This is the first of some of my pieces that I’ve recovered (and re-tooled, and re-written) from the old site.  The Original version was written on February 13, 2006.

Methuselah lived nine hundred years,
Methuselah lived nine hundred years,
Say, but what’s good o’ livin’
When no gal’ll give in
To no man what’s nine hundred years?

I’m preachin’ this sermon to show
It ain’t nessa, ’tain’t nessa,
’tain’t nessa, ’tain’t nessa,
‘Tain’t necessarily so.

from the musical “Porgy & Bess”

It’s time to take on that demon of the Right’s nightmares: the feminazi.  More specifically, it’s time to show her what’s what.

Actually, no.

It’s really time to show you that the fearsome feminiazi is a marketing construct; she’s little more than an illusion used to bash a large and wonderful group of people, and she’s used in much the same way that the boogeyman is used to keep kids from getting out of bed at night. I don’t plan to spend much time on Limbaugh’s straw woman, because somewhere in here I hope to throw in just enough truth about what feminism is to make you curious, find out for yourself what’s really going on, and hopefully actually talk to some of the most engaging human beings you’ll ever meet.  On second thought: of the two goals, I’d much rather spend time devoted to people reading what I write as opposed to Limbaugh’s sound-bites, but knowing me and knowing Limbaugh it will take longer to do the former than the latter. Having said that, I’d better get started with an excerpt from Limbaugh’s book, The Way Things Ought To Be:

FEMINISM’S SLIDE

This obsession with abortion and lesbian rights became entrenched in the woman’s movement in about 1978. That’s approximately the time when feminism became separated from its original concerns and veered into strange new territory.

One of the things about Limbaugh is that you can’t get through a single sentence without finding something stupid.  Here, does he mean about the time the extension for the time limit to ratify the ERA was passed?

I date it from the 1978 conference in Houston that was chaired by Congresswoman Bella Abzug of New York.

I think he means 1977. The positions were presented to Congress in 78, the conference was in 77.

Jimmy Carter had caved in and caused the federal government to pay for this women’s conference and it was taken over by the radical left.

This being the conference formed by the bill that was signed into law by Gerald Ford to be part of the Bicentennial celebration?

Gone were concerns about equal pay, assertiveness, and expressing one’s individuality.

The conference adopted a platform consisting of 26 “planks,” named as follows: “Arts and Humanities,” “Battered Women,” “Business,” “Child Abuse,” “Child Care,” “Credit,” “Disabled Women,” “Education,” “Elective and Appointive Office,” “Employment,” “Equal Rights Amendment,” “Health,” “Homemakers,” “Insurance,” “International Affairs,” “Media,” “Minority Women,” “Offenders,” “Older Women,” “Rape,” “Reproductive Freedom,” “Rural Women,” “Sexual Preference,” “Statistics,” “Women, and Welfare and Poverty,” and “Committee of the Conference.”

Only the position on equal access to credit was passed unanimously. This was a diverse, active, thoughtful, and passionate set of debates on a huge number of issues, and the one about sexual orientation was the most divisive and hard-fought one on both sides. I think it’s amazingly to the conference’s credit that this plank was passed.

In their place were women ensconced in bitterness, hatred and resentment. The NOW gang became a fringe movement, and lost a lot of women who no longer wanted to call themselves feminists. The women’s movement was taken over by radical leftists and became an adjunct of the Democratic party.

No support is ever given for this contention, because it didn’t happen. Rush, and the common Right-wing wisdom, is to take the most divisive issues at the conference that were decided with the narrowest margins, and characterize them as the most fervently embraced issues at the event. I believe that he portrays the entire group as if it spoke with one voice on everything. He mischaracterized what was said and why, and later in the text started slapping labels on the tiniest minority in that group while alluding to the idea that this minority not only represents the feminist movement as a whole, but the Democratic party. Note again that the bill which created the conference was signed during the Ford administration, and further consider that Congress appropriated the money for the conference, not Carter.

As far as NOW as it stands today? Abortion rights/reproductive issues and lesbian rights are two of the top six of NOW’s current “Top Priority Issues,” but the other four are violence against women, constitutional equality, promoting diversity/ending racism, and economic justice. Below that under “Other Important Issues,” we have Affirmative Action, disability rights, family, fighting the Right, global feminism, health, judicial nominations, legislation, marriage equality, media activism, working for peace, Social Security, Title IX, welfare, women-friendly workplace, women in the military, and young feminism. This is not a single-issue group – that would be NARAL, and even they branch out. [note: the author was irritated at NOW for including Senators who voted for cloture on the Alito nomination debate in its list of Senators to thank for opposing Alito, but will get over himself for the purposes of this discussion, since the current action alert is not forgiving]

I prefer to call the most obnoxious feminists what they really are: feminazis. Tom Hazlett, a good friend who is an esteemed and highly regarded professor of economics at the University of California at Davis, coined the term to describe any female who is intolerant of any point of view that challenges militant feminism. I often use it to describe women who are obsessed with perpetuating a modern-day holocaust: abortion. There are 1.5 million abortions a year, and some feminists almost seem to celebrate that figure. There are not many of them, but they deserve to be called feminazis.

