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MULTI_FEMINISMS

                                                             December 23, 2014
                                                             February 19, 2015
                                                             February 19, 2019
Once upon a time, I got into a fight with a
feminist internet brigade, and I got the sense
that there were a lot of corners of feminist        My impression at the time
history that were falling down the memory           was that this was a
hole.                                               teenage twitter brigade--
                                                    they were inclined to say
So I started piecing together my grand              things like "Oh yeah? But
history and critique of feminism...                 my mom said--".
I've got a bunch of notes in this
direction, but it's a tangled mess of
various side issues:

o There's all the defensive
  butt-covering you might expect...       (No, I'm not with incel/gamergate/etc,
                                          no I don't think much of frat boy
o A difficult one-- in fact, maybe it     culture, no, I am not actually
  should be the primary lens for the      interested in making excuses for
  material-- is with the whole idea of    rapists, and yes, accusations of such
  "activism".  With activists, the        need to be investigated seriously...)
  question of what is true is often
  subservient to what's effective, and                          ASTERIX
  effectiveness is, if anything,
  harder to establish than truth, and
  there's a constant suspicion that
  activists play too loosely with
  fact.

o the definition of what exactly you
  mean by feminism.  There are various
  takes on it used at different times      Then there's a rhetorical
  and places and by different people,      dodge popular with critics of
  and many self-styled feminists are       feminism, they use a label
  very huffy about insisting on a          like "radical" or "extreme",
  particular definition (even if they      so no one can come back with a
  don't always use it themselves).         "but not all!".  This strikes
                                           me as at best intellectual
  I considered using the title             lazy.  You need to *say* what
  "feminisms", and then noted that         exactly is radical or extreme
  some other people have already           and ideally you should explain
  gone there.  Since it'S entirely         why those are bad.
  possible that there are multiple         
  perceptions of the range of                      Usually the labels
  "feminisms", in order avoid                      "radical" or "extreme" have
  horrible confusion I am using the                negative connotations, as
  phrase "multi-feminisms".                        opposed to, say, "serious"
                                                   or "mainstream".
  But the original source material         
  I was writing is such an unwieldy                Though some actually might
  mess, I'll probably never finish                 consider "extreme" or
  it-- and if I did, what would I                  "radical" as positive
  do with it, publish it as a book?                attributes...
  So instead let's raid it for bits        
  that I can stick here for now--                  (I certainly would, provided
                                                   it was a radical extreme that
                                                   actually worked.)
                                           
                                           


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