I am a traditional feminist. So is my husband and daugther. We will include our pups too
"curing autism because autistics have a harder life and are discriminated against would be like if the early suffragettes had gotten sex-change operations so they could vote instead of lobbying for women's sufferage."
I'm an Aspie for Freedom, yeah, right on...but I feel obliged to point out that I can vote and perhaps we're stretching a dodgy analogy? The message of feminism could so easily be to value anyone - but it isn't. I got sacked recently by a feminist who couldn't encompass my right to be. She knew she was allowed to be...but she was pretty sure I and my autistic traits weren't. (I told her the honesty she told us she was prepared to hear - that she has no management skills of any value, except PR, and would she please listen to the engineers who were screaming about the shuttle widgets...it's going to blow. I wanted to leave anyway...)
There are some feminists who are only interested in themselves and their own, just as there are in any group. There are some people who are pro-neurodiversity but don't care about any other social-justice issue, or don't even care about neurodiversity for anyone except people whose neurodivergence is exactly like their own. It's unfortunate, but there you are. The point of the suffragette analogy is that you shouldn't change your child's core identity just to keep your child from being discriminated against. You should work and lobby to change the discrimination instead. The fact that autistics have a harder life is no excuse for wanting to make autistics into non-autistics any more than sexism is an excuse for parents to try to turn their daughters into sons.
Ultra left feminist tend to be mouthpieces for their left wing bfs. They have no minds of their own believe it or not... There are factions in the feminist movement . We do not all agree. There are many left wing feminists who care little about others.... I was president of our major metropolis's Womens liberaton movement in 1970 before NOW came in.. I can say , there are major disagreements... just because we are women doesn't mean we are right ...
"curing autism because autistics have a harder life and are discriminated against would be like if the early suffragettes had gotten sex-change operations so they could vote instead of lobbying for women's sufferage."
I'm an Aspie for Freedom, yeah, right on...but I feel obliged to point out that I can vote and perhaps we're stretching a dodgy analogy? The message of feminism could so easily be to value anyone - but it isn't. I got sacked recently by a feminist who couldn't encompass my right to be. She knew she was allowed to be...but she was pretty sure I and my autistic traits weren't. (I told her the honesty she told us she was prepared to hear - that she has no management skills of any value, except PR, and would she please listen to the engineers who were screaming about the shuttle widgets...it's going to blow. I wanted to leave anyway...)
There are some feminists who are only interested in themselves and their own, just as there are in any group. There are some people who are pro-neurodiversity but don't care about any other social-justice issue, or don't even care about neurodiversity for anyone except people whose neurodivergence is exactly like their own. It's unfortunate, but there you are. The point of the suffragette analogy is that you shouldn't change your child's core identity just to keep your child from being discriminated against. You should work and lobby to change the discrimination instead. The fact that autistics have a harder life is no excuse for wanting to make autistics into non-autistics any more than sexism is an excuse for parents to try to turn their daughters into sons.
Who wants to say something that could discriminate women nowadays, I'm often in fear of doing so.
So am I , and I am a Feminist! Many of them turn me off... I think some women have hyjacked feminism to their own selfish purposes or left wing politics...
My advice is just to be yourself... I have made many a left wing feminist turn red with anger, when I don't agree with them.
Stand your ground.. if it is moral and right.. you will find the strength.. don't let the loudmouths run you over...
There is a saying "If you can't be right , be wrong in a loud voice" I think this is where feminism has been taken to by some... not all... There are many of us Traditional feminist as I call ourselves..
Betty Freidan who wrote the Feminist Mystic was Blasted down by the hard left feminist just before she passed away.. Like me , she was dumfounded at what has evolved.
Actually as president of Houstons Womens liberation in 1970, I felt compelled to join the service if my Bday was called for the men.. I told my mother and father I would join because it was not fair for men to serve and women not... We all watch the draft numbers...my bday was 360 to the relief of my parents... the day after my bday was #3!!!!! But yes I would have joined the Navy with honor next to my fellow Americans.
I could not live with myself if I did not as a female who wanted equal rights and the ERA.. I still have my ERA bracelet.
Who on earth is Rush Limbaugh, Max? I do my own thinking...
I guess your last remarks to me are as close as I'll get to an apology for the aggressive, ignorant post of yours which started this (you were claiming a superior knowledge of 'truth', you'll remember). Those last remarks of yours, as I'm sure you'll agree, amount to nothing more than "you're no better than me"...which was my message in the first place. Except, of course, I don't offer my ideas as 'unassailable truth'...I just offer my ideas. You choose to attack the person behind the ideas - unsurprisingly, this person responds personally. And no, I have seen enough to be sure that I have little or no respect for you. You can imagine it's because you're (what is your beef? you are a guy, right? whatever, fill in your own victim-status), but it's because you regurgitate political propoganda without ever trying to find the *whole* of the truth.