At least he recognizes that the group he derides is vanishingly small, though this is lost in his broad generalizations both before and after that admission. The word “militant” has gotten thrown around a lot, and I’m wondering how it stuck on feminism.  What it usually means is somebody’s got a gun and believes that shooting people is the fastest way to further their cause. Now it may just be me, but I don’t recall hearing about gangs of AK-47-wielding feminists shooting up their rivals, or feminists heading into businesses run by subcultures they don’t like and violently expressing their displeasure through the application of pitchforks, torches, and gasoline. If it did happen, I suspect Fox News would be on it like white on rice, but that’s just me. As for the “modern-day holocaust,” if you believe that a human being is a human being at conception, then there’s very little to negotiate on, but I have trouble with drawing a moral equivalence between a fetus and a human being who has knowledge, opinions, memories and dreams.

Let’s expand on that a bit: I have serious trouble with equating the value of a clump of cells, and a person who has come through the transformative experiences of their first crush, their first heartbreak, or (my favorite) the first time asking “why,” and really meaning it.  Making the equivalence between a fertilized egg and a human being offends the hell out of me, as it undercuts everything about us that makes us different and worthwhile as individuals. Let’s not get into my problems with the idea that society can place a lien on a woman’s body for the duration of a pregnancy.  People, I’m lazy.  I don’t want that kind of responsibility for controlling other people, let alone to exert the effort to beat back the people who think I shouldn’t have it in the first place.  It would be incredibly difficult to get motivated about, because I agree with them.

Anyhow, back to Rush and the feminazi:

A feminazi is a woman to whom the most important thing in life is seeing to it that as many abortions as possible are performed.

I call shenanigans.  I have never seen anyone advocate anything even close to this. The closest I have seen is the contention that the presence of the option has done society great benefit by allowing people greater freedom to begin a family (or not) at a time of their choosing. I have never seen an abortion drive, an abortion fair, or an abortion jamboree, and I doubt I ever will – because the number of people living on the planet who would hold such an event is vanishingly small, assuming there are any in the first place. I have never heard of a woman saying “She’s pregnant! That means we can take her to get an abortion! SCORE!” While there are stories running around of people expressing such glee, it just doesn’t happen. I’ve never met someone who talks about these stories who can actually point to a specific person who expressed joy over an abortion (it’s always “this Code Pinko my brother’s friend saw”).  (SB: I used to have a link here to a detailed post with my feelings on abortion – I’ll try and recover it)

Their unspoken reasoning is quite simple.

The nice thing about challenging someone’s “unspoken reasoning” is that you never have to prove that it’s actually their reasoning in the first place. This makes it an excellent way to jump from one irrational statement to another without a safety net.

Abortion is the single greatest avenue for militant women

These would be the imaginary militant feminists packing assault rifles and hand grenades which we discussed earlier.

to exercise their quest for power

“Quest for power” is a big phrase, large enough that it can accommodate some truth no matter what meanings you apply to it. Is registering to vote a quest for power? Signing a petition? Getting a medical check-up? Running for office? How about raising your kids the way you want to, within the boundaries of compassion, sanity, safety, and health?

and advance their belief

Unsupported and un-cited.

that men aren’t necessary. They don’t need men in order to be happy.

Again pointing to a small group, and pointing at an extreme position – but to be perfectly fair, how often do you hear guys saying “women – can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em?”

They certainly don’t want males to be able to exercise any control over them,

As opposed to men, who want men to exercise control over th… oh, wait.

Abortion is the ultimate symbol of women’s emancipation from the power and influence of men.

This is really hard to disagree with, but I think contraception just barely edges it out. Score one for Rush.

With men being precluded from the ultimate decision making process regarding future life in the womb, they are reduced to their proper inferior role.

And here we begin leaping giant exaggerated conclusions with single bounds. Before it was a “modern-day holocaust,” now it’s about “future life.”  I really wish he’d be consistent. The inferior role thing kinda bugs me, though. I didn’t hear anyone call for the sterilization of “Welfare Kings….”

Nothing matters but me, say the feminazi. My concerns prevail over all else. The fetus doesn’t matter, it’s an unviable tissue mass.

One wonders how such an irate, sociopathic, and mentally unstable type of person would manage to form groups with other such people without the whole bunch of them killing each other off the first time a desire were thwarted (probably when they needed to form a line for anything).

Feminazis have adopted abortion as a kind of sacrament for their religion/politics of alienation and bitterness.

In the spirit of presenting this fatuous conclusion with the derision it deserves, I point back to the conference planks cited above.

And that’s enough time spent with Rush. So now that we’ve pointed out what feminism isn’t, just what is it?  Rather than try and answer a question that there are some very good books written to try and address, I’ll take you on a mercifully brief whirlwind tour of my exposure to it in just four steps, that will leave you with enough information to do some real research.

