Absolute Lunacy and Feminism

I was pretty confident that 1980s style feminism had died a thorough death. Nobody yells at anybody for holding doors open or stupid things like that. You don't see the style of the old "Take Back the Night" march where men are excluded and generally pointed at and accused of rape along the parade route. And, furthermore, there was no feminist defense of Janet Jackson when someone ought to have noticed that - at least superficially - she was the victim.

So it surprises me when I run across apparently recent postings where the conservative lunatic fringe is still getting angry about feminists charging all men with rape. (I'm guessing virgin males are innocent, but I don't see a specific exception). The evidence that feminists accuse all men of being rapists consists of posts like this wherein we have a list - basically - of specific non-exceptions to the rule that sex must be consensual.

But my goodness, the vitriol that comes flying out of the mouths of these anti-feminists. All women, apparently, are happier when men are controlling them. Men are happier that way, too. In fact, if men don't have a woman to control, they are useless. The tools of socialism - which I always thought liberated women by taking away the traditional yoke of stay-at-home motherhood - are actually taking away her freedom to ... um ... do whatever her husband wants. Or something like that. I honestly have trouble making sense of it.

The sum total seems to be that these people - some of them women - seem to believe that "womanhood" and "femininity" have some a priori definition which only they know. That definition involves being happily ensconced in a very traditional style of marriage - sometimes apparently not even choosing their husbands (?).

And here I thought women want freedom from being the mandatory brood mares of the state and church, but I guess I was wrong.

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