Question about feminist appropriation of historical figures

PastDifficulty7 · 2025-09-08T23:57:41+00:00

I agree with that take.

I am not intimately familiar with John Stuart Mill; but my understanding is that he believed people should be treated equally because of utilitarianism. Advocating for a vague, general equality does not make one a feminist. It's the same reason why we would never call our slave-holding President, Thomas Jefferson, "woke" even though he wrote about equality in the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

bIuemickey · 2025-09-09T04:38:07+00:00

I have no idea about these people but I’ve found this to be a very common strategy used in feminism.

Just look at intersectional feminism itself. Intersectionality is used to appropriate the oppression of marginalized groups and to maintain a feminist-dominant narrative in academia.

Check this out

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_history

History is basically being rewritten based on ideology based on history based on ideology. There is a lot of manipulation and abuse. They believe men have written history with the intent of oppressing and controlling women. Not just history though, science is a sexist power structure as well apparently.

Feminism is built on propaganda and framing. It’s political.

Look at the “talk page” of any Wikipedia article you think is biased. Then look at the archived talk pages if there are any. You’ll likely find people calling out the bs and sometime providing some insight.

CommodoreGirlfriend · 2025-09-09T00:59:34+00:00

I mean, he was genuinely feminist for the day. He was a mega wifeguy and was crushed to lose her. The intro of On Liberty goes into this, in my version anyway. I agree that they might not appreciate him now because he's a white male libertarian techbro 😏 but feminism meant more than hating men back then.

BedSpreadMD · 2025-09-09T04:12:54+00:00

The same reason any authoritarian does it. To try and lend credibility to their movement. It's not about truth or accuracy to them. All that matters is generating support for their movement to force their agenda forward.

Since they can't seem to find any notable figures who are alive, they simply use ones from history. A dead historical figure works the best, because they're not capable of refuting things.

YetAnotherCommenter · 2025-09-09T00:41:08+00:00

Mill was a classical liberal feminist. So whilst he's a type of feminist, he's one of those types of feminist that the official feminist movement considers not feminist enough.

Frankly, most MHRAs (me included) are, by the traditional definition, classical liberal feminists too. But the feminist movement has purged any and all liberalism and individualism from itself.

DarkMage11 · 2025-09-09T00:40:06+00:00

A couple things here:

Building credibility - All political movements do this. By saying "our ideas go way back," they make their positions seem more legitimate and less like modern fads.

Cherry-picking the good parts - Historical figures are complicated. Mill wrote groundbreaking stuff about women's equality, so feminists focus on that and ignore the parts that don't fit modern feminism.

Words change meaning - "Feminist" in Mill's time just meant supporting basic legal equality for women. Modern feminism has somehow become a toxic movement.

Historical context gets ignored - There's a big difference between what someone believed 150 years ago and how they'd react to today's movements, but that nuance gets lost.

Vinniikii · 2025-09-09T01:25:03+00:00

Common, it is a powerful alignment of coercive group think (all good people in past followed modern ideology) and “arguing over nothing” (testing willingness to ignore fact). Most misandrists today barely know history and will immediately banish any informed scholar for mansplaining. Either you accede to ideology or you call yourself out as a misogynist mansplainer; the ideological citadel is maintained.

How suspicious it would be for a man to research male history in search of male accomplishments, instead of early feminist support! It is dangerous for any men to accomplish or think of male accomplishment as useful/good.

Actual discussion and nuance are stigmatized and avoided. The contempt for men and facts allows facile, superficial history that makes much of queerness and female oppression. It’s not a serious debate.

kmikek · 2025-09-09T18:56:32+00:00

More than 100 years ago, leopold masoch wrote venus in furs. A fictional story based on mary wollstoncrafts work. The story was about swapping gender roles in a relationship which at the time meant she had 100 percent power, and he was at her mercy. She warned him this whole thing was a bad idea, and it was, and in the end he says he was foolish to try it, and equality was the only fair way to have a relationship. At the time, first wave feminism, this was definitely a pro-first wave feminist work of fiction.

Exercise-Delicious · 2025-09-10T13:13:12+00:00

Rebecca Latimer Felton was the quintessential feminist.

theineffableshe · 2025-09-12T14:37:48+00:00

How are you personally defining feminism here, Kanadano?

Low-Intention7763 · 2025-09-13T09:33:30+00:00

Did you know that the small penis suicide rates are not accurately represented. When a person kills themselves and writes in there suicide note that they ended there life because of there penis size they catagorise this as body dysmorphia disorder. When they do this the reason of suicide on there death certificate changes from suicide from small penis to suicide because of body dysmorphia.

Because of this it is impossible to actually represent how many men kill themselves because of there penis size.

Last year the American depression and anxiety association said that 9000 men died from suicide related to body dysmorphia disorder. How many of those men killed themselves because of penis size 🤔 I wonder.

When my father killed himself because of his penis size they wrote in his death certificate that he killed himself because of body dysmorphia. He did not he literally wrote why he killed himself in the suicide note.

Title	Question about feminist appropriation of historical figures
Author	Kanadano
Upvotes	52
Comments	15
Date	September 8, 2025 8:15 PM UTC (11 months ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1nbyk9d/question_about_feminist_appropriation_of/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/question-about-feminist-appropriation-of.1561591 https://theredarchive.com/post/1561591

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