Now, you've referred to some lifetime of privilege that you think I've had. Bearing in mind this is an aspie site, you think I've somehow still had more than my fair share, that perhaps servants arrive every morning (as they once did to noble women) and ease my passage through the day? I grew up as an immigrant, so faced violent prejudice daily. I've been attacked for all sorts of bizarre reasons - mostly by women, funnily enough (just a couple, but they understood themselves - and their sisters - to be in a position where they could physically, verbally and psychology attack men. That's always been true, at least in working class communities).
Class...we seem to have lost sight of that power struggle in the focus on women. Have you *ever* met a misogynist, Max? really? All the men I know have been raised to respect their mothers and thus their wives, and women generally. We certainly don't hit or insult them.
Class played a huge part in the pointless slaughter of millions of men during WW1 -would it really have been a victory, Max, if they'd conscripted women too? No society that does that to millions of men can legitimately be referred to as 'patriarchal' - certainly not to the point that it becomes the sole defining factor.
You mention Hitler up there, Max - he relied on people like you to bolster the idea that all the problems could be solved by blaming them on the 'other' who had been oppressing 'our group' for ever. Women *are* human beings, Max - at least one, then, will be Hitlerian. It only takes one. The rest will be a mixed bag of all those *human* qualities and failings that define men. You can argue that men define society, if you must (devaluing women *again*), but you can't, with a straight face, argue that women could define it 'better'?
Give your body and gold to Ceasar, your soul belongs to you and God.
I respect your patriotism, Yetti. You and your agemates actually have living memory of an American draft. Now, being born in April 1970 (Beatles breakup, Cambodia invasion), my generation thinks a draft is a beer
I respect your patriotism, Yetti. You and your agemates actually have living memory of an American draft. Now, being born in April 1970 (Beatles breakup, Cambodia invasion), my generation thinks a draft is a beer
Also.. it was not easy being a feminist back then, I think the far left gals today are a new phenomena. They are lazy and mindless, their far left bf do the thinking for them. The traditional feminists were the early ones... we went through hell.. now the new feminist give us hell too.. Ask Betty Fredan's family.
{I like the classic statement by Cheris Kramerae:
"Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings." }
I like that quote Max.
Jewellie, I like how you bring up the "power of naming". I'm to lazy too now to look up references, but in the early conceptions of conception, women were just vessels, nothing more than that. The spermcel was the seed; everything that made the human. The womb nothing more than the incubator. Investigators even saw the human, very tiny, in the spermcel under a microscope.
Also the soul entered the female baby later than the male baby. A miscarriage of a boy was the loss of a person. His soul had already entered his body. A girl of the same age could go unwept for. She wasn't a person (yet).
And there are still countries where girls are aborted, just because they are girls.
Some people want prenatal screening for AS. The thread about the 21 year old mom in Wales says enough.
I like to treat people as persons. But people are partly formed by how the environment looks at them. I like to see persons. But I do notice; female, male, black, white etc. etc. I also notice women i like, women i don't like. Men i like, men i don't like. NT people i like, NT people i don't like. non NT i like, non NT i don't like.
But as long as the world we live in judges us as male vs female; black vs white; hetero vs gay; NT vs non NT; it's also respect to notice what is happening in the world and how "Normal" is dictating where the power is. And as long as "Normal" rules i like to see people connecting and opposing the status quo. And Thank goodness there is a wide range of feminists. Never will feminism become that "normal" that it will dictate the world. The individuality makes sure that there won't ever be an overall accepted feminist fundamentalism.
Being a woman is quite pervasive i think. If not by genetics, than by society. When my second daughter was born there really was a women who was sorry for me not having a son.
Like people feel sorry when they hear your child is on the autistic spectrum. I see the looks. OK I'm not really good at those non verbal things, but I do notice.
Oh I haven't introduced myself yet. I'm Hyke, 42, waiting for a diagnosis. Theology is one of my passions. Feminism fits in to that. I can't stand fundamentalism. Not even the atheist form of fundamentalism.
Max I'll try to begin to answer your question. I just can't find the right way to put it in english now. Maybe I haven't thought about it enough.
It has to do with how I see fundamentalism. A rigid thought pattern that gives a group of people a feel of security; we're right, we've got the truth, everybody else is wrong in the end. In extreme cases it can lead to "just" violence or force against ''unsafe'' groups or individuals.
And that I see in all kinds of groups, regardless of faith. People living on their island of absolute truth. And the others are wrong. The wrong, misled others can be tolerated, as long as they don't bother the just. But tolerance is something completely different from respect.
Fundamentalism is an opposite of diversity.
Before I joined this forum, a few days ago, I was a regular guest. I had to feel myself around. And it was diverse enough to feel safe. And that's a compliment to you all.
Fundamentalism, on a secular basis might be what happened to Amy and Gareth when they had an asperger friend to stay over.
Police coming in to check on you because you are not in the ''safe'' circle of people who are right (read ''normal''). They might tolerate you, if you don't come in numbers, but thats different from respect you.
They might even know a nice asperger themselves...
Fundamentalists never really have to explain their actions. They are right, aren't they?