I've always found it somewhat amusing that an issue which damn near everyone agrees on can be so bloody divisive. I mean, a discussion which should go something like:
"Do you agree that men and women should have equal rights?"
"Damn right!"
"Cool"
Always seems to end up like this:
"You misogynistic prick!"
"Go fuck yourself, feminazi!"
"You're a fucking rape apologist!"
I really don't want to get too involved in this thread as I like a lot of people on both sides of the issue and this topic tends to get pretty intense (not that I think there are really sides as such).
I think a lot of the divisiveness comes from conflating "feminism" the idea with "Feminism" the ideology/dogma.
There are loud, obnoxious opinionated and generally offensive people on sides of the debate (I'm not talking about anyone on this forum btw) and I think the only way to have a sensible, mature and intelligent conversation on the subject is to ignore these people.
Damn near every feminist I've spoken to has been just as concerned with inequalities for men as well as women, so my opinion is that terms such as "sexism" "misandrist/misogynist" etc need to be left at the door as once insults start flying, it's hard to bring things back down to earth. It's far too easy for otherwise harmless and innocuous sentences to be inadvertantly taken out of context or misconstrued. I think people need to extra careful whilst wording their own posts and more lenient when reading the posts of others. It might be best to ask someone to clarify their position in order to avoid reading something into a post that was never intended.
"Do you agree that men and women should have equal rights?"
"Damn right!"
"Cool"
Always seems to end up like this:
"You misogynistic prick!"
"Go fuck yourself, feminazi!"
"You're a fucking rape apologist!"
I really don't want to get too involved in this thread as I like a lot of people on both sides of the issue and this topic tends to get pretty intense (not that I think there are really sides as such).
I think a lot of the divisiveness comes from conflating "feminism" the idea with "Feminism" the ideology/dogma.
There are loud, obnoxious opinionated and generally offensive people on sides of the debate (I'm not talking about anyone on this forum btw) and I think the only way to have a sensible, mature and intelligent conversation on the subject is to ignore these people.
Damn near every feminist I've spoken to has been just as concerned with inequalities for men as well as women, so my opinion is that terms such as "sexism" "misandrist/misogynist" etc need to be left at the door as once insults start flying, it's hard to bring things back down to earth. It's far too easy for otherwise harmless and innocuous sentences to be inadvertantly taken out of context or misconstrued. I think people need to extra careful whilst wording their own posts and more lenient when reading the posts of others. It might be best to ask someone to clarify their position in order to avoid reading something into a post that was never intended.
