Ok an odd place to put a blog about Feminism but hey my Husband hangs out here and I also made a deal with him. I would try to understand what the big deal is with this game you call hockey and he has to read Noam Chomsky.

SO without further adieu here is my first blog.


Yes I used the dirty F word...FEMINISM. I know that this is a large topic for a blog, and for this reason I will be splitting this topic into a few different entries in the hope of doing justice to the subject matter.

Let me start by acknowledging that there are many different forms of feminism. They include but are not limited to radical, liberal, socialist, gender, post-structural, third wave, marxist, anti-racist, post colonial etc and etc. I am sure that this list comes as a surprise to a few people. There are many people who equate feminism strictly with the organizing principles of the 1970's radical feminism.

Since the second wave of feminism, it has grown and diversified, as many different women from different ethnic, cultural, class and racial groups have actively researched and worked to improve the lives of women.

As the author of this blog I should at this point acknowledge my own ideological position. At this point other than admitting to advocating feminism I have not chosen to declare a specific allegiance to a single form of feminism. Though all work for the improvement of women, men and children none as a singular ideology are able to offer a concrete answer to many of the problems facing the disenfranchised of the planet. When necessary I refer to various ideologies and organizing principles of different feminisms to reify the ways in which patriarchal control has impoverished the lives of women.


In the last paragraph I used the other dirty word. Did you miss it? Yes I said patriarchy. Without essentializing by gender it is fair to say that ALL MALES live with unearned privileges. Some so-called feminist males will admit their gender privileges while most (in my experience) deny that these privileges exist. To acknowledge unearned advantages is to admit the many ways that men profit through their relationships with women.

It is a historical fact that anyone in a position of power is often resistant to not only acknowledge inequality, but the various ways in which they profit through systemic inequality. Privilege whether earned or unearned is something that no one willing relingquishes. Does that fact mean that I believe that their is an organzied male conspiracy to devalue and exploit women....in short no.


This however does not negate the fact that world wide women are exploited, raped, assaulted, devalued, dehumanized, stalked, and murdered. Men benefit through marriage..sexual service ( until the 1970s a wife could not charge her husband with rape as she was considered his possession), domestic labor ( cleaning, cooking household organizing while men perform duties like mowing the lawn which can be performed on convenience and are less labor intensive), child rearing, support staff activites (work that supports their employment) emotional comfort and companionship.

Men benefit in the labor force...under paying women employed in the pink ghetto, offering women less chances for career advancement, the ability to take less time off of work because the woman has the main responsibility for child rearing, all the while women earn 60 cents for every dollar a man makes. Men benefit through prestige...whenever a task is divided by gender the work that is performed by a woman is always devalued in comparison to the work performed by a man. Men become distinguished as they age whereas women become dried up hags. Men are considered rational, logical thinkers, whereas women are hysterical and subject to the whims of their uterus's. Historically in the medical profession male bodies were and are considered representative of the human body despite the fact that men and women present differently ( eg. strokes, heart attacks) with the same disease.

Baby, baby it is a mans world.... the next post will concentrate on the family and the declining reproduction rate in the western world.