As the title suggests I'm trying to put together a sorta good argument and all for why feminism is not necessarily needed. The idea behind this is to try to separate the idea of "women's rights" and "feminism" in a manner that is difficult to refute. The reason for this is because when the two are taken to be synonymous it's very difficult to come across as anything but a bigot if you're against feminism. We all KNOW that's not why we're here (well at least most of us, there are a few people here who can't make such a claim, but down-votes make our thoughts clear on them), so I want to try to make an air-tight and easy to follow case for why these two should be separate, that one can argue that 'feminism' is bad, without arguing that women have things 100% equal (while the case or not, many people don't think it's there, and there are some social things that they face if only from gender roles, it doesn't matter whether you believe they do or not, arguing that front only leads to everyone getting angry). I'd like to get some thoughts from you people before I go around upsetting people with a (possibly) shoddy argument. I'll thank you all who read this in advance since I can be quite long-winded..... Anyways! Onto the argument!

So, first off, one should take into consideration the 'civil rights movement' and the 'black panthers'. Regardless as to the actions taken one has to consider are they the same group, does opposing slavery and wanting blacks to have the same rights as whites make someone a black panther, a supporter of Malcom X? Well of course not, these two groups, while fighting for the same thing are ridiculously different in their actions, they are different groups, even if they want the same thing to make them the same group is downright wrong and even offensive to several. The groups are VASTLY different even though they both support the good idea of black people having the same rights as everyone else.

Another example of this is with animal protection even. There exist several groups which advocate for animal's rights in all sorts of ways. Three that I know of are PETA, ALF, and ARM. Regardless as to how ethical and all PETA is, they do (or did, iunno I don't keep up with them myself much >.>) try to help animals but they do so in ways that are (as far as I know) entirely legal. ALF will break into testing labs and all and free the animals and destroy some computers among other places, stuff like that, while illegal one could draw comparisons to the morality of someone who could have, back during slavery, broken onto slave owner property and freed a bunch of slaves despite such actions being illegal, regardless as to how ethical it may be, ALF's actions certainly aren't on the same immoral level of a group that goes around killing a bunch of people. Which then brings us to ARM, who does just that. They've send bombs in the mail to members of the British Parliament.... I don't care what rights you're advocating for, that is just downright wrong. Even though these groups all are trying to help animals (in their own ways >.>) ultimately someone who supports PETA (even if entirely unaware as to their less than fully ethical practices) does in no way support ARM just because they support PETA, and maybe they don't support ALF either, or maybe someone who supports ALF doesn't support PETA or ARM, or maybe someone is all for animal rights but aren't supportive of ANY of their practices, the support or desire for animal rights does not in any way dictate the necessity of any of those groups, your support for 'rights' is INDEPENDENT of your support or criticisms of ANY movements which supports such rights, obviously they can be on the same page but are not guaranteed.

Thus assuming whoever has read this far follows along with your logic and agrees, you can now point out how "women's rights" and "feminism" are not the same thing, if say all feminists everywhere sent bombs in the mail to men who held political office, to not support feminism then would have no bearing on whether you support "women's rights" completely, merely on the actions of the movement. While feminism thankfully doesn't do anything that horrible as a whole (I'd bet my left food that there are radicals that at least want to, even if there is only one of them) it shows that NO movement is EVER the 'only' way to be supportive of the rights that it fights for.

I believe this argument completely separates the issue of whether "women's rights" need to be fought for with if "feminism" is the right way to fight for them, while the issues do relate to one another often I see that the problem is that people argue in support of the latter BECAUSE of their opinions of the former, saying that they tie into one another, when we know that's not the case. Another thing this does is when the question "Is feminism necessary?" is posed it shifts the dynamic from "Do women have all the rights they should?" and thus they don't have to prove an inequality of rights (which comes down to ideological stuff that is probably like trying to argue if the bible matters to a Christian) but RATHER they have to prove that feminism HELPS get women these rights. While most people I've seen will still support it 100% and not really understand why such a question would be asked, it comes to my mind, has feminism even DONE anything for women's rights in the past 30 years? I mean that's an entire GENERATION of people since after they've managed to get a lot of things done, that means that the children who were growing up with women fighting for their right to vote could now be in office, teaching children, or married to the men who hold power, we have giant organizations like NOW who get thousands of dollars in funding, and HUNDREDS of people at their disposal, managed to without having the vote convince the officials elected only by men to give them the right to vote, and yet, for the past 30 years, what have they accomplished?

I mean, surely you'd have expected them to have accomplished something in 30 years for all those people. I mean the only things that I can think of that would be 'good' (something that when framed in a pro-women's rights way is good) in the past 30 years that might have happened would be fighting for abortion stuff maybe, but Roe vs Wade, the biggest moment of abortion and all happened back in the 1970's, over 40 years ago, and if abortion is such an important issue for feminism you'd expect some landmark case in 40 years that would have fixed some problem.

The only real thing that I can personally think of that feminism has accomplished (that can't be 'explained' away with some NAFALT argument) is making radical feminists, lowering the standard for rape convictions to an atrocious level in some places, getting some primary aggressor law stuff done, but ultimately just churning out a bunch of radicals (while I know there were plenty before, the fact that they keep getting fresh new YOUNG radicals who aren't even 30 years old means that they're still making them), which in turn means, that in the past 30 years, unless I'm missing something substantial (which if I am PLEASE point it out, I may like to WIN arguments, but I want to win because I was RIGHT, not because I covered facts inconvenient to my argument) I would then say that if that's ALL that feminism has become able to accomplish, despite it being one of the biggest lobbying groups around, then in a CLEAR argument could be made that feminism has become NOTHING except a movement that churns out individuals who do the things that radicals do. Someone can support women's rights and be ignorant of just how horrible the things these radicals do is, but that doesn't make feminism anymore necessary, it just means that they don't CARE enough for the rights to make sure they signed onto the right boat. If I went and joined ARM but had a problem with sending mail bombs, I can't go around yelling at people who say that ARM is bad, I should have joined PETA, or ALF, or formed my OWN group.

Sorry again for how verbose I am. Just wanted to get my thoughts out there and give them a chance to be torn to shreds, to see faults in my logic, and while I know this most certainly isn't the place where I'll get a lot of opposition, I know that these sorta sentiments are probably welcome here, so if my ideas are so weak that they don't stand up to the scrutiny here, then I'd just look even worse anywhere else. I thank you VERY VERY much for your time, ANY thoughts you give, and hope you all have a wonderful day!