Here is the most recent piece of offensive silliness from a site where the so-called radical feminists congregate:
We are desperate for women to reject the specious narrative that within the nuclear family we have “choice,” when in fact the “choice” (regarding motherhood) is between doing one full-time job (stay home and raise kids) or two full-time jobs (do paid work and also raise kids).* We are desperate for women to stop buying into the patriarchy-sponsored message about women’s fulfillment — that is, the notion that you are a selfish blob of failure, or worse, that you are missing out on life’s greatest joy, if you don’t martyr yourself to home and family and totally subsume your identity in the process. We want women to reject marriage and the nuclear family. We want women to not have kids in the first place.
Renee from the Womanist Musings blog has written a brilliant and powerful response to this inane piece of rubbish, so all I have to add is the following:
It is not your place to “want” anything in other people’s lives. Especially not something as major as the very personal decision of whether or not to have children and how to organize one’s private life. Wanting all women to do or not to do something is essentializing, reductive, offensive, and plain wrong. Feminism struggles for equal rights for people irrespective of their gender. However, these idiotic pronouncements about how all mothers buy into the patriarchal agenda, martyr themselves to home and family and subsume their identities in whatever is an offensive generalization that can’t have any possible goal other than humiliating a huge group of women.
Clarissa's Blog 
We want women to reject marriage and the nuclear family. We want women to not have kids in the first place.
Wow. Just wow.
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Completely and utterly insane, huh? What is even the point of this, politically?
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Hmmm…I want women to have fewer children so that global warming is arrested and I can get to go on long safaris and establish a home in the wilderness where I can see wild animals that haven’t all been eaten because of population growth. 🙂
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To be honest, it would make a lot more sense to want both men and women to have fewer children to achieve this goal, not just women. 🙂
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Yeah, people as such ought to stop it.
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I read this post by her further explaining her position:
“As for not having children, it is a political decision I advocate based on the current state of global overpopulation and the rate at which H. sapiens is hurtling toward a major die-off due to the earth’s inability to sustain us in these numbers”
I have to say I completely agree with her. From a political point of view, I also think it is important encourage either not having children or limit the number of children as much as possible. The planet has a finite amount of resources and it will not support our current growth rate.
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Do you know what is the ONLY effective method of limiting natality rates? It’s extremely, super duper productive. Almost immediately a lot less people begin to be born than the number of people who die every year.
Everybody can venture a guess, I’ll wait. 🙂
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Wars and/or pandemics?
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I think it’s raising the standard of living actually, thus making raising each child to cost more.
Letting birth control and abortions be realistically achievable for all (most) women has to happen too, but imho isn’t enough.
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The financial aspect has nothing to do with it. Women’s rights are the only way.
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I’m not sure. But I think education is the key. Educated people tend to think more rationally and see the problem of having many children.
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Sorry, not really.
Everybody should participate in guessing. People, hello?
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Hm. Does it have anything to do with death? For some reason, that’s all I can think of, but then I’m bogged down in the Mire that is Physics right now. I’m too burnt out to think properly.
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Does it involve killing people?
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No, of course not. Nor forced sterilizations, nor fines for having more than 1 child. 🙂
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I don’t believe there is ONLY one effective method.
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contraception on demand, including abortion. Treating women like adults.
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And we have a winner! 🙂
In countries where women achieve equal rights and opportunities, natality rates drop instantly. In Western Europe, governments are jumping through hoops to motivate people to give birth. However, women who have a chance to have careers do not choose to have a multitude of children. One or two is usually the absolute maximum. No amount of social help and direct payments for having more children motivate women to do so when they can have careers and lives outside the home.
Easy-peasy. 🙂 This is why feminism is the only thing that will save our planet from overpopulation.
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I think many radical feminists miss out on the fact that it is almost – if not completely – impossible to avoid living within ‘the system’. Yes, marriage, motherhood, etc. could all be considered part of the normative structures that built the suppressing system we are living in. But we are also humans, who need people around us, people who we love. What do we actually change by rejecting marriage and having children? Basically nothing. We make a statement, but it’s not productive and the stereotypes of married and unmarried women keep on existing. Using the system to your advantage, and contribute wherever you can to change the fixed normative structures, is the key. Be a role model, an empowered woman. If you decide to get married, do it because you love the other one, not because you feel like you should for whatever reason. If you decide to have children, don’t transform your identity from ‘woman to mother’. If you decide to take care for your kids instead of working (full time), make sure you maintain having an identity: make time for the things you liked to do; reading, writing, drawing, working out. I feel that the biggest trap of ‘the system’ for women is losing yourself.
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A brilliant comment. Thank you!
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On the other hand, watching an erotic movie could lead to all sorts of calamities, or not, depending on how you interpret their outcome:
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It is these people though, that are damaging their own movement.
