking, in a very roundabout and completely unnecessary manner, now that I sit and think about it (I've been up for far too long, I apologize) if you believe that the necessary consequences of having sex should apply to the woman universally as well, disregarding the issue of abortion.

I'll rephrase your question to answer it. Do I believe that the "necessary consequences of completely participating in the reproductive act" should apply to women as well as men?

Yes, of course.

[Conserative Morality]

In 46 out of 50 states the father can relinquish the child to a safe haven. He can't do this if the mother refuses to acknowledge him as the father, but if she refuses to aknowledge him as the father he isn't required to provide support anyway and thus cannot relinquish a right/responsibility that he doesn't have.

Hm. I didn't know that.

[Falcania]

I consider myself to be whatever the equivalent of "level 1 feminist" is. I've come to it fairly recently.

I have lived the majority of my short life holding unhealthy and damaging views, opinions, and behaviours around women. They hurt the women around me, and they hurt me, and they hurt my friends. I was the classic model of a young boy raised on the patriarchy and trying to make my mark on those around me. I was an asshole, basically. I treated people like shit. But I barely treated women as people. As a teenage boy, I had urges, and I let myself believe those urges were needs. Women existed solely to satisfy those urges, and were discarded just as quickly. But I didn't actually enjoy it. I saw myself being an asshole, I got down about it, then I started thinking that the best way to beat the blues was girl-chasing. I wasn't even thinking about it, really.

And it snowballed, and I was a greater and greater asshole until I pushed away almost everyone who'd ever cared about me.

Then, by some miracle, a couple of people took me in and talked to me about what I was doing. And by an even greater miracle, I listened. And I started reading about it. Then I started writing about it. At some point in that process, I started to think about it.

Since then I started to see the truth about how fucking horrible the world is if you have to go through it with people like me in it. What it must be like to feel constantly threatened by people like the person I was. The person I try every moment not to be any more. It's all very well to say that feminism is about advancing women and only women, but assholes like me didn't need advancing.

Yeah, I know, women are just as capable of being assholes as men are. But there is a systemic problem of men behaving like sexually-entitled assholes. The economy of sexual power is a terrifying thing, and it is kept in a stranglehold by men. I'm not just talking about the extremes like the recent Indian gang-rapes. I'm talking about the myth that the male sexual impulse cannot be healthily suppressed. That's a doozy - that all men are rape-bots that it is women's responsibility not to attract. I'm talking about the fact that we have woven into our language such loaded idioms as "pussy out" and "man up". I'm talking about nice guy syndrome.

I'm talking about the term "feminazi". I'm talking about the tearing-down of feminist ideals with cries of "misandry" and "why can't we be equal?" The reason we can't be equal, my friend, is because you're unthinkingly dismissing the only real movement that actually, genuinely wants equality.

I'm talking about the fact that men think that feminism is somehow a threat to men. Because that's the best thing about feminism - it's only a threat to men, if the men in question are the kind of assholes that are making the world a worse place for women. It's not a threat to men. It wasn't a threat to me, it turned out to be my fucking salvation, because through learning, thinking about, and following feminist principles, I didn't have to be that asshole any more.

[Conserative Morality]

I'll rephrase your question to answer it. Do I believe that the "necessary consequences of completely participating in the reproductive act" should apply to women as well as men?

Yes, of course.

Thank you very much, that's a better way of phrasing it. Sorry for the somewhat obvious question but, sadly, I've gotten less-than egalitarian answers to it before. In response to your original post, you are correct, no one forced him into it. A better way of phrasing it would have been 'left without a choice unlike the mother' (Though a recent post has cast this view into doubt).

[Mike the Progressive]

No. We need to repeal the 19th amendment.

[United States of Dixieland (Ancient)]

So this wave of feminism to me is just unneeded.

You are exactly why it is.

OK, All I said was men and women are unique. I am sure if I stopped opening the car door for my wife. Told her to fix the sink. Made her go take my job working in the extreme hot, cold outside weather and repair the roof. Then she walks in sweating, bleeding from cuts and dag tired she would indeed have a problem with me.

