My I Cannot Identify As a Feminist

NonbinaryYolo · 2025-08-29T07:52:00+00:00

As someone that dabbles in marketing I have some constructive criticism. First I just want to say excellent work, and please keep it up. My tips are purely superficial aspects, but you had mentioned not getting viewers and this might help address that.

My first impression of your article purely visually is that it was a bit jarring. While the image you chose to head your article is extremely fitting from a technical standpoint, or as a symbol of empowerment, in my opinion it's very sterile. It lacks humanity. It lacks the personability needed to engage interest with someone who isn't already passionate about the subject. It feels like clipart.

This is totally superficial from an information standpoint, but from a marketing standpoint that image is huge part of my first impression of your article, and the first impression it gave me about your article is "This is going to be dry".

This is where I'm out of my depth on what to recommend. I mostly learn though trial and error, but in my mind one great potential image would be just a couple walking down a park path holding hands, the message being that your article is ultimately about promoting healthier relationships.

BhryaenDagger · 2025-08-28T21:09:31+00:00

The issue w feminism isn’t “in-group bias…” unless the in-group is all man-haters.

The fundamental flaw of all special interest advocacy is that in itself it’s only circumstantially progressive. Black advocacy over half a century ago could be assailed for being “in-group biased”, but actually organization of black people against Jim Crow was essential, and it was overwhelmingly progressive. Its goal was social equality, it dismantled open legal oppression, and for decades there have no laws able to be made discriminating vs blacks even in the rural south. Major corporations will pay and have paid hefty fines for discrimination. Civil Rights won.

Women had a different road to social equality to overcome but now universities no longer ban women or force them to sit outside the classroom, they’re not confined to mental institutions for merely being “disobedient” to husbands, etc. Discriminating against women is completely removed from society and penalized… unlike, say, legally forcing all women to wear burqas or forcibly circumcising girls that happens elsewhere in the world…

So what is feminism up to now? Since at least the 90s it’s still advocating for women, but instead of overcoming any inequality once social equality became the law of the land, it’s been endeavoring instead TOWARD inequality in women’s favor. That’s a different goal within different circumstances. And that goal is regressive and has been uncoincidentally and unsurprisingly accompanied by increasingly flagrant misandry. It’s also why women lost national support for abortion access, but that’s another aspect… They stopped fighting for what mattered most to women…

ActualInteraction0 · 2025-08-28T13:39:12+00:00

I started to read it, then got repulsed by pop ups on the site.

Maybe the view count is related to where you posted it.

TheDdken · 2025-08-28T15:49:13+00:00

Bro, the article is excellent! However, it is possible that to put put the citations at the end?

I've come to the same realization as you, although I think it's more specific to radical feminism. My brand of feminism is called Darwinian feminism and it is egalitarian. You could try it!

retrosenescent · 2025-08-28T19:47:20+00:00

I agree with everything you said
This article is overly impotent. Your stance is almost entirely: feminism hurts my feelings. It's valid, but it's impotent and almost irrelevant.
I wish you would have deconstructed feminism - showed how it harms both men and women in modern times (not historically - historically it was helpful). There is so much to support that argument to the point that anyone calling themselves a feminist in 2025 (in the modern Western world) is completely out of touch with reality, or merely a female supremacist.

Turbulent_Ad_5273 · 2025-08-28T20:28:13+00:00

I've long been frustrated with simplistic views of feminism. I've heard men say that "feminism means believing in equality between men and women. so if that's what you believe, congrats: you're a feminist"

the thing is... feminism these days is an endlessly complex conversation between women about women. it's an intricate web of arguments and thought experiments designed to make sense of womanhood.

are women whose choices reflect patriarchal values making a truly free choice? should lesbians use he/him pronouns if they wish? what was up with the women's vote activists who later became nazis? who gets to decide what feminism entails? was political lesbianism an insult to gay women or a relic of its time?

I don't have answers to any of these questions, nor do I care to formulate any. these are all questions that have been fiercely debated in feminist spaces for at least 35 years if not longer. none of it is new. all of it is an attempt by women to make sense of womanhood.

so what the heck does it even mean for me, as a man, to call myself a feminist? it means ignoring all of that stuff, or inserting myself into a conversation where I won't be welcome.

what information does me calling myself a feminist give to anyone in a world where a number of self-described feminist men have turned out to be abusers of women?

a feminist could argue that my not calling myself a feminist is telling in itself. but then, yet another feminist could argue that men shouldn't call themselves feminists anyway, only allies to women.

I'm out. there's too much noise. I'm just gonna live my life and support fair treatment of people of all genders.

bass_of_clubs · 2025-08-30T13:39:17+00:00

Excellent piece.

NatrualPine55 · 2025-08-28T22:17:06+00:00

Wow I read it and I completely agree

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