Young women don’t find feminism very relevant. I ask my students all the time, and they tell me feminism has achieved all its goals and is no longer needed.
It’s true that feminism doesn’t have much to offer to young women. Until they try to have actual careers, give birth (without the mediation of their parents), make serious money, experience health problems, etc, there truly is nothing for them in feminism. The only thing anybody has come up with to offer as a substitute for feminism among this group is orifice policing, and that energizes only a small segment.
And that’s the real reason why young women don’t see the need for a candidate who will champion feminist issues.
Clarissa's Blog 
I only became interested in formal feminism ™ my senior year in college. However, I do remember certain things being unfair but I phrased it in my my mind as “[authority figure] is being unfair to me and giving [male peer] better treatment”. I assume you fold “access to birth control” under “orifice policing.”
Until they try to have actual careers, give birth (without the mediation of their parents), make serious money, experience health problems, etc, there truly is nothing for them in feminism.
By that measure you should expect to see support for a feminist candidate rise exponentially after age 24-30.
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This is the Bible Belt, my students are all anti-choice.
They don’t support Hillary but they won’t be flocking to Bernie either. I’m guessing Cruz will be the favorite choice.
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Have they all taken a vow of chastity during their college years? I certainly didn’t and I never bothered dating anyone who didn’t take full responsibility for their end of birth control. How many of your students had dumb abstinence only sex ed?
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Feminism has allowed itself to be kidnapped by extremists who hate men – (misandrists?) and science deniers. Valerie Solanas so called S.C.U.M. manifesto sounds a lot like the results of the Wannsee conference – but with “men” instead of “Jews”. Simone de Beauvoir’s dogma that sex or gender is a social construct has no support in science, and her education was in literature and philosophy – not medicine or psychology. A French feminist doubted Einstein because he was a male, and in our country Moira von Wright found that you could not teach physics from Isaac Newton’s laws – things like “speed” and “mass” are too masculine, and so on.
A recycled old communist, Gudrun Schyman, started her own thing with “Feminist Initiative” – in short “F!” or “Fi” – but with around 2% of the votes, it hasn’t entered the Riksdag – but in tiny town Simrishamn she made it to the local assembly. There she made herself temporarily famous by imitating Don Quixote – but instead of windmills, she was charging a hot dog stand – because the advertising display showed a woman with red lips eating a hot dog – that could be interpreted as sex!
The idea that the feminist movement “owns” the very concept of sex is probably stolen from the Christian churches successful effort to control people by controlling everything about sex.
Most disappointing is the feminists total neglect of the struggle women in countries like Egypt fights – there was absolutely no reaction when first Lara Logan and then a Dutch female reporter and then dozens a day women were raped in the middle of the Tahrir square and open streets. The leftist party discipline forbade any actions that could stain the so called “Arab Spring”. And the demonstrations of hundreds of
thousands in India after some horrible rape cases did not seem interest them either.
The Egyptian initiative http://harassmap.org/en/ is worthy of all respect.
Instead we could hear Schyman declare that every Swedish man was like the Taliban – but as far as I know, none of us guys have cut off ears and nose on any woman to punish her for disobedience. And a dogma that all men are responsible for all rapes everywhere sounds like Mississippi in the 1930’s – if a white woman claimed to have been molested by a black man, they could lynch a couple of random black men – as all black men were the same, so all of them were guilty by default.
The war against the “heteronormativ”, “the nuclear family”, “the two-ness” and so on fails to excite most women, as the majority wants her very own “standard, generic male”, wants to live with him and raise kids together, and very strongly prefer marital fidelity. And it also seems like the vast majority prefer heterosexuality. So the extreme feminists tries too sell something that has no market.
For the US, I would suggest to push for paid maternal leave – there are only two nations on Earth that still has no paid maternal leave – the USA and Papua New Guinea,
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This generation has no idea who Solanas was. The kind of feminism you are discussing hasn’t existed since 1970s. This is before my students’ mothers were born.
Let’s talk about things that are actually in existence and not these boring marginal groups from 40 years ago.
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Not so long ago, there was a serie of readings from the S.C.U.M. Manifesto held from a stage in Stockholm – to a large extent paid by tax money. For very submissive masochistic leftist men, it must have been Christmas Day to watch it with his mistress.
A polished-up google translation by me from Svenska Dagbladet:
Stockholm 8 Nov, 2011 SCUM Manifesto Genre Theatre By: Valerie Solanas. Direction, set design, lighting: Erik Holmström. Counter Force Production / Turteatern. Translation: Sara Stridsberg. “Actorinne”: Andrea Edwards.
