Am I a feminist?

I believe in equal legal rights for women and equal treatment in every aspect of life.

If I had a daughter, I would want her to grow up believing that she could do anything in life that she chose to do, and that her gender should never be a disadvantage in any choices she made (aside from the fact that there are obvious anatomical differences between men and women that will always have some influence), and I will absolutely raise any daughter I have this way.

I personally love to see a woman succeeding in a male-dominated field.

However, I believe that there are certain male-dominated areas of society that women will never penetrate to the same degree.

For example, I used to play chess a bit and there was always a debate about why there had been only one top ten in the world female player (Judit Polgar). I’ve heard all kinds of intricate explanations for this, but I think the reason is quite simple. Women don’t play chess in the same numbers or with the same passion and dedication as men. They have different priorities. This will always be the case.

I don’t think this previous phenomenon occurs because of the nature of society, although I accept that has some influence and if we lived in a healthier society then some male-dominated pursuits would feature more women, although not an equal number.

But I don't think women should be pushed into careers or life choices that they don't actually have any interest in purely because these areas are currently male-dominated. For example, I have seen some concern that women are not pursuing maths or engineering in the same numbers as men. This doesn't concern me at all because my experience is that generally women are simply not interested in these subjects. And I don't believe this is due to societal reasons.

I believe women get more pleasure and fulfilment out of children than anything else. I accept this is a generalisation as some women don’t want children at all.

I don’t think women should be obliged to be confined to the home, but I believe that as a society we place a pathetically low value on raising children and the ideal situation would be for one parent to raise the child at home (this doesn't have to be the mother) at the very least until they start school. I accept that this is frequently not financially viable, but it should be held up as an ideal.

I believe in the total decriminalisation of all forms of sex work. I don’t have any qualms about men seeing prostitutes / escorts, and in my opinion the ideal scenario would be if we could all talk about this openly without the fear of ridicule or worse. Women who work as sex workers should be in the safest situation possible when they work in this field, rather than the practice being driven underground.

I don’t think we should view a woman who has had 30 sexual partners any differently to a man who has had 30 sexual partners. Slut shaming is disgusting, disgraceful and hypocritical.

I don’t think there should be any quotas for anything regarding the percentage of women being part of a certain institution. I think everyone, male or female, should be there on merit. I accept that creating a true meritocracy, considering our corrupt, cronyist and elitist society is difficult, but I don’t think positive discrimination is the answer.

I think we should endeavour to judge all women's competence to perform any position based on their ability, rather than making stereotypical and often baseless assumptions and comments based on gender.

I disagree with a lot of what I read from feminist writers. I read articles in The Guardian all the time that are laughable. I particularly strongly disagree with what feminist writers tend to say about sex and sexuality which bears no resemblance to reality.

I don’t think women should be condemned by feminists or other women for their choices in terms of career (of course, the economic system has a massive influence over our ‘choices’, so the extent to which we ‘choose’ our profession is debatable, but let’s not go into that…).

It annoys the hell out of me when other women are told that they are only choosing certain professions / behaviours because of the society as if they don’t know their own minds! “You’re a woman and you have freedom of choice. Now that you have freedom of choice, you should make choices that I agree with!” Anyone should be free to do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t infringe upon the freedoms and rights of others to do the same, without any form of condemnation. I have absolutely no qualms about women working as strippers, hookers, or anything else as long as they are not forced or coerced in any way.

I don’t agree that stuff like Page 3, Playboy (when they had nude women), umbrella girls at motor racing, etc, is demeaning to women. I don’t agree that it has a significant influence over men viewing women as sexual objects. Picketing stuff like Miss World is fucking ridiculous, I might as well protest outside male strippers' houses because women find them attractive.

I don’t watch much porn, but I think pornography is generally becoming more hateful, violent and misogynistic (and in some cases misandric) and this is a worrying trend considering its wide availability. I’m not sure what the answer is to this issue, but we should definitely be extremely careful to ensure that minors don’t gain access to it.

I could probably think of more, but that’s enough for now.

Am I a feminist, or not? Do you agree with my views, or not? If so, which ones do you agree and / or disagree with and why?