Most people take these women to be representative of all feminists. It isn’t their fault, it’s not like they are running a smear campaign on feminists and quote mining these radical feminists; it is just a general lack of education.
If these women were to shut the fuck up with their victriol and their misanthropist hate-mongering maybe actual feminists who have something sensible to say would be able to find a voice somewhere in the media.
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That’s so true. People who choose to dismiss feminism can easily use these radical rantings as an excuse to do so.
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I strongly disagree. It’s in practice demanding of all women to present a unified front of “the right” kind of feminist, as if women aren’t human but all similar to each other robots. I don’t think any social movement has ever been 100% of “the right” kind. Women are 51% of population, more than men in numbers, if somebody searches for an excuse, he’ll find it somewhere without Twisty Faster too. Like in junk science and Bible teachings.
maybe actual feminists who have something sensible to say would be able to find a voice somewhere in the media
Those acual feminists aren’t prevented by Twisty or other radical feminists from being in media. Like “Yes means Yes” book, this man blog project, many sites like Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon. Twisty hasn’t written any books, has a small blog. There are million blogs of all kinds. Again your demands and assigning fault to a few radicals, even if they’re mistaken, puts unhuman demands of perfection of more than half human population.
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I often ask my students why they don’t identify as feminists. Can you guess what they respond in about 80% of cases?
A guess as to what they respond in the remaining 20% of cases is also welcome. 🙂
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80% we already have equality
20% those feminists are insane, leg hairy, not shaving lesbians
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Pretty much the other way round. 🙂
20% we already have equality and 80% “I don’t hate men.”
The number of times I had to say “I’m a feminist and I don’t hate men either” only to hear “Really???” is huge.
It’s always the wackadoo crazy wing that gets noticed. How many people are aware of the Tea Party but have no idea that very calm, reasonable, intelligent, highly educated Conservatives who support women’s rights even exist?
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El – I would be inclined to flip those percentages, as a guess.
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‘El – I would be inclined to flip those percentages, as a guess.’
– Right you are. 🙂
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//that very calm, reasonable, intelligent, highly educated Conservatives who support women’s rights even exist
Do they support women’s rights in congress? I have never heard of that. Tea Party ideas, unlike radical feminists, seem to have huge political power. Look at attacks on abortion and even cotraception.
//The number of times I had to say “I’m a feminist and I don’t hate men either” only to hear “Really???” is huge
From the beginning of feminist movement there would be not a very different picture of man hating feminists as a stereotype.
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‘From the beginning of feminist movement there would be not a very different picture of man hating feminists as a stereotype.”
-I agree completely that Twisty and Co adore the patriarchy and do all they can to keep it in place. They have fully interiorized the anti-feminist hatred and contempt for women that male chauvinists possess.
‘Do they support women’s rights in congress? I have never heard of that. ”
-The point is precisely that they can’t get their representatives elected because the screamers scream louder.
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//-The point is precisely that they can’t get their representatives elected because the screamers scream louder.
Don’t you see a difference between “can’t get their representatives elected” because a public chooses to vote for “the screamers” and the situation with unpopular feminism of any kind? If most conservatives vote for what you call a fringe, it shows that popular views are for the (named thus by you) fringe, that’s all. And that those ” intelligent, highly educated Conservatives ” should change a party to get elected.
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People who choose to dismiss feminism can easily use these radical rantings as an excuse to do so.(Clarissa)
Well, I guess if feminism isnt a monolith then maybe you need a different term to describe yourself. Otherwise you run the risk of getting lumped in with the loonies. It seems to me your views are probably better described as “egalitarian”. The ‘right’ kind of feminist sounds awfully close to being the ‘right’ kind of christian.
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I don’t see why I have to abandon my movement to accommodate a bunch of loonies. I was here first 🙂 , so they should be the ones to go.
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I was here first , so they should be the ones to go.
Youve aged well, I would never have put you there in the beginning. 🙂
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Are other social movements a monolith? Really?
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“Are other social movements a monolith? Really?”
-A monolith, no. But having the margins that do the exact opposite of what the center does is kind of unique. Of course, if anybody knows other examples, please share.
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“Here is the most recent piece of offensive silliness”
It was written in 2008 🙂
“Renee from the Womanist Musings blog has written a brilliant and powerful response to this inane piece of rubbish…”
A piece that offensively assumed that all white women are pampered and get to choose whether they work or stay home, have kids or not, etc, as much as Twisty, who is a rich lesbian (so it’s also easy for her to demand that women give up men), who has never worked a day in her life except for some ‘amusing’ forays into the temp world for a very brief period as detailed on her ‘about’ page. She owns a beautiful ranch complete with horses, nature preserve, etc. Her site is extremely classist and by no means speaks for “White women” – which is why I was banned.
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