"Oh, no, I'm not a feminist. I mean, I believe in gender equality, but not gender superiority..."

This is the event that convinced me I should finally stop taking up blog space on what is supposed to just be my angsty blog with the Feminismz.  (Not that writing about feminism is less worthwhile than writing whine-y posts about my angst--to the contrary--but I just feel like I should keep my blogs organized, and so here we are!)

I was in one of my Lit courses that's cross-listed as WGS today.  We had a guest speaker, Richard, a fellow undergrad who is about to publish a paper on Onanism in The Awakening (fascinating stuff, seriously).  In this paper, Richard takes a good look at the Victorian crusade against "the solitary vice," "sexual inversion," and individualist feminism while making his case.  He argues that Edna's husband is so oppressive that he "turns her to masturbation" (obviously, this is from the Victorian point of view), and thus ruins her.  It's a solid argument, and I was really impressed with his work.

But first I had to overcome a big, bad, awful, terrible first impression failure.  The professor made some comment calling Richard a feminist (which is totally valid!), and his response was, "Oh, no, I'm not a feminist.  I mean, I believe in gender equality, but not gender superiority, which the majority of feminists do.  Those are who I like to call 'feminazis.'"

RAGE!  SO MUCH RAGE!

I couldn't keep quiet, of course.  "Actually, you're wrong.  Feminism is all about gender equality, not superiority.  Only radical sects on the fringe of feminism, who you couldn't really call feminists, believe in gender superiority.  Also, it's never okay to compare anyone to a Nazi, unless they are committing genocide or actively perpetuating racism/anti-Semitism/etc."  In his defense, Richard corrected himself and admitted that it was a small minority who believed in "gender superiority," but I still felt it was necessary to remind him that you don't identify large groups by their most extreme members.

This is my biggest pet peeve, this vast cultural misunderstanding of feminism.  I would love to say that people are simply uninformed about feminism, and that's why they don't understand, but that would be naive.  People are misinformed about feminism, and I genuinely believe this is a lie perpetuated by the mainstream to maintain the status quo--to keep power in the hands of those who already have it.

Don't believe their lies.  Don't accept the status quo.  If you believe in gender equality, you can call yourself a feminist.  I understand that there are other reasons not to identify as such (e.g. many WOC reject the label because the feminist movement has historically shut them out), and that's more than fair.  But if you're resisting an identification with feminism because "Ewwww, feminazis!  Bunch of castrating bitches!  I hear they don't even shave!" then you're continuing the problem.  Don't be that person.