Found on tumblr. Dont know the source. Here’s the thing: it’s not a crisis or a huge problem if people want to call themselves egalitarians rather than feminists. I respect the reasons why they might choose that. It’s just… I hate it when it’s framed as an either/or thing. As a judgment on people who DO call themselves feminists. As an implicit statement that calling yourself feminist is retrograde. Because the people who have a vested interest in making feminism seem divisive and exclusionary and cruel are most definitely not ‘egalitarians’ in the sense being discussed here. They don’t like feminists because they don’t like the idea of gender equality. BUT, and this is the crucial thing, they don’t see it that way. They very likely do believe they’re in favor of equality. And that’s the problem with egalitarianism. It means almost nothing. Which means: if you’re uncomfortable associating with a label endorsed by people who believe things you don’t like, you probably shouldn’t be an egalitarian either. Egalitarianism includes John Locke (of ‘land only becomes property through development, so let’s go colonize the New World’ fame) and Milton Friedman and the radicals of the French Revolution and those great egalitarians the slave-owning founders of American democracy. Andrew Jackson founded a new republic on the principle of egalitarianism. It was a republic built on the graves of an exterminated people, grounded in the cementing of religious and gendered hierarchy. John Roberts believes himself to be a proponent of equality. So does Clarence Thomas. So do many Tea Party libertarians. And on and on. And that’s the problem with egalitarianism. As a philosophical concept, it’s very interesting. But as a general social value, it’s either far too radical to get any traction or far too vague to generate any meaningful distinctions. Because basically everyone believes in equality. Who is against equality? No one. The problem is when you start introducing specific claims. When you start to argue for workplace protections, for health care and birth control, for public support, for changing social attitudes about beauty and harassment, and so forth. So again, if people prefer the label egalitarian, it’s not a big problem. I just worry about the way these sort of things get broadcast. Where it’s ‘let me tell you why I’m NOT a feminist.’ Because it encourages people to discard feminism writ large because of their experiences with a few feminists. Because it encourages people to back away from fights rather than engaging them. Because it encourages us to think in platitudes rather than specifics. And I can’t help but think that all of this plays into the hands of folks who want to portray concern for the way women are treated as a bad thing. Who want to make it seem gauche and pointless and tasteless. tl;dr - I genuinely support people calling themselves what they like. I just hope I can persuade you that if you care about these things, being willing to take on the label of ‘feminist’ is really important.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 10:36:58 +0000