I currently attend an all girls high school in which I am constantly subjected to warm, fuzzy
brainwashing on the status of women. To that end, I currently have an actual
class on Women in
Jewish Law (did you know that
the Bible forbids women from carrying weapons?). And in this environment, I have encountered "
feminism" similar to much of the
sexism I have just read about in the write ups above. That is,
Women are better than men because they are more sensitive. Because men are cave-bear hunting baffoons.
This is unfair to both women and men. It infantilizes women as weak, helpless children. It degrades men as stupid, oblivious fools. And yet, it is spouted by the so-called feminists who keep Hallmark (think "You go girl!" cards) and Seventeen magazine in business. It should be noted that women such as these are not guilty of hypocrisy in insisting on
chivalry from the men around them. But they are destroying their own prospects of a more equitable world, and giving a bad name to legitimate feminists (and confusing more than a few men, as the write ups above indicate.)
This is feminism as I see it:
Women are people.
What a radical concept! The truth is, women are not better than men, men are not better than women, and they are not "apples and oranges". Study after study finds that women’s brains have more highly developed emotional centers than men’s? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I would think that these studies are done on adults, or perhaps children. Has one ever been done on infants? From the moment of birth, the typical child is surrounded by
social conditioning foisting upon him/her a proper
gender role. If a girl baby is given a doll to play with, and a boy baby is given a gun, who develops greater sensitivity, huh?
One of my best friends aspires to be a paratrooper (in the Israeli army, which has just opened all combat positions to women, finally). Another, a genetic engineer. I am going to be a veterinarian. Not one of us is a militant
feminazi (an equally ridiculous contortion of feminism, claiming that women should massacre all men on earth). And not one is a soft, warm and fuzzy “girl”. We open the door, if we get to it first. We pay for our own food. We do not watch
chick flicks (whatever those are). Is it so hard to understand?
Incidentally, I once had a teacher who told the class that if she was in a burning building and saw a female firefighter climbing a ladder to rescue her, she'd "jump out the window." I am scarred for life.