Fun Feminism
Firstly - an apology for taking the week off. I've had exams and personal things going on that made blogging even less of a priority than it already is.
So I've written before about my problems with feminism, and I have a post squirreled away somewhere that explicitly addresses the bits of radical feminism I find problematic (to put it mildly). I may publish it someday.
Anyway, yet another problem I have with radfems is their disparaging of any feminism that isn't radical feminism as "fun feminism", with its not-so-subtle implication that if you dare to have a feminist movement without transphobia and denial of intersectionality, you're quite clearly not serious about smashing the kyriarchy and only want to - the horror, the absolute horror! - enjoy yourself. This is an absolute clusterfuck of logic fails, and I'll try to pick them apart.
Firstly, there's nothing wrong with enjoying yourself while working for a good cause. There is no rule that states that you cannot have fun and work at the same time - oh, society normally perceives fun and work as antithetical, but it's not a logical or indeed a nomological impossibility. By implying that you can't have a good time and work at the same time, radfems are buying into a false dichotomy.
Secondly, no kind of feminism - fun feminism included - is all fun, as much as I'd like it to be (people like to have fun, get over it). Infighting is not fun. Trying to break free of the shackles of the kyriarchy is not fun, especially when you keep fucking it up. Agonising over said fuckups and over fucking up as an ally, fucking up checking your privilege, etc. are really not fun. Seeing what the kyriarchy does to everyone and being even the tiniest bit aware of it is really, really not fun. I'm not going to argue about which particular group of feminists has the easiest or hardest time of it, but I will argue that other forms of feminism are not as easy as radfems seem to think they are.
Those essentially seem to be the two main strands of reasoning behind the "fun feminism" label, both of which are quite hilariously wrong. All the same, I expected better.
So I've written before about my problems with feminism, and I have a post squirreled away somewhere that explicitly addresses the bits of radical feminism I find problematic (to put it mildly). I may publish it someday.
Anyway, yet another problem I have with radfems is their disparaging of any feminism that isn't radical feminism as "fun feminism", with its not-so-subtle implication that if you dare to have a feminist movement without transphobia and denial of intersectionality, you're quite clearly not serious about smashing the kyriarchy and only want to - the horror, the absolute horror! - enjoy yourself. This is an absolute clusterfuck of logic fails, and I'll try to pick them apart.
Firstly, there's nothing wrong with enjoying yourself while working for a good cause. There is no rule that states that you cannot have fun and work at the same time - oh, society normally perceives fun and work as antithetical, but it's not a logical or indeed a nomological impossibility. By implying that you can't have a good time and work at the same time, radfems are buying into a false dichotomy.
Secondly, no kind of feminism - fun feminism included - is all fun, as much as I'd like it to be (people like to have fun, get over it). Infighting is not fun. Trying to break free of the shackles of the kyriarchy is not fun, especially when you keep fucking it up. Agonising over said fuckups and over fucking up as an ally, fucking up checking your privilege, etc. are really not fun. Seeing what the kyriarchy does to everyone and being even the tiniest bit aware of it is really, really not fun. I'm not going to argue about which particular group of feminists has the easiest or hardest time of it, but I will argue that other forms of feminism are not as easy as radfems seem to think they are.
Those essentially seem to be the two main strands of reasoning behind the "fun feminism" label, both of which are quite hilariously wrong. All the same, I expected better.
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