On feminist/feminism

[dragonimp]

Okay, I've run into this opinion a number of times now, and it bugs me. It is:

A man can't be a feminist. He can be a feminist ally, but not a feminist.

I guess the semantics are really important to some people, but I never thought it was a gendered term. This is the dictionary.com definition of feminist:

1. advocating social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men.

2. an advocate of such rights.

And for feminism:

1. the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.
2. ( sometimes initial capital letter ) an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.
3. feminine character.

Nothing in that says you can't have a Y chromosome.

I'm sure there's a lot of men who don't "get it", but I'd say they're not truly feminists. For the ones who do get it - why kick them out of the club, as it were? Why reduce them to the secondary status of "ally"?

I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on this.

Comments

[dragonimp]

That's what really gets me, it undermines the whole point of wanting equal treatment and equal rights. I've seen people get really snippy about terms like "actress" because it separates female from male actors, but then I turn around and see this "men can't be feminists" BS. It's like, "We want equality so badly we're going to give men second-class status in our movement!" Er....

I've also seen the distinction made between "gay rights advocates" and "gay rights allies" (can't we all just be pro equal rights without the semantics?) but I stay out of that one because someone is bound to scream "straight privilege!" at me.