Monday, March 30, 2009

Are we just misogynistic feminists?

One thing many women do while fighting for women's right is to segregate women into two groups. Us and them. They are usually women who are following the stereotypical image of women held up by male dominated society, putting all efforts into making themselves look pretty, big breasted and naive and safe enough so no man will find them physically but also mentally threatening.

Thus, some feminists take these women on as their number one enemy, for reasons that they re-enforce the false imagery of how women should be, for they take us back 30 years when emancipation was just an infant or non-existing. They/we treat these women as brainless bimbos and "large walking implants", with no character nor sense to see what they are actually doing to woman kind. Attack them, make them into worthless creatures, only then can the smart intelligent women shine...

... or is it?

If we look up the word misogyny, it is defined as the hatred of women or girls. However, prejudice against women is also considered misogynistic.
Okay then, how about feminists who critique other women that behave completely according to the patriarchal social structures.

Tanya Gold's article on Miss Great Britain is a good example of this. Although her article is bit more spiced up and rude, as it always in to get more viewers/readers interested and excited, it is not too different from what other feminists think and do, and by other feminists yours truly is not excluded. However, what we forget is that this type of attacking other women, who we believe to set us back in our fight for feminist rights, is also misogynistic. Especially when it is done in a non-tasteful way of criticizing them by being mean, suggesting that they only way they could be helpful to this world would be in the form of them being tampons - see Tanya's article for more on this reference.
In other words, we hate women, who we think hate themselves because they act like the only way to love themselves is to be loved by men by living up to this image of stupid skinny bimbos. However, even if it is indeed hatred towards women with serious self-hatred issues,(or body image issues etc), it is still hatred for (other)women = misogyny.

I am not saying these women should not be criticized, although I think it is even hard to draw a line between the feminist and non-feminist women, since it is a continuum of various rights of various dimensions. It is not like feminists can group together in harmony to begin with, we all have various ideas of what needs to be tackled and how, and it is good that we do have this diversity. It is important to critique what is being done in this society and how other women, who should really take part in changing the vision of what woman should be like, are actually enforcing the machoistic view of women's roles. However, just flat on hating them, considering them as some other creatures which one cannot even relate to, is not the way to do it. Still, being the minority - thus still the societal norm of womanhood involving lots of make up, great loss of weight, lots of plastic surgery, and no brains!, we tend to be very defensive since we need much more power to balance things out. However, to single them out as being idiotic women, will only enforce this view, making men take on views such as, "yes I respect you and your beliefs and thoughts, but the other women, those bimbos, well all they are good for is a good fuck."

True feminism should not be changing men's, world's view on myself and other similar women, but every women and everyone, even if this may entail respecting other women's choice to become bimbos and walking silicone implants.

3 comments:

hwayoungjung said...

that's why I'm a misanthropic feminist

insatiable hee said...

hehehe.... yeah, that's much of a neutral way of dealing with things. Why hate women? just hate human kind! - ... just looked at the blog post again, and found like 100 grammatical mistakes.... buts it's all cool, I'm hot so it doesn't count B-)

Miguel Carvalho said...

une femme sans un homme, c'est comme un poisson sans un velo

one of my all time favorite quotes

anyway, i'm like 200% feminist, butdon't know what to say about the topic. i guess the bimbos should just be left alone. criticizing them just helps pointing the spotlights at them