Seven Reasons You Should Thank A Feminist Today

[ismnotwasm]

If there is one thing in this world that makes me want to chew my own face off, it’s women who think that feminism has ruined their lives.

You know the type - women who want to live in some kind of souped up 1950s fantasy world where they get married right out of high school and their husband makes enough to support their family on just his income and they think the moral decline of society has something to do with the fact that women no longer wear crinolines and genteel white gloves and cute little hats. Never mind that, you know, lots and lots of families in the 1950s weren’t able to live off of a single income; trust me when I say that feminism did not invent the working mother. Leaving that little scrap of truth aside, I guess I can see what some women find appealing about this model. They want to live in a world where there were fewer expectations put on women – and lord knows that in this day and age, when women often work full time jobs outside of the home and yet are still expected to do the majority of the housework and childcare, the idea that there was a time when you only needed to be pretty and fertile might seem downright relaxing. I guess.

Of course, many women were miserable back then, and the feminine mystique and blah blah blah. I’m not going to get into all that Betty Friedan second wave fun here, but feel free to look it up if you don’t believe me. Life for women back then was like a fancy chocolate with some gross shit inside – really pretty to look at, but best left in the box so that some other sucker who HASN’T read the chocolate map gets tricked into eating it. Just kidding. No one should eat that chocolate – it’s a garbage chocolate and should be treated as such.

All that being said, the thing that REALLY makes me howl with exasperation over this time-travel housewife fetishization is that the vast, vast majority of the women who say that they hate feminism seem to be pretty damn happy to reap the benefits of it. So either they’re totally unaware of what feminism is, what it’s done, and how history works, or else they’re just total hypocrite jerks.

http://bellejar.ca/2014/07/04/seven-reasons-you-should-thank-a-feminist-today/

[shenmue]

1. Thank you

[sheshe2]

2. Thank you!

[sheshe2]

3. OMG!

I was just going to post that gif! Love it!

[Tuesday Afternoon]

4. Thank you!

[malthaussen]

5. Eh, feminism is like unionism in this regard.

How many rabid anti-labor types gleefully benefit from the work and bloodshed of their predecessors on the front lines? They're dwarfs lounging on the shoulders of giants.

-- Mal

[ismnotwasm]

24. Exactly!

I use that analogy all The time-- I work in an open shop, and although I don't begrudge it (much) my union dues are paying for others' benefits. My union fought for those benefits in the first place.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

6. Quickly, the Seven Reasons listed but, do read the whole article. It is good =

1. VOTE
2. OWN PROPERTY
3. HAVE REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS !!!!!
4. WEAR PANTS
5. GET AN EDUCATION
6. WORK OUTSIDE THE HOME AND BE FINANCIALLY INDEPENDENT
7. BE A PERSON

[ancianita]

8. A good platform for a Women's Party.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

9. I have been wondering if that is what it is coming to. I sincerely hope not but,

I can see it might happen.

[niyad]

11. the national women's party

National Woman’s Party
The Suffrage Era

Alice Paul was a well-educated, Quaker woman working and studying in England in 1907 when she became interested in the issue of women’s suffrage. She met Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, Christabel and Sylvia, who were causing controversy throughout England with their militant tactics to secure the vote for women. Paul’s participation in meetings, demonstrations and depositions to Parliament led to multiple arrests, hunger strikes, and force-feedings.
She returned to the United States in 1910 and after completing a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1912, turned her attention to the American suffrage movement. After the deaths of the two great icons of the movement—Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1902 and Susan B. Anthony in 1906—the suffrage movement was languishing, lacking focus and support under conservative suffrage organizations that were concentrating only on state suffrage. Paul believed that the movement needed to focus on the passage of a federal suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution. After joining the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and assuming leadership of its Congressional Committee in Washington, DC, Paul created a larger organization, the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. Paul’s tactics were seen as too extreme for NAWSA’s leadership and the Congressional Union split from NAWSA in 1914.

In 1916, the Congressional Union formed the Woman’s Party, comprised of the enfranchised members of the Congressional Union. In 1917, the two organizations formally merged to form the National Woman’s Party (NWP). From the Pankhursts, Paul adopted the philosophy to “hold the party in power responsible.” The NWP would withhold its support from the existing political parties until women had gained the right to vote and “punish” those parties in power who did not support suffrage. Under her leadership, the NWP targeted Congress and the White House through a revolutionary strategy of sustained dramatic, nonviolent protest. The colorful, spirited suffrage marches, the suffrage songs, the violence the women faced (they were physically attacked and their banners were torn from their hands), the daily pickets and arrests at the White House, the hunger strikes and brutal prison conditions, the national speaking tours and newspaper headlines—all created enormous public support for suffrage.

The Equal Rights Amendment Campaign

In 1920, the 72-year struggle ended with the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the “Susan B. Anthony” Amendment, granting women the vote. Paul believed that the vote was just the first step in women’s quest for full equality. In 1922, she reorganized the NWP with the goal of eliminating all discrimination against women. In 1923 Paul wrote the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), also known as the Lucretia Mott Amendment, and launched what would be for her a life-long campaign to win full equality for women. The current version of the ERA reads: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States on account of sex.” Congress passed the ERA in 1972 but remains three states short of ratification today. For over fifty years, the ERA has been introduced in every session of Congress.

