Feminism

Feminism means different things to different people. The words feminism and feminist have negative connotations to many, and in some cases, these connotations are not unfounded. However, personally I believe that feminists are treated too harshly in the media and in general. It seems to me that the negative attitude toward feminists originates in confusion concerning the definition of the term 'feminism'.

Google defines feminism as:
'The advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.'

Most people in my experience however, believe feminists to be men-hating, malicious extremists, often using the term 'feminazi' when referring to feminists, a term coined by Rush Limbaugh. I think these people are pretty stupid though.

Wiktionary has this to say about the term:
'Limbaugh has defined the term as  "a feminist to whom the most important thing in life is ensuring that as many abortions as possible occur." adding that, "There are fewer than twenty-five known Feminazis in the United States."However, in practice he and others use the term in a much wider context.

I don't know how you get from equal rights to abortions, but it's not all that surprising coming from a Republican. That last sentence should really tell you all you need to know about Limbaugh and feminism, there may be some irrational extremists, as there are with all politcal and societal groups, but using that term as a broad reference to all feminists is a dick move. After doing some research, this Limbaugh character is racist as well as supporting capital punishment, so he's not the greatest role model out there.

I'm going to move past Rush Limbaugh now, because the more I read about him the more I dislike him, and this post is about feminism, not some idiot American talk-show host.

Let's talk about someone who I actually agree with (to a point), Anita Sarkeesian. You may already have heard of her, Sarkeesian makes feminist videos describing the role of female characters in the media today. Her videos are pretty interesting, she runs the Youtube series 'Feminist Frequency'.

It seems you can't talk about Feminist Frequency, or Anita Sarkeesian, without mentioning the severe amount of trolling and vandalism her wikipedia page and other related sites endured after she announced a kickstarter campaign for a video series titled 'Tropes versus Women'. It was a typically petty and despicable attack, resulting only really in a massive loss of ground for any counter-argument to Sarkeesian's opinions on popular culture. While I don't agree with everything she says, (I think she goes too far sometimes when defining some things she considers sexist) I do appreciate her perspective and find her videos entertaining enough. Of course instead of arguing their case, whatever that was, those who acted against her chose the idiotic reaction to a difference of opinion.