Taking Back Feminism

By Holly Lisle

I identified myself very firmly as a feminist once upon a time. I was in sixth grade, the time was the early 1970’s, and I could see what feminism was accomplishing for women, and I could see myself fighting that fight.

That was, of course, before NOW, the National Organization of Wackos, lost all sight of what feminism is and decided it was a platform for defending and even lauding child murderers like Andrea Yates, pushing an anti-male agenda in favor of female separatism and endless wails of ‘down with patriarchy’, and cheering deadly cults like Falun Gong which encourages women and children to immolate themselves in protest of repression, and which has been responsible for mass suicides and family murders.

Feminism, real feminism, is about women sharing the world with men, being equal partners with men, having equal rights and receiving equal pay for equal work. And that’s pretty much it. It does not denigrate motherhood in favor of careerism — it supports choices. It does not encourage lesbianism while claiming that women who choose male lifemates are traitors to the cause. It supports choices. It sure as shit doesn’t claim that women like Andrea Yates are cautionary tales for all women who are mothers, one of those ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ examples of how risky motherhood is to your sanity, as if having kids damaged your brain, destroyed your capacity to judge right from wrong, and might just turn you into a murderer in spite of yourself; real feminism never portrayed murderers as victims, and never encouraged anyone to look at women as weak, helpless slaves to their hormones.

I’ve had enough. I say it’s time we — the sane women of America and the men who love us — reclaim feminism from the lunatics who are currently tarnishing it. I say we stand up and say to NOW, “Your vision of feminism has nothing to do with what most American women believe or want. We don’t want to live in a world without men, we don’t want to live in a world with men in subjugation, and we don’t want to live in a world where idiots like you are trying to destroy all the gains we’ve made by claiming we’re too weak and fragile and helpless to make intelligent decisions or to take responsibility for our actions. WE ARE NOT VICTIMS. We are women, and we can stand on our own two feet, and take our knocks, and keep right on going. All we want is an equal (not preferential, just equal, thank you) hand in the poker game with a clean deck of cards. We’ll take it from there.”

Care to join me?

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