International Women’s Rights

In addition to working on issues affecting American women, the NWP was extensively involved in the international women’s rights movement beginning in the early 1920s. In 1928, the NWP assisted in the establishment of the Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW), which served as an advisory and policy-planning unit on women’s issues for what is now the Organization of American States. The NWP sought equality measures for women at the League of Nations through Equal Rights International and the International Labor Organization. The Party also provided assistance to Puerto Rican and Cuban women in their suffrage campaigns. In 1938, Alice Paul founded the World Woman’s Party, which, until 1954, served as the NWP’s international organization. In 1945, Paul was instrumental in the incorporation of language regarding women’s equality in the United Nations Charter and in the establishment of a permanent UN Commission on the Status of Women.
The National Woman’s Party Today
The political strategies and tactics of Alice Paul and the NWP became a blueprint for civil-rights organizations and activities throughout the twentieth century. The NWP ceased to be a lobbying organization and became a 501©(3) educational organization in 1997. Today, the NWP seeks to educate the public about the women’s rights movement and to use and preserve the Sewall-Belmont House, with its outstanding historic library and suffragist and ERA archives, to tell the inspiring story of a century of courageous activism by American women.

http://www.sewallbelmont.org/learn/national-womans-party/

[Tuesday Afternoon]

17. wow. Thank you.

The NWP ceased to be a lobbying organization and became a 501©(3) educational organization in 1997. Today, the NWP seeks to educate the public about the women’s rights movement and to use and preserve the Sewall-Belmont House, with its outstanding historic library and suffragist and ERA archives, to tell the inspiring story of a century of courageous activism by American women.

[niyad]

18. whenever I am asked my party affiliation, I tell them the national women's party.

think it is far past time to resurrect it as an actual party again.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

19. gosh. mixed feelings about it and what that says about us as a whole.

that society has not progressed past this need to divide in order to unite in a more fair and balanced manner.

[niyad]

21. it gets people's attention, and creates conversation.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

22. I understand that part of it all. But, To actually start it back up as a Third Party?

[DreamGypsy]

12. There's an eighth reason that I consider very important...

...and I thank my favorite feminist (my wife) for it frequently:

8. BE A MENTOR AND A ROLE MODEL FOR OTHER WOMEN, YOUNG AND OLD

She's a scientist (biochemist), entrepreneur (founder of a number of companies, some successful, some not), business person (CEO). She has helped her six granddaughters, my three nieces, and many of her colleagues, friends, and associates to realize that though the paths they choose may be very different for the ones she has chosen, they can strive and achieve to become whoever they want to be.

Thank you.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

16. AWESOME!!

thank you, DreamGypsy

[ancianita]

7. I'll go for your "total hypocrite jerks" reason. Women have been each other's worst enemy for too

damned long. Only the youngest seem to slap and snap each other out of that stockholm syndrome. Stil, it's enough to make a grown woman cry.

[redqueen]

10. Given that femicide is a thing, sexual violence against women is a global epidemic,

and that an average of three women are murdered by their male partners or ex partners every single day, on average, just in the US... I fucking loathe the statement that we are our own worst enemy.

[ismnotwasm]

25. Number 7 is more your thing I think

7. Be A Person

You know what’s awesome? Being a full-fledged person in the eyes of the law. I really, really love not being a man’s property. I love having agency. I love being able to make my own decisions. I love that I live in a world where it’s no longer completely 100% legal for a man to rape his wife. Being a person is so fucking rad. And yeah, if you’re a woman, you can fucking thank feminism for the fact that you are legally a person.

And as a recent ruling expresses, not everyone thinks women are people. Brood mares maybe, but not people

[ancianita]

26. Loathe a statement? Interesting. I've considered its shortcomings in that light.

Women and girls' being trained into religious and social identities while concomitantly untrained for psychological and physical defense does embolden weak or strong patriarchalists to presume privilege, proclaim superiority or to violently show it toward their mothers, sisters, community women or random women, whenever and for whatever reasons. Singly or in groups. Abuse is internalized, then displaced, family to children over millennia. Force succeeds in domesticating girls and women's free will.

Fighting is my preference, on any level. Infighting isn't. I'm describing, not condemning. Infighting doesn't strengthen women; it weakens women; yet we do it.

Harriet Tubman saw slaves the way I see women: "I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."

I could say more to explain myself but won't.

Thanks for your support.

[tea and oranges]

13. Back in the early days of unionization

the female mill workers in the Carolinas didn't want to protest or strike for fear men would see them as unfeminine.

The first anti-feminist we must all defeat is the one planted in our heads by our sexist culture!

[ancianita]

20. So true. Men in that same sexist culture are trained never to show that they care what women think

of them.

[tea and oranges]

23. Agree

Men aren't in the same economic circumstances women traditionally are or have been.

It's only recently that some women have been able to become high earners.

Which is exactly what pisses authoritarians off. If women aren't dependent on men's wages, OMG, freedom.

[littlemissmartypants]

14. Do we have a woman's health care group?

We should.



Love, Peace and Shelter.
Lmsp

[ismnotwasm]

27. That's a good idea

[littlemissmartypants]

15. Kicking. Thank you. nt

[Warpy]

28. I would have cited eight reasons

the eighth being an end to child labor, not being forced to send your little six year old to crawl into tight spaces in a coal mine because you, yourself, were not allowed to work for money.

That's about the first thing women did when we got the vote in partnership with some of the unions.

[ismnotwasm]

29. Nice one!

[niyad]

30. kcik for the weekday crowd

[theHandpuppet]

31. Loved it!

A big K&R!