Why I am so passionate about speaking out against feminism.

[TaraJo]

I don't know if I'd say people are always ignoring them anymore. The fringe feminists are making a lot of enemies and I can't help but think, they're making anti-feminists who are hostile towards feminism in general.

Yes, that's one of the two points I had in entering this thread. OP seems to regard the fringe as being mainstream.

Within any large group there are those who take it too far, and some people who are just assholes in general. Moderates usually understand that and don't judge the group by the fringe.

Kinda true. The fringe do make themselves look mainstream. I mean, it can even happen in atheist circles. I mean, think about it: who do you think is going to get more attention (especially attention for being an atheist), the atheist who just quietly disbelieves or the atheist who goes out on a street corner, telling everyone who isn't an atheist they're just a bunch of brain-dead sheep? I mean, the first one you probably won't even notice and you really won't notice that they're an atheist, but it's kinda hard to ignore the later. And when the rest of the world thinks of atheists, they get the impression of the person who does the best at drawing attention to themselves and their atheism. It's not fair, no, but it is what it is.

But I think what bothers me about moderate feminists is that it's so damn rare to see them say anything to the crazy feminists who say crazy things. And so many of them do get all defensive and bent out of shape when we do talk about the extremists. Why is it that the moderates are never concerned with the crazies in their own camp, but they get really upset by outsiders responses to those crazies?

The best example I can give, again, comes back to religion. You know religion has been one of the primary sources of homophobia, right? And it's led a lot of GLBT people to feel hostile towards religion in general, especially Christianity. And instead of getting upset and demanding that gay people acknowledge that not all churches are homophobic, there have been churches who have actually gone and done things like this:



Now, I still have no plans to ever convert to Christianity or any other mythology, but I'd say this is a damn nice gesture. It isn't taking the defensive, it's acknowledging my feelings and acknowledging what people in their group have done. Seeing similar sentiment from feminism would go a long way, but it seems to be pretty rare.