On Feminism

Before I start, yes, I am critical of feminism. And before any antifeminists who think that hairy-legged, unnatural lesbians have destroyed the family think they'll find a friend in me, I'd like to point out that they have another think coming; misogynists of any shade revolt me. But I would like anyone who reads this to hear me out anyway.

For all my problems and disagreements, I truly miss being a feminist.

A lot of the people I know who first got me into feminism are really, really cool and supportive; a lot of feminists I still know are really, really cool and supportive. Feminism is a broad tent full of bright people whom I loved (and still love) working with, and if you find the right group of people it feels absolutely fantastic just to be supported by a bunch of other people working towards the great goal of smashing the kyriarchy.

So, you ask, why would I leave? Surely I'm just making this up and am a traitor to my sex by no longer being a feminist?

The thing is, I was led into feminism by holding two very dear beliefs:

1. Women are people, not just objects of male pleasure.

2. Feminism is about the liberation of everyone from the kyriarchy, not just certain groups - otherwise you're still working with the same oppressive power structures.

So far, so good, right?

Wrong.

As I have said, there are a lot of very cool feminists out there. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of feminists who are racist, colonialist, ableist, transphobic, classist, cissexist and more. I doubt this is because these people are actually evil, but I do think they're heavily and damagingly misguided as being oppressive towards particular already-oppressed groups in your feminism isn't working for the liberation of everyone - it's working for the "liberation" of a certain privileged class.

If that wasn't bad enough, there's a ton of infighting between feminist movements. This is, I suppose, understandable due to the fact that the word feminism itself is supposed to describe an incredibly wide range of movements, but it upsets me; often it gets to the point where women are throwing other women under the proverbial bus for not having the right kind of feminism (the perennial liberal feminism versus radical feminism argument is probably the biggest one). Again, to me this sort of goes against the point of feminism: fighting each other strengthens the kyriarchy and does nothing to weaken it.

I do not want to associate myself with oppressors calling themselves liberators, and I do not want to associate myself with people who spend more time pissing around fighting each other than fighting oppressive power structures. So until people are collected and the hive is cleared out, as they say, I will not call myself a feminist. I will call myself a profeminist; I will work with people I like and trust who also happen to be feminists. I will do my level best to fight for liberation everywhere (though I am disgustingly privileged, so I don't want to do the whole white saviour thing and be oppressive while trying to help), as I used to do. But I won't label myself while doing it, and I would appreciate it if people didn't label me either; I dropped the feminist label for very personal reasons and really don't want it back for a while.