@Holy:
Not really. The oppression and marginalization, major or minor, all across the board (race, sex, gender, age, etc) is very real.
There is no middle ground to find. It is an entirely male-driven concept of singling out women. What everybody else is saying about just being polite to everybody is basically the best answer one can get out of it.
Nah way man. The media is the biggest offender of all when it comes to perpetrating ways of marginalizing people.
People need to stop acting like "feminism" is some big bad monster that's out to make people's lives unfun, this being a comment directed above to somebody who claimed negatives of "uber-feminists", which I'd probably call myself.
The feminism of today is an all-inclusive movement involving equality on a very accepting, reasonable scale and it is not just about sex anymore either. Gender, sexuality, race, class issues, feminism encompasses all of these things now and all of it is good. There is just no way around it.
And no, those "uber feminists" who demand special treatment that puts them over other people do not exist and it is a media-made image. That big fat, "dyke" woman saying she's better than ALL MEN EVER MEN ARE SCUM is not feminism and it just flat out does. Not. Exist.
Ahh yes. I'm not going to deny that it happens, never did, what I mean is that it can go too much to one side so it prevents a case from being objective and fair for all sides even if it is what someone would believe is for the best (just to get it clear I'm not saying that it's okay for someone to go around and shoot a person down because of their race, gender, sexuality, haircut or whatever without consequences, it's meant on a more civil level, if that makes… sense). I wasn't going for singling out feminism, I'm all in for equality for all, however I have seen people going on about these “isms” and mostly (yes generalization at it's worst, sorry, but I'm talking general-ish) in an extreme way where in this case for example some try to reverse the roles, like females first then males. The monster is a media-image but there are as many woman who thinks they are better than men as there are men thinking that about women who are extremists in their “isms”… Or you know they say they are. Of course, it's extreme cases and only counts for a minority of wacky people, who don't get the pure purpose of feminism, however it still leaves a mark for many that changed the interpretation on feminism over the years. And I find that important because it is people who carry out these things.
What I mean by a middle ground is where there is equality for both genders, and yeah feminism is about that, but in this case it's hard because as you say it is a male driven concept (sadly expected by too many girls), but it's kind of a traditional way of thinking, like don't hit girls, pay for their food that's how you show them respect, so and so, that many are raised with, and that's probably not easy to let go of atm. If this is still taken up for discussion ti's still there. I mean, I most certainly have certain things that I find hard on letting go as well even though it's old-stuff. It's not an excuse but more like something to take into account. As in it's not entirely on purpose that some do it.
And of course my formulation is pretty fucked now that I re-read what I wrote before. I'm really sorry. It is as you say a media-image and yeah I sounds like I am making my conclusion out from that image and don't get it either, probably still does, but it's more based on what I've seen around. I can't say that I've felt oppression myself so I might just not know about what it's all about, and thus should have kept my mouth shut, but hey. Teach me then.
@Monkey:
I don't get where someone grows up acting like that around the opposite sex. Maybe yall are raised in some kind of Amish shit where the girls and the guys are opposite sides of the party and were raised on the cool totally healthy idea of the other group as aliens or whatever.
But I didn't, and most of my friends have trended vagina, and so treating them as some kind of bizarre foreign creature with different customs who needs some sort of weird coddling is really goddamn strange to me.
If you think holding doors and pulling out chairs is romantic you're really awful at being romantic.
Oh hi. Say what now?
 