The first step, a general definition and description: like any movement or philosophy there are differing ways of expressing and acting on the ideas embraced by Feminist Theory, but the core idea is that women and men are of equal worth as human beings, and should be treated as such. Very simple, direct, and straightforward. The vast, vast majority of feminists consider this to apply to all human beings, which is why the women’s movement still has yet to do unto others the way it has done to by the abolitionists, the peace movement, the labor movement, some environmentalists, and everybody else. The GLBT movement has struggled for acceptance within feminist circles (yes, plural – there are many kinds of feminists), but to be honest I believe that effort has been has been easier than with any other activist group, because of the egalitarian core ideals of feminism. To me, that kind of integrity is worth more in an ally than gold, and should never, ever be betrayed. If you ever want to know what progressive movements are walking the talk, watch who a variety of feminist organizations support (I say a variety because of the sordid NOW/Joe Lieberman incident). These are dedicated people who have been dissed again and again and keep coming back, not for the abuse, but because they know a very important truth: that the goals all of these seemingly disparate causes are actually integral to each other.

Next, to show how I got to where I am with Feminist Theory, I’m going to take quick looks at the first three books that got me thinking about the subject. Just teasers, you’ll need to read them yourself (and talk with someone else who has read them cover-to-cover) in order to get anything meatier out of them. This is not meant to be a substitute for real knowledge of these works, just an invitation to go learn more.

The first real exposure I had to the study of feminism was Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents, which was written in 1930 just as the aftermath of World War I was turning into the furor that would become World War II. Yup, that Freud. In it he, in a back-handed, almost shamefaced way and at the very end of the essay, contends that the hyper-masculine nationalism sweeping the Western world is not only a scourge, that it is partially due to the rejection of the feminine civilizing influence, and that this rejection is at our peril. Heavy stuff, and laden with the notions of the woman as the teacher of moral authority, but certainly a contention that sounds very familiar today.

The second book would be Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Now since I cut my philosophical teeth on Existentialism, I flew (meaning rapidly, not casually) through this one three or four times back to back, re-reading it to catch minor points I missed and just plain enjoy how well she wrote it, and the translator presented it (even though there are places where the translator seems to have written the exact opposite of what Mme. de Beauvoir originally said, the core messages remain intact). Even translated from the French, the text is accessible, yet filled with enough good stuff to be a serious read for those who dig deeper. Her presentation of Existentialism also is much clearer than Sartre’s, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. Her argument boils down to this: We are only free to act within the boundaries placed by our environment – whether these boundaries are physical, or the common wisdom we learn at mama or daddy’s knee. She takes this into feminism (to horribly and unforgivably oversimplify her words) by presenting the idea that even with some hard examination, we really can’t absolutely distinguish between what our society presents as the difference between men and women, and what differences beyond the naughty bits may or may not actually exist. Take the core theory above, and you end up with this: since we can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined in how we view men and women, you can’t justify unfair treatment at all.

Third would be Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. While the first two books focused on esoteric and metaphysical aspects of humanity and culture, Friedan nailed the practical, by looking specifically at the cultural expectations and attitudes towards women in post WWII America. She focused on the hyperfeminization of women (like a bouffant hairdo is a natural expression of womanhood? Puh-leeze.) and the iconification of the “nuclear family,” and how this turned out to be immensely profitable for the business sector. It turns out from her research that the nuclear family was a product sold to America the way it would sell appliances, justified by the reasoning that you can sell many more clothes washers if people are living in single-family homes, thus increasing economic prosperity not only for the appliance manufacturers, but also for the repairman (upkeep is always more profitable than the initial sale).

Moving right along, let’s go to the question of what feminisim is about, or perhaps “what is a feminist issue?” Truthfully, it’s anything that has to do with the intersection between the living beings that we are and the societies we have built.  Feminist Theory studies the human race, investigating how our assumptions and physical realities regarding gender and sex (and the two are very different) impact our lives, thoughts, and decisions. To give you one example that is not directed specifically at women, wouldn’t it be nice if maternity leave was given to both of the expected child’s parents? It would make those early months a million times better for the entire family, both individually and collectively, but especially for the infant. You could even expand this to make both legal guardians eligible for leave, which would make it even more egalitarian and inclusive (providing both people pull their weight in the matter, of course). So really, it’s almost anything .

Lastly, where do you go from here to learn more about feminism, since the media is clueless on the subject? I have some good news and some bad news. First, the bad news (bad as in “there’s no easy way,” not bad as in “this is going to be awful”). Just like the best way to get your teeth fixed is to go to a dentist, the best way to learn about stars is to talk to an astrophysicist, and the best way to get your toilet to stop backing up is to call a plumber (quick!), the best way to learn about feminism is talking with feminists (yes, plural, because there are many, many different kinds, and it covers many, many fields). You can also do reading on your own. The fact is, the more you know about human beings and what we do, the more you learn about, and can learn about Feminist Theory, because it examines everything we are and do as human beings. The good news? You can start yourself, very simply: every now and then, just ask yourself “why did I do that?” Once you start digging into what you’ve been taught and what assumptions you make (and perhaps even why you make them), you’re on your way to learning just what Rush is so bothered about and threatened by.