It's always kind of
disheartening, when here you are, having spent
years and years rethinking shit,
mercilessly dissecting the
biases that you'd rather
write off as "
that's just how I am",
other guys looking at you like
you're crazy,
struggling to
reconcile your
ideals with the
reality of how your
brain is
hardwired... and you meet a
woman who starts
sentences with "
I'm not a feminist or anything..."
You can't just jump in and say "Oh, you mean you'd rather be
pregnant,
barefoot, and in the
kitchen? You mean you'd rather
defer to
men in every
decision? Oh yeah? Well, as a man, I ORDER YOU to
sprout a
pair of
cojones right now and start BEING a
feminist dammit."... because telling women what to think about
feminism is
patriarchal behavior, even if what you want them to think is
pro-feminist.".
Catch 22.
Nevertheless,
labels come and go, but
results accumulate.
The fact is,
regardless of just about any woman's
political alignment today, she'd be considered a
radical feminist/
suffragist/
abolitionist/
heretic/
witch in an
earlier time. So
perhaps progress is
continuing, and
merely the
word is
temporarily out of favor thanks to the
efforts of
Rush Limbaugh and his
ilk.