On Feminism...

If you go to this link, you will find a vintage photo of a young woman in a bathing suit on a playground swing. The caption will read: "Women: The most beautiful thing in the universe". If you go into the comment section, you will find a great debate between a group of radical feminists, and well...everyone else.  I realize that not everyone has time to read the 119 comments, so I will try to establish both positions as briefly as I can before I go on my little rant about how radical feminism has it all wrong. And yes, even I jumped into the fray. Guess who I am.

The "feminists", and I put that in quotes for reasons that shall become apparent as I go, are arguing that the photo and caption are degrading, and that admiring physical beauty is always wrong. One person went as far as saying that sexy equates to perverse. In the minds of these people, when it comes to attraction, and finding a partner or maintaining a relationship, the only thing that matters is the person's intelligence, personality, and heavily imply that a woman who goes out of her way to look good, or model in a swimsuit, is a slut, and of course, dumb as a brick.

I have always maintained that the radical is necessary in a movement in order to bring attention to it and make way for the voices of reason. Once the voices of reason emerge and productive dialogue between opposing parties is established, the radical is best fading off into the background, for their extreme views are not only generally unrealistic, but well over the top and mostly irrational. The use for radical feminism has long since faded in our society. This is not to say that women should revert to being oppressed by society, or even that they still aren't to a certain extent in the free world - far from it. We just have better ways of fighting the good fight, and no longer have to shock people by declaring that anything with a penis is the enemy.

Radical feminism turns on the very women it is supposedly out to represent. When they see a scantily clad model, they assume that she has some sort of terrible self esteem issue, is shallow, oppressed, and a traitor to her gender because a man might admire her physical attributes. What I see is a woman with self confidence, which is the single most important aspect of empowerment. When a woman goes out of her way to look pretty or feminine, she is criticized for conforming to society's (i.e. a man's) ideals of beauty. What I see is a woman who wants to put her best foot forward and takes pride in doing so. Not all of us go out of our way to look our best to impress a man, and even if we do, if that man is worthy of the effort, I don't see how this compromises her in any way. Radical feminism is out to oppress men as well as women that don't conform to their ideals, when it should be embracing all women and supporting the choices of those women.

What radical feminists want to deny is that men and women, though entitled to equal treatment in society, are still very different. They want to deny that we all objectify one another, and treat physical attraction as some terrible wrong, when in fact, it is what first draws people to one another. No one is going to be happy with a person who is physically beautiful but offers nothing else in that relationship. No one is going to be happy in a relationship without physical attraction. It's just as wrong to be with someone for just their body as it is to be with someone just for their mind. Both people involved are losing here.

A relationship, whatever one's gender, is not healthy without both the physical and mental attraction in place. My husband and I appreciate one another's intelligence, have a mountain of respect for one another, can have adult discussions about profound subjects and make decisions as a family. However, if we did not objectify the hell out of one another, find one another physically attractive, and enjoy the sexual act for what it is, then none of that would matter. When I leave the house, I take care to look as good as I can because I am human and not immune to vanity. When I look good, I feel good. However, I also like to look good for my husband, and there is nothing wrong with that. He loves me without make up as much as he does when I wear it, but I take pride in looking good on his arm, just as he takes pride in looking good on mine. That does not compromise my belief that men and women should be treated equally in the work force and in the eyes of the law. To try and create an androgynous world in which we focus solely on intellectual compatibility is against nature. This applies to all people, no matter what their sexual orientation. Looking our best for one another and complimenting that, appreciating it, is not degrading, which is what these radicals would have us believe.

The idea that the physical is meaningless, that acknowledging it is demeaning, is a horribly unhealthy view of people and relationships. This attitude is no better than a chauvinistic one because it is degrading to both men and women. Men are not all knuckle dragging, shallow beasts, and to paint them all with that brush is as unfair as treating women as little more than breeding machines.

Quite frankly, if that is what feminism has come to represent, I'll go ahead and chain myself to the stove now.