My mother is sadly a bit of a feminist, and so is another sibling. My Mom’s feminism goes way back. One of her best friends was one of the founding members of the California NOW back in the late 1960’s. She went to some of the foundational meetings of that group in Laguna Beach, California. M. was the only heterosexual among the founding members of California NOW. All the rest were lesbians. M. eventually stopped going to NOW meetings because the lesbians would not stop trying to seduce her.
One of her best friends set up a women’s shelter for battered women at California State University Long Beach where I went to school. I met this woman, and she was a real feminazi. But my Mom defended her and said men had screwed her over badly in life. She also defends other man-hating feminists on the grounds that the men in their life treated them badly. But I am sure she does not think much of misogynists, no matter how badly they have been treated by women.
I don’t think the genders ought to be making excuses for the haters on our own team. If it’s perfectly fine for women to be man-haters due to mistreatment by men, then why isn’t it fine for men to be misogynists due to mistreatment by women? If you are going to defend the man-haters, then you have to defend misogynists as well on the same grounds.
Of course feminism cannot do that because feminism is all about defending or even lionizing man-haters while reviling misogynists as the spawn of Satan. And this is the fatal flaw of feminism. Surely if misogynists are awful, then so are manhaters. If manhaters are just fine, then so are misogynists.
Of course the stupid MRA’s are caught in this same moronic trap. Misogyny is elevated to near religious status, while manhaters are the Devil incarnate. Of course if misogyny is great then so is manhating. And if manhating is a cardinal sin, then so is misogyny.
That sibling and my Mom are almost feminazis, I hate to say it. Looking at my Mom’s feminism, it looks like vengeance. I think she wants to get even. That’s what I get from her. Face it, feminism is paybacks, and as they say on the street, paybacks are a bitch.
She seems to think that men are in charge, men rule, and that men’s rules are lousy for women. She gets this hard look about her when she talks about feminist stuff, and it’s really all about revenge for some wrongs that we have done to them. I think it is also about evening the score. My Mom seems to think that society is set up for men’s rules, and she would like to change that in some way and make society run more according to the rules of women. This unfortunately even includes the legal system.
However, my Mom is not a true feminazi. She is too sensible for that.
And I do not think she is a manhater. She has three sons who she loves very much, though I often wonder if we really deserve it. But she shovels the love anyway whether we deserve it or not and I believe whether we return the love or not. Her love for her sons is quite unconditional. She loves her sons even if they don’t love her or even like her. She loves her sons whether they are deserving of it or not, and honestly I think at times some of us really do not deserve her love.
That’s quite a selfless endeavor, is it not? To give unconditional love irrespective or whether it is deserved or returned. It’s almost…Jesus like. But then maybe my mother is not unusual.
Mothers and daughters are often locked into very problematic relations that often are not only loveless but frequently even look like hate, often combined with some strange and bitter rivalry.
Perhaps many mothers love their sons in this sort of saintly way. Why? Perhaps a mother’s love for her sons is an undying thing, rooted in nature and biology like the sun or the moon and not dependent on conditions or circumstances. It’s just there. It’s actually a rather amazing thing is you think about it.
My mother does have some resentment towards men, but I am starting to think that a vast number of women have this. It may build with age as damage accumulates. One can see this resentment when the females of my family get together, as they form a “female pack” like a wolf pack, move away from and don’t talk to the males and unfortunately even laugh at and ridicule them. It turns into Women Against Men, which strikes me as a Game, and a needless and ugly one at that.
There’s some residual anger at men there, or possibly they simply think females are superior. Female chauvinism definitely exists, and it’s about as common as the male variety. It’s more that most folks don’t notice it.
Anyway, by my age almost all men have more than a bit of residual anger at women, so I don’t particularly care if the sexes are mad at each other on some hopefully minor level. It is rather the normal state of affairs. I don’t agree with forming gender packs and waging slow guerrilla war against the entire other gender. That’s ugly. It feels like war, a very unpleasant feeling. I would not like it if men did that to women, and I don’t think women should do that to men.
Bottom line is I do not think men and women should pit themselves against each other like boxers in a ring. It seems insipid unless you are can prove that one gender is very good and the other gender is quite evil, but the more you think about it, there’s nothing there. Men are about as good as women, and they’re about as horrible too. Or they might even be worse.
I suppose it is because I am a spiritual androgyne that I just don’t get the gender hate thing.