Friday, April 14, 2006

Feminism

I am proud to be a feminist. I do not understand why women do not call themselves feminists, or think it's a dirty word. These are otherwise strong successful women who would have a fit if they were being denied something because of their sex. It is very strange to me.

I dislike the words whore, slut and slag. Most of the time these seem to be used to desribe a woman who is wearing revealing clothes. So people assume she sleeps around. How does that work? It aims to defines women by their sexual, for lack of a better word, function. And it makes me very uncomfortable. Much like the casual racism around in Norfolk. Why do people whisper the word black? It's very odd.
Back to the offending words. Why is it so bad for women to enjoy sex? Or make their living by it? There aren't equivalent words for men who go to prostitues. And if a man who sleeps around is called a slag, or slut, that word appears to feminise him and becomes an insult because it implies he is less than male. Because it's such a terrible thing to be female.

The world has not moved on, women's rights issues are not high on the agenda and women don't appear to care. The government (finally) starts an anti-rape campaign and all the media says is that the images are tacky. I know these subjects have been covered before but they are still important and seem to be forgotten about far too readily.

Anyway, this is an excellent website:

http://www.feministing.com/

I can't really think of any other issues I wish to raise at the moment.

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