Femitropes

So I have a confession about this blog: I've recently come across a series of blogs, posts and comments that were the straws that broke the proverbial camel's back. I bundled those straws into a twig because they each came from different sources: two atheist, two law and one cooking blog.

It's the F-word. Feminism.

See, I was raised by a second-wave feminist. Anti-porn, pro-woman-workforce feminist. Now, being a child, I didn't have an opportunity to view porn to make the judgement about whether or not porn was objectifying towards women - so I was forced to consume and evaluate her other feminist ideals. And they have stood the test of time:
I am a woman. I:
- am capable of anything that a man is capable of, other than the biological production of sperm cells.
- will improve, not hinder, your existence as a man with my opinions, feelings and perspectives.
- am as complex as you are.

I was initially skeptical of these feminist stances my mother held, but as I reached adulthood, I realized their truth. Since that time, I have without hesitation called myself a feminist. Because the opposite of "feminist" was "misogynist," and I obviously wasn't one of those, was I?

If I wasn't a feminist, I would obviously have to hold the opposite opinion:
- Women are incapable of things that men are capable of.
- Women will handicap men by bogging them down with their silly opinions, feelings and perspectives.
- Women are simple. Men are complex.

So here we are, decades later and I find myself being confronted by wave after wave* of feminist saying that my definition of feminism (and the actions that people like me take in an effort to be in line with feminism) ISN'T TRUE FEMINISM.

Now this would be a shitty blog post if I left it at that. No True Scotsman is screaming out loud right now, and I heard it immediately. I looked around online and began to see that this infighting among feminists is quite common. And actually, quite a few things are quite common. Some of them are infighting, many of them are related to the censoring of male (or as I recently discovered, transgender) voices.

So I've decided to begin cataloging them here. I shall call them ... Femitropes.

1. Making a blog post complaining that men always need to assert their opinions on women - then being shocked (SHOCKED, I SAY) when men show up to rebut/comment on the post.
Here's an idea: set up a religious blog and make a post saying that Muslims constantly try to censor blog posts - then when Muslims show up to say that's not what they think: they've proven your point!

* See what I did there?