what if just stop speaking english altogether?
January 17, 2003 09:36 AM

I seem to get one idiot reader or idiot email per day. Perhaps I should start a blog to highlight these on their own.

For instance, I received a comment on a journal entry from six months ago today.

The journal entry in question was my attempt to espouse the "feminism is dead" perspective for an On Display collab assignment. The assignment was stated at the end of the entry, and the following entry went into some detail about my feelings re: writing from the opposite perspective. The comments on both entries made my feelings rather clear, as well.

And someone who didn't leave a means of contacting her left me this rather odd comment:
I'm not suggesting you don't know what you're talking about, but I am questioning whether you've actually read any feminist writings. It seems not. Otherwise you would not have made the statement 'feminists to this day continue to think of women as superior to men, or to think of men as the enemy'. In fact it's not about bias, it's about non-bias. It's about eliminating bias in society. It doesn't purport to solve all (or any) of the world's ills, but operates along the theory that unless you make your condition known, you can't complain about it. Feminism has always been seen as threatening by men, but it needn't be. I love men. They are not the enemy. I just want to be treated as if I'm worth as much as them. This is the feminist position in very simplistic terms. Feminism is not finished. There is a way to go yet and to say that it's dead is to imply women don't deserve full equality, which I'm sure you don't believe?

The comment in question seems to imply that my random reader [by the way, I allow anonymous comments, but if you leave no contact info, I am forced to air your foolishness to the rest of the world, as I have no other means of communicating my sorrow at it.] had not been able to understand the purpose of that entry.

I can only suppose that phrases like opposing viewpoint are not necessarily understood by our viewing public. That, perhaps, there is no point in even bothering to speak the language I think I know, as no one else is actually hearing me.

There's also, of course, the possibility that my commenter had some sort of partial blindness. Or is simply an idiot.

In truth, this whole mistaken-commenter affair has rather upset me. It may be simply that I've been close to too much narrow-mindedness in general this week. Or that I had to work on a snow day. But I can't help seeing this as a symptom of the failure of social equality movements.

That is.

What if there is no longer any value in feminism because feminists are too different in opinion? Too focused on their own opinions? Too ready to counter an argument rather than hear it? What if feminism really is dead, killed by its own unwillingness to accept opinion as a matter of choice?

I'm concerned that my metaphorical heart is no longer in the fight. Not just for feminism, but for fatties, for queers, for whoever. It's petty and trivial to refuse to fight because I don't like the rest of the army, but I've been pissed off and upset by entirely too many feminists in the past few days.