Since any topic with the F-word mostly becomes about how good or bad Feminism is, here is a thread solely dedicated to that exclusively.
So copying a message I posted in another thread,
It comes down to the "Personal is Political,"
Women will complain about the lack of men in college, but only because there is a stunted dating pool and for some women it sucks having to compete with the sexually voracious. They don't believe in public policy only that boys need to work harder .... FOR US!
When a movement is based solely on Women's lived experiences a funny thing happens. Lived experiences and perspective is quirky, nobody writes themselves as the villain or sees anyone else as vulnerable.
1) Notice how the typical Feminist narrative always castes women in sympathetic light? Think back, have you ever told a story were you were definitely culpable but you re-cast yourself as just an innocent bystander?
2) Notice how all the policy positions only benefit women, but allegedly will help men too..... in some vague non-descriptive roundabout way.
3) Notice how a problem is only a problem when it effects women and girls?
When all of gender issues are monopolized by Feminism and Feminism's only acceptable Orthodox perception is based on Women's Lived Experiences, don't be shocked that we slant the story in our favor. If we get to write the narrative we will always be the most sympathetic characters.
Additional Explanation:
Feminism as it exists today and as a theoretical framework for political action and understanding the world has become an all encompassing -ism based entirely on the core principle of Women's Lived Experience, or some core selections of it. Obviously my Lived Experience is a bit too lucid and self aware to be added to the canon.
The best example of this is probably Domestic Violence. In almost any study not directed by Feminist theory from the outset, DV is multi-directional, complex, and women are just as likely as men to be abusive. Women can and are equal partners in aggression and violence towards intimate partners. However a female abuser will never likely cast themselves as an abuser. By Women's Lived Experience women, even if objectively the aggressive one or abusive, will cast themselves as more sympathetic characters. Thus why some studies in Feminist DV Canon claim that when women are violent it isn't really aggression but just attempts to get control of a chaotic situation, I.E. its only evil when men do it! That is the kind of rationalization that only Lived Experience can conjure. Women will never fail to cast ourselves in a good light. Men would do it too if given this much social power to do this.
As a Historian I can say it is completely unique in human history that now women are thought of as a class and not as individuals, and more over Feminism as a attempt to interpret the world through the often chaotic perspective of Women's Lived Experience is unheard of IMHO. But for Feminists of the Betty Friedan era and beyond this was the only option for them. Otherwise it would be an impossible project to try and create a Pan-Female political movement and Social Theory around us. We are objectively too diverse in nature to be corralled into a single narrative. Even today dissident women and rebellious heretics and those dirty dirty harlots are all hounded viciously for not being in line with the Narrative.
Additional Info p2 Electric Boogaloo:
The core divisions within Feminism are between Sex- and Sex+, though Sex+ is a bit on the ropes as a real idea since it is frequently co-opted by Sex- which IMHO has all forms of institutional power that Sex+ doesn't and Sex+ has to supplicate the Sex- crowd to have any seat at the table. Thus why Laci Green proclaims Sex+ nature but talks about the ever present "rape culture," and how all things are sexist and problematic.