Rambling on feminism, femininity, and submission

[Madeira]

I'm a feminist, I'm a submissive, and I'm (primarily) a lesbian, and I was thinking about this, and how a lot of people would see a submissive feminist as an oxymoron, but I often think about it in terms of feminism.

Feminism is about freedom, the freedom to be who you really are, and I think as a feminist I should have the right to submit to a partner of my choice without it reflecting on the nature of my entire sex. I also think that although I'm very feminine my femininity and my submissiveness (to a partner, in day to day life I'm independent and often very in command. I suppose I like to think of myself as the first mate of my relationship, they steer and I help them along) in any case, I don't think that femininity and submission are inherently linked, I think there can be dominant femininity and submissive femininity, and dominant masculinity and submissive masculinity and they are qualities that function entirely separately from one another

[PSAlexandria]

I agree with you that feminism should be about choice. I don't identify as feminist, because I believe that too often, the mainstream of feminism makes it about restricting men and women, rather than about choice. There are two sides to the left. One is the liberal left, which believes in individual choice. Feminism, to them, doesn't mean the end of all dominance and submission in the name of equality, it means that people can choose, as rational agents, to be dominant, or submissive, or equal. It doesn't mean the censorship of people who say anti-feminist or anti-woman things, it means that the reason and free speech of women isn't weaker than that of men. If a misogynist is, in fact, saying unreasonable and ridiculous things, then it follows that those things can be dealt with by reason or ridicule. It means that women aren't discriminated against for choosing the careers they want, but it doesn't mean that if a woman's career choices aren't identical to a man's, she is weak and brainwashed.

There is also the illiberal left. They advocate for things like campus speech codes which place some protected speech under the category of 'harrassment', anti-pornography laws in order to censor people who choose to be dominant over a consenting submissive, or to submit to a consenting dominant. Instead of using their hard-won legislation and activism to ensure that everyone gets a fair shot at a basic education, they use it to nitpick about the funding of school sports teams.

If the liberal left were controlling the direction of feminism today, I would be a feminist, but the illiberal left has hijacked feminism too much, in my opinion. We've lost sight of the fact that feminism is about choice for men and women, and choice is about individual rights.

[Endo]

I really don't think that in today's world we need to be having a discussion about how first-world white cishetero women are being "oppressed".

Oppression is the treatment of Muslim women. Oppression is the sex trade that has somehow still existed in America in secret, and publicly around the world.

Edit: 500th post! And what a shitty topic for it to be on.

[PSAlexandria]

^ That was kind of what I was saying when I talked about equal opportunity in education. We are focusing on using Title IX to nitpick about funding of sports teams. Meanwhile, there are women (and some men) in the world being denied basic literacy education.

[legoeater]

"We aren't anti black so much as pro white." -former KKK grand wizard

"We aren't anti men so much as pro women" -feminists