Feminists

deep, deep anger or rage at what men (as a class) under patriarchy have done to women (as a class) -- OR, the results of deep wounds suffered at the hand(s) of individual male(s), as discussed in post #8.

When I discovered feminism -- and really, I've been a feminist all my life I just didn't have a word for it or an ideology until I stumbled into it in the early 70s -- I read everything I could get my hands on and at that time there was an enormous proliferation of feminist books and materials. I spent 3 solid months doing nothing but reading one book after another, and I read pretty fast. That's how I got my own consciousness-raising.

But it made me very, very angry -- with an anger that's not fully gone away (and maybe never will). The anger was about my own limited opportunities (up to that point), the actual suffering that I'd witnessed women endure and knew about women enduring for milennia, etc. That anger isn't that difficult to trip even if I don't haul it out and put it on display every day. In fact, I'd really rather not -- it's pretty uncomfortable.

So I don't hate men, but I strongly prefer (and celebrate) what I call "educable men," those wonderful, darlingmen who actually try not to be sexist and who are willing to listen about issues of sexism and misogyny. There are many who are not, most dishearteningly here at DU. Unfortunately -- and I'm not proud of it but also not willing to apologize for it -- they tend to trip triggers and the result is they earn my contempt or probably more accurately disgust.

This is a side of you I'd not seen before, MineralMan. I Iike it.