My feminist opinion post

This is a reactionary piece which relates to feminism and the rhetoric of feminists. This is not meant to be offensive or mean. This is just my reaction to things I read and how I feel about it. This topic primarily came up after reading my good friend's blog. But it really pertains to all feminist opinion based articles. 

I believe in fairness and equity and I am for the most part a strong feminist. I would say with my introduction into queer theory that I'm a bit queerer than some and less queer than others but that's hardly the point. I want to discuss the state of feminism and the way that people frame their life stories to become an issue of feminism. Many of my friends would label themselves as feminists, and with so many branches of feminism it's a fair label and it's a noble cause. They believe in equal treatment of women and they oppose patriarchy which has throughout history dismissed women as either being fully human or being treated fairly based off of their own merits.

However, this is one of the issues I see feminists that I know get into. The frame of the argument being within their merits, they often disregard intersectionality and the affects of their own arguments in replicating and regulating what they see as injustice. Many of my friends are indeed white, middle class, feminists and the arguments are often framed in a light which promotes the ideal of how women should be treated as well as how women should act with the perspective from that standpoint. This limitation of seeing women from only their social space. 

Side note: Many feminists that I know project their expectations of how women ought to behave when they have feminist debates which reenforces a discourse of what women ought to be, which is funnily the thing we try to oppose.  This often comes in the form of opinions about how women ought to act and rebuking behavior, I see this often with slut shaming. Which often happens off handedly by saying I dressed slutty and did XYZ, or that girl's slutty and has a lot of boyfriends. This regulates behavior and suggests that there is a right way of being a woman. 

Although opinions are a fair assessment of your personal experience it does not reflect an intersectional perspective nor does it denote that this is a limited scope due to your own privilege or position.

I know I'm just poking at a pet peeve of mine but feminism must have context and assess the privilege of the speaker. The idea that everyone in the world who is a woman receives this reaction because they are women is absurd. Think of women who don't have the same privileges. The women you call sluts, the women you think have too many children, the women you would label as unmarriable due to their social position, age, how able their body is, their gender, their physical appearance or their mental handicaps. Do they also fit into this limited view? Do people also reflect onto them the same “disadvantage” or annoyance that you deal with? Probably not. 

A woman who is disabled or who is not in a monogamous heterosexual relationship probably won't be asked the same questions. So please, please keep your feminist perspective in focus and within context. Please view things with your own privileges in mind before you put out an opinion piece about how people generally behave towards women. It is true that romantic relationships are the focus of people's conversation, mainly that have to do with the heterosexual matrix of it being monogamous and heterosexual. It is true that mostly women's worth is derived from their relationship with men, especially in third world countries where you're worth is in relation with your family which in turn reflects on the patriarch of the family. But can you really generalize? 

Are women really treated this way? And if they are, deconstruct why it happens. Or who it doesn't happen to? And why you find the exceptions ask why they are exceptional and what structures make it so they fall beyond the norm. Why is it that you think/ or people think that way? What norms are they transgressing? Why is it that you are regulating their life by suggesting or thinking of them as non-normative?

I suppose my take away message of this is that opinions are one thing. But please do not generalize and if you do, back it up. Feminism is not just a reflection of your life and the disadvantages you see, although that maybe a part of it. Rather, think of your own privileges, analyze why things are the way they are and do not assume that because it happens to you it must happen to everyone or that people were blind to this injustice before you pointed it out. Often times the people who are dismissed from the discourse entirely are the ones with the most to say. Your rhetoric and your anger over injustices reflects how you see the world and also exemplifies where you see people and your expectations of behavior.