Feminism?
Published by Jeff, December 1st, 2003 in Social issuesSo I was in history today, and I started thinking about this. Apparently, I’m more intrigued by it than the Renaissance. Maybe confused is the right word. I’ve always defined it as the pursuit of equality in society with regards to women. Standard definition, and after reading a little today, I still think it’s the correct one. But what confused me is that I’ve seen feminism held responsible for the objectification of women in pop culture. Which, I guess, makes a sort of weird sense: trying to empower women to break out of the social stereotype of the modestly dressed homemaker, you get women wearing basically nothing, and see it as empowering themselves (or seen that way by the media). But I also see that here, in a declaration of the goals of the feminist movement (as defined by one organization), they specifically object to that:
6. An end to advertising that exploits women�s bodies to sell products.
And certainly that isn’t a tenant of the other side, conservative anti-feminists, who I’m not really sure if they actually dislike the things feminists fight for, or are reacting to the stereotype of the man-hating/lesbian feminist. Do they dislike the fact that these women don’t want to be homemakers? While the idea that one should have a say in another’s personal life is something I don’t understand, I don’t put it past that side of the political spectrum.
So where did that idea come from? The objectification of women just seems to come from a drive to sell more shampoo or whatever, so why did it get dumped on feminism? Both sides are against it. Maybe I’m just being confused by one person’s opinion, that isn’t especially widespread?
Sadly, as with almost all of the progressive issues, the #6 rule decides that human nature is bad and must be changed.
Sex sells. Women’s bodies are even used to sell products in the gay/lesbian community.
Human nature trumps everything. Especially any puny societal/political threory that intellectualism can come up with.
But, so what? It’s human nature to use power to dominate or abuse other humans. Certainly we aren’t to just accept that, are we? Forget about abusive rulers around the world, it’s just human nature?
Actually, war/murder/destruction is not a born-in instinct. And, while greed and envy are, the method of aquisition is a learned behavior. I would not kill to get a Lamorghini, but someone else might.
The key to stopping violence (such as war) is not to change human nature but to make the consequences so vile that people don’t take it to that level.
Take our invasion of Iraq. Iran let the UN in once they saw that we would follow up on our promises and the Norks now want to talk (they remembered that they were on the same list as Iraq). Even a crazy, poofy haired dictator and a group of men who think that they are earthly bound demi-gods saw the writing on the wall after that.
Sadly, Jimmeh Cahtah wants to take his fingers out of his nose and get them in Nork pie and the UN kid gloved the Mullahs.
So much for the born-in need to defend. I guess that some methods of changing the weaker parts of human nature have proven successful on the weak minded.