Revolutionary Rants

There is a interesting article online today (yes, Charles, in the Guardian and, yes, I do still read the online papers before going to work, even the employed do this, apparently…) about one of my favourite rant topics, feminism. Anyone who knows me will know I am a proud feminist, but I am also involved in a loving relationship with a man. I wrote an article on a similar theme in our University paper, the catchily titled Huddersfield Student, called “The F-Word”, surprisingly. It was about how feminism has been demonised - bra-burning, lesbian man-haters, and so on - and corrupted since the 60’s and 70’s and about how most women of my age seemed to go out of their way to avoid “feminism”.

Love, as the article says, does not equal “passive”. The great anarcho-feminist Emma Goldman talks about just that in her article Love and Marriage, it is only the capitalist based, traditional (male controlled) version of “love” that has the female as passive. Women are controlled in to passivity; the dreams of the big white wedding, the need to find “Mr Right”, the need to be thin…
Now, of course, we have a different problem, the fact that women are told by “society” that they fail if they do not have a career and children. If they dare to have one or the other they are bad girls. Surely the thing should be that women have a choice and that neither choice is wrong.

I am a feminist, I have romantic love and shortly I will be using my wages to buy a dishwasher.

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