I think the world is changing and it's for the better. Just my 2 cents. But then I also know places where women's rights are not upheld to such a high regard..or blacks, or gays, or other minorities. It's sad.
warning, my post here veers off into a graphic tangent about child abuse, please don't read if you'll be kinder to yourself not to...thanks, Hops (And I will remove it pronto if anyone asks me to.)Yes, yes. The Western world, anyway. And there are so many places of prejudice and sexism still here.
I despair over the treatment of women in other places. Try not to despair, but I do feel connected at a heart-level. So many things happen to helpless boys, too...like the child soldiers in Africa, or any abused boy anywhere. Especially those with no fathers. My heart breaks for them.
PLEASE DON'T READ ON IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO HORROR ABOUT CHILDREN--STOP HERE).When people are considering the general exploitation and suppression of women and girls though, it seems endless. For me, the worst thing (though I know there are worse, because depravity can go lower):
I had an "adopted" child from the Sudan for a long time. I wrote her and her family, she sent me little drawings. They sent me her picture every year. Before the program was driven out of the area by war, they sent me her 11-year-old photo. From age 10 to 11, ALL the childhood had drained out of her face. I had an intuition, called the program and asked, and they were truthful: yes, they practice female genital mutilation in her village right at that age. Older women, well indoctrinated, hold down the child, and one of them slices off her labia and clitoris--usually with something like the edge of a can lid. No anesthesia. Their wounds are disabling and lifelong.
I saw a photograph of this (it was being done in the middle east somewhere) in National Geographic once. The child was screaming in pain, reaching out to the photographer. I have never before and never since seen such an expression on the face of a child.
(So little Dakota Fanning is doing a brutal child-abuse scene to entertain the Western world. It's all of a piece.) I cannot imagine the trauma. I have heard some people dismissively compare it to circumcision, when the equivalent would be amputation of the penis.
Sorry for the great darkness, but this is why I do not quibble over labels like feminist (to me, it assumes a love for all of humanity of any sexual identity, gender, age, race...it covers it all, for me). If it's a convenient shorthand for passionate about the liberation of women and it helps anyone understand or think about anything, I'll wear it. All words are approximations anyway.
I don't argue about "isms" much. Except fundamentalism of any stripe...and then there's no argument, nobody's listening. And that would include radical anythings...women who hate and belittle men are stuck.
As are men who dominate women or have generalized hostility for them.
I'm so grateful for the wonderful women and men in my life. (Here too!)
Hops
