Feminists

The easy way out. If somebody wants to be an object, let her.

Me, I am actually concerned about others. Hm, isn't that what the criticism of the old-schoolers is? That we weren't concerned about others, just about our privileged selves (even if we weren't actually privileged at all)?

I don't believe that any woman's choice is free unless the constraints that all women operate under in society are removed.

If it's somebody's choice to be a sex worker, then it is somebody else's choice to be an abused wife.

There simply is no way around that.

Some groups and some individuals are vulnerable and disadvantaged from the outset. I believe that a decent society has a responsibility to protect its vulnerable members. I believe that responsibility overrides individual freedom in some instances. The extreme vulnerability of women all over the world to sexual abuse and exploitation overrides the "choice" of some privileged woman (privileged by virtue of the very fact that she lives in a developed society, for starters) to play at being a sex object for whatever reasons she may assert.

I believe there are bad choices, choices that some women make that harm themselves or other women or their society at large, whether they make them because they actually have no choice or because they are simply self-interested and have no regard for anyone but themselves.

In some cases I will indeed "judge" those women and their actions, where they seem to be acting with a minimum of constraints. In the case of the young woman in Thailand I saw a documentary about some years ago, who prostituted herself in the city in order to support her rural family, I will judge her a hero; the constraints in her life left her little choice, and she made the choice that did the most good for other people. She was not the source of women's problems, she was a victim of them. In the case of the North American woman demanding the "freedom" to prostitute herself for profit, I will judge her for what she is: self-interested and selfish, and not in any way deserving of my concern if her choices are limited against her wishes in an effort to improve the lives of women living without choices. Because she is very definitely part of the problem.

A feminism that demands that all choices women make be given equal respect is the real feminism of privilege, the "feminism" of those who are lazy and self-absorbed.

No. You choose not to acknowledge that not all women are affected the same way by those words, and that those words have effects on society at large that are harmful for women. You choose to put yourself above other women in deciding what you will give a damn about. If it doesn't bother you, then you will do nothing about it, and to hell with anyone who gets hurt.

Doesn't mesh real well with that whole "intersectionality" thing, if you ask me. I thought that was about understanding other women's problems and examining how our own immunity to those problems affects our feminism.


Jeeeeezus. The irony is just too strong here.