From the Readers

I've had three reader e-mails this week; yay! One asked my why I have no comments section. I answered that I'm too busy to code one or find one to incorporate. I've seen some blogger blogs with comments - anybody have recommendations? I'll look into this in September, likely.

Two, Mike Courtney wrote to inform me that blogger was hogging my permalinks. Bad blogger. Blog hog, blogger. My permalinks are STILL not properly rendering, which, given that this is a weekend, is not shocking. Perhaps all will be well tomorrow.

Three, Hans "Is the Party" Gerwitz, whirling dervish bicycle and software geek, wrote thus:

Thought for the day: how is ifeminism, well, feminism? Isn't is oxymoronic to use a gender-loaded term to describe a position that dismisses gender as the basis for rights?

Yes, and no; more soon. Dictionary.com:

Feminism
1) Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
2) The movement organized around this belief.

If you take definition one, it doesn't say anything about the collective female voice rallying for acceptance of women as equal to men; rather, this is a blanket statement that, once accepted, hopefully leads one to view people as individuals rather than collectives of men and women (and never the twain shall meet).

But, of course, the word "feminism" elicits a much different view - often with the encouragement of the feminists. If you know me personally, you've probably heard the story of the female realtor at the party who adamantly insisted that ALL women are oppressed. I said, really, I don't FEEL oppressed. I don't see any evidence of oppression; how can I be oppressed? THESE women (those whom I have labelled with the negative connotation of feminism) probably give the movement a bad name, even in my eyes. I don't see any need to band together with other members of my gender to assert the need for something that I believe, in this day and age, at least as far as my life goes, ALREADY EXISTS.

But I digress. Hans, I stand firm on the "social, political, and economic equality of the sexes" (en masse). What's unstated, of course, is that this is typically from a female perspective (as are my thoughts - no escaping that). I'll state the text from the ifeminism post again, just for ease of reading. From the site ifeminism.com:

What is ifeminism?

Individualist feminism, or ifeminism, advocates the equal treatment of men and women as individuals under just law. The core principle of individualist feminism is that all human beings have a moral and legal claim to their own persons and property. It is sometimes called libertarian feminism.

ifeminism: literal, libertarian feminism.

hln

Posted by hln at August 10, 2003 11:47 AM | Blogspot Blog