In fact I do all of these things so she will never have to and after four years of marriage I still pick her up and walk across puddles so she wont wet her shoes. I do this because I am the man in our house and she is the women. In fact she runs our house. When she tells me to go grocery shopping for her, hold her bags, and rub her feet I pause the game and do it. Again because she is a women and my wife.

I would never do any of this for some guy friend of mine.

So...she needs feminism because I am actually oppressing her by doing all of this. Someone needs to tell her.

[Neo Art]

OK, All I said was men and women are unique. I am sure if I stopped opening the car door for my wife. Told her to fix the sink. Made her go take my job working in the extreme hot, cold outside weather and repair the roof. Then she walks in sweating, bleeding from cuts and dag tired she would indeed have a problem with me.

she may. She may not. I don't know your wife, I have no intent to speak for her. I have no idea how she feels about you. She may well share your antiquated belief system. People tend to marry others with similar belief systems.

I do, however, know that there are over 3 billion women on this world who are not your wife. And while you may be comfortable speaking for her, you aren't in a place to speak for them.

[Conserative Morality]

OK, All I said was men and women are unique. I am sure if I stopped opening the car door for my wife. Told her to fix the sink. Made her go take my job working in the extreme hot, cold outside weather and repair the roof. Then she walks in sweating, bleeding from cuts and dag tired she would indeed have a problem with me.

I'd get pissed if I got a bunch of shit dumped on me with no warning too.

In fact I do all of these things so she will never have to and after four years of marriage I still pick her up and walk across puddles so she wont wet her shoes. I do this because I am the man in our house and she is the women. In fact she runs our house. When she tells me to go grocery shopping for her, hold her bags, and rub her feet I pause the game and do it. Again because she is a women and my wife.

I would never do any of this for some guy friend of mine.

So...she needs feminism because I am actually oppressing her by doing all of this. Someone needs to tell her.

Let me get this straight. First off, you would never open a door for your guy friends? Jesus, I thought that was common courtesy. Second, since you're presumably the one who knows how to fix the sink, you... fix the sink. What does this have to do with gender roles? Are you saying if one of your guy friends had a broke sink and had no clue how to fix it you wouldn't help him out? The issue is not distribution of work around the house between individuals. The issue is treating different genders as inherently less or more able at tasks than others.

[Nailed to the Perch]

You are exactly why it is.

OK, All I said was men and women are unique. I am sure if I stopped opening the car door for my wife. Told her to fix the sink. Made her go take my job working in the extreme hot, cold outside weather and repair the roof. Then she walks in sweating, bleeding from cuts and dag tired she would indeed have a problem with me.

In fact I do all of these things so she will never have to and after four years of marriage I still pick her up and walk across puddles so she wont wet her shoes. I do this because I am the man in our house and she is the women. In fact she runs our house. When she tells me to go grocery shopping for her, hold her bags, and rub her feet I pause the game and do it. Again because she is a women and my wife.

I would never do any of this for some guy friend of mine.

So...she needs feminism because I am actually oppressing her by doing all of this. Someone needs to tell her.

This may come as a shock to you, but there actually exist people in the world who are neither you nor your wife. If your wife likes the fact that you have forbidden her to engage in activities that make her sweat or form callouses on her hands, bully for her, but out of the 3.5 billion other women in the world, some of them actually want to join the military, go to the gym, work in a coal mine, play the guitar in a rock band, or otherwise live their own freaking lives without your input.

[Nailed to the Perch]

I do, however, know that there are over 3 billion women on this world who are not your wife. And while you may be comfortable speaking for her, you aren't in a place to speak for them.

Freaking ninja lawyers!

[The Emerald Dawn]

I realize that there are valid discussions to be had regarding the different experiences that people have in various geographical/sociological areas as the various hybrid man-woman composites they are, but Malcolm X on a Pogo Stick can we stop the proliferation of them, or at least combine them into a megathread?

