I recently looked at FemraDebates again and noticed something - the behaviour of the major feminist organisations, politicans, journalists and NGO's is massively out of step with what the average feminist actually claims they think.

For example the main point was that someone was arguing that most feminists are for 50/50 default child custody. This is obviously in stark contrast the the large feminist organisations that have active power (with the main one being NOW) who actively block such laws.

So you have a situation where the powerful feminist backed groups are:

  • Against shared parenting.
  • Against education equality.
  • Pro circumcision.
  • Against male rape victims.
  • Largely deny that men can be abused.
  • And on and on

It requires some serious disingenuous mental gymnastics to try to deny any of the above.

Yet your average feminist is both totally unaware of the above and also unwilling to accept it as relevant. It reminds me of the thread where someone was arguing that Donald Trump was not a real Republican - which is both true and entirely irrelevant.

So we spend all our time arguing against institutional feminism with feminists who don't support it (overtly at least) yet are defending their personal feminism - which is again irrelevant.

How do we reconcile this? How do we move the discussion on without spending all our time talking about what feminism actually is? It seems this is the core of the problem.