Wimmin who Keel

From the last post, and resulting comments, I realize that there might be some misconception about me. I'm not a feminist.

Now, you might imagine that I'm some kind of Gynophobe, who can't stand strong women.Nope. Far from it, I like strong people of whichever stripe. I might define "strong" differently from you. I think that arguing doesn't account for strength. Fighting just proves you're out of ideas (and don't get me wrong, I'm out of ideas pretty frequently). No, Strength, to me, is endurance. What can you survive? By that barometer, I don't have a single friend who isn't strong.

Maybe, you think that I wouldn't support equal pay, and equal rights? Nuh-uh!  I think that pay should be for the job, not the person, and that we all should be equal under the law. Of course, I think that should work both ways. Just like women should be able to be President, men should be able to be preschool teachers. Just like women should be protected from physical and sexual abuse, so should men be protected from it. Even men in prison, Beyotch.

So, why am I not a feminist? Well, first of all, I don't like the name. I get queasy at any name that ends in "ist". I get really queasy in a word that starts with something I'm not, and then ends in "ist'. I don't much care for the lazy "humanist" tag, either. Of course I like humans, and yes, Go, humanity! but what about the rest of the ecosystem? Ifi'm gonna be lazy, I'd prefer "environmentalist" because I think that the notion of people being apart from the world is silly.

But, there's a lot more. I think that both men and women get a bad deal from thinking about a gender divide, even if it's done in the name of undoing a wrong. I think it sells women short that we don't realize that they can be just as brutal, violent, and power hungry as any man. I think we sell men short that we don't realize they can be just as nurturing, gentle, and self-sacrificing as any woman. See, just like I think pay should be for the job, not the person, and just like I think humans are a part of nature, I don't like when a judgement comes down about men or women. Like, "If women ruled the world, there'd be no war" is just as offensive and stupid to me as "A woman's place is in the home".

I've been on the brunt of sex-based discrimination more than once, and I've been hit by more than one girl. I don't react to that by thinking that Men need some kind of special protection. I react to that by thinking that we should let everyone have the opportunities they deserve, and that nobody should have to put up with abuse.

Oh, the title? It's a reference to an article I wrote more than 20 years ago. That article was called "Wimmin who kill" and it was about trash culture. I changed it slightly to reflect my thoughts on the subject a bit: to keel, as in "keel over" is to lean.