[Mianjing]

I'm a male, but gender doesn't apply to feminism, Feminism is a mere idea of women's rights and equalities, it's just basically a division of humans by ideology and philosophy. I'm more lenient to more of a united rights between man and women than just more equality for the single gender. The activists annoy me when I'm defending up to my rights and what I can do on a more Civil-Servant society. As I know, from the past 90 years or so, women's rights have gradually increased from 1920-2010 than from the birth of Christ to around the end of American Civil War (5 B.C. - 1865 A.D.), that is just in the Western World, Oceania, and Eastern Asia (Japan, Taiwan, SK, Singapore, Macao and HK).

Feminism is just simply a division of genders and it's blatantly obtuse. I would be a humanist, for all human rights in and around the world (in Latin America, Africa, Middle East and Asia), than just for an activist group in the United States, Canada, UK and Australia.

[Neo Art]

I do, however, know that there are over 3 billion women on this world who are not your wife. And while you may be comfortable speaking for her, you aren't in a place to speak for them.

Freaking ninja lawyers!

I'm batman.

[The Emerald Dawn]

Freaking ninja lawyers!

I'm batman.

Mr. West, why exactly did you feel the need to treat Mr. Ward like that?

[Nailed to the Perch]

Freaking ninja lawyers!

I'm batman.

The best thing about this reply is that I knew, with about 99% certainty, that you were going to say that.

[United States of Dixieland (Ancient)]

OK, All I said was men and women are unique. I am sure if I stopped opening the car door for my wife. Told her to fix the sink. Made her go take my job working in the extreme hot, cold outside weather and repair the roof. Then she walks in sweating, bleeding from cuts and dag tired she would indeed have a problem with me.

she may. She may not. I don't know your wife, I have no intent to speak for her. I have no idea how she feels about you. She may well share your antiquated belief system. People tend to marry others with similar belief systems.

I do, however, know that there are over 3 billion women on this world who are not your wife. And while you may be comfortable speaking for her, you aren't in a place to speak for them.

Fair enough. But I never claimed to speak for 3 billion women. Just used an example with one person whom I know very well. And merely stated my beliefs on feminism. Never said anything about speaking for billions of people I would not even pretend to have the skill and knowledge for that. But we can turn that around too. Of the more than 3 billion women I am sure not all are feminist. So you are not in a place to speak for them.

Not pretending you would have known this, but my wife leads a very independent life. She has a very succesful career. Makes more money than me. Participates in politics. Participates in sports and does many things herself. She is more active than most other women I know. She manages our finances and God bless her raises our kid. As I work much longer hours she is usually in bed when I get home. She cooks as I cannot to save my life. And she even decides the money I get to use in my friday night poker games. She plays piano in town and is far more talented than I. In all my house and life would collapse without her.

She has probably single handedly saved our marriage. While doing all of the above. So I do believe she is tougher than I am. But I am still the one who wakes up at 5:00 in the morning to provide like I as a man should.

Just saying that if treating my wife in a special way because she is a woman and doing things

[Neo Art]

But I never claimed to speak for 3 billion women.

their are certain jobs and activities that women should not do.

Don't lie to me.

[Ifreann]

I'm batman.

The best thing about this reply is that I knew, with about 99% certainty, that you were going to say that.

She's a witch!

[United States of Dixieland (Ancient)]

But I never claimed to speak for 3 billion women.

their are certain jobs and activities that women should not do.

Don't lie to me.

In my own opinion. You are not suggesting that my opinion speaks for 3 billion people are you? I believe it only speaks for one.

Nice try, kid.

[Neo Art]

Don't lie to me.

In my own opinion. You are not suggesting that my opinion speaks for 3 billion people are you? I believe it only speaks for one.

"in your opinion" you have decided what over 3 billion people should, and should not do. You're the one who's suggesting you know what's best for them, not me.

I don't think you know how words work.

Nice try, kid.

Says the guy who by his own admission can't cook, clean, or take part in raising his own child?

You won't last long.