“Valerie Solanas behind SCUM is forever doomed to be connected with a man, Andy Warhol, she shot without immediately killing. Her manifesto of 1968, is still able to offend, not least by describing the men as critical as women is described and has been described throughout the millennia.
On Turteatern Andrea Edwards presents the text as a monologue, directed by Erik Holmström. She does not act Valerie Solanas. She rather makes Solana’s ideal woman, smart, cool, free, cool shit opposite of daddy’s girl, the docile upholder of patriarchy.
Solanas shot Warhol and the manifesto’s title has been interpreted as a call to cut men to pieces, but otherwise it’s not so much about violence, at least not about women’s violence against men. The point is men’s overall inferiority and worthlessness. Capitalist society is seen as a gigantic project to hide this fact: men are insecure and fearful, they know that they are worthless, but attribute the woman with all his weaknesses. According to the manifesto, the man just really good at one thing: PR. He has managed to market his excellence in a brilliant way, and thus concealed his real longing to be a real woman.
Andrea Edwards, who I last saw as a foolish and much crazier doctor at Theatre Guillotine, adorn the theater’s walls with a kind of textile PostIt labels (mother Inghttps://clarissasblog.com/2009/04/a has embroidered) reminiscent of all evil the men has accomplished. War is, as expected, first on the list, but he may also take on polite conversation, social codes, villa suburbs and Great Art. Solana is hitting hard on American society with the man as its apostle.
In the intimate theater room we women get the best treatment. We sit comfortably with golden pillows behind her back and are offered grapes and candy. The men are sitting on bare chairs, and must often take part of Edward’s back or a stern bout with her head in their direction. It does not feel bad to be privileged, it would be easy to get used to, to take as a benefit given by nature.
Edwards acts with great authority and sharp humor. Her jokes does not remove Solana’s sharp arrows; she throws them with full force. The show culminates in an exit into the real reality which I will not describe here (it would be like to tell you who the killer is).
The energy generated in the room could throw us out in protest and rebellious non-action. But this is not the end. Its pissed analysis of society turns into utopian thoughts. Then the air seeps out of it! Despite all the slogans the attack fades into something resembling feelgood. Then it feels as if Dad won the game. Again.”
// Sara Granath
http://www.svd.se/vassa-pilar-kastas-med-full-kraft
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I’ve got to say, you folks in Sweden have interesting ways of spending your free time. 🙂
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And as for actual feminists, it’s parental leave we want because fathers are as crucial as mothers.
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Yes, what Clarissa says. The feminism Sternococktail is talking about I have not even heard of, for the most part, and I’ve been a feminist for nearly 30 years now.
There are extremists and loons in every movement. To argue against a movement by describing it by its most lunatic members convinces no one but those who already agree with you.
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As much as I like Sanders, I have to point out that a big reason why Clinton does well with older people and african-americans is that they get to live government policy every day of their lives. Politics means more to them then hurling some zingers on twitter or getting your hot take upvoted on reddit. Like, actual people died when petulant red states refused to expand medicaid.
I think younger, mostly white people are mostly insulated from this. If you did care so much about the future of the country where the fuck were you in 2010 and 2014, when your absence gave the house, senate, and several governorships to the republicans?
And because they don’t seem to have much to lose, it seems OK to take a gamble on the general election by voting for someone that makes them feel good. It’s not like they’d have to deal with repealing of Obamacare, privatization of social security, medicare, national ‘right to work’ laws, stop and frisk, and so on. A world where their candidate loses the general election still works out pretty well for them.
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I agree completely. Now that we’ve been saddled with Rauner, electing the best president in the universe will not help us get rid of this vile creep. He’ll destroy the state, he’s already doing it. And the idiots still support him.
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You nailed it, Stringer.
Whenever I hear someone boast about how they don’t vote because “both parties are the same” or some other nonsense, I frankly want to grab them by the lapels and give them a couple of left-rights. I’m all too aware of the price that was paid to allow me to vote without fear; also, I’m alive today because of Obamacare. I’m way past the point of voting for someone because they make me feel good–I’ve seen what happens when people go that way.
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Not to mention the “Women in X Field” conferences geared toward undergrads–particularly in physics, but I’m sure there are probably others as well–that are full of “the thing that’s great about having a job in this field is that I can take time off to be with my kids/make dinner/date/etc. That’s just a huge turnoff. A student going to a conference just wants to see research. And the emphasis at these conferences on doing these things just strikes me as even more antiquated and sexist.
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