By writing this entry I am avoiding doing an assignment which needs doing. This is a perhaps a problem because it seems like a fairly large assignment but I know people who got it up to a pass level in two days and so I think the key word is seems. At any rate it scares me so I’m putting it off.

I was thinking I was going to write a long blog entry about meeting with Caroline. Oh gosh. Getting to the meeting point was a total mess. I got into the city an hour early and we met at least an hour late. “Comedy of errors” is the phrase I’d use to describe it.
I was going to go into a lot of detail, but somehow that reminds me of this and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.

Rather then going into a point by point detailing of everything that happened since I woke up - I’m just going to post ideas and summary thoughts of concepts discussed, and just other things I thought about, or have reflected on somewhat. In no particular order.

1. (Not a feminist one. You can skip past if y’like.) I am a child of the internet. Something I already knew, but felt pretty hard today. Hence the posting of the above comic really. Not just because Caroline and her partner didn’t spend as much time on the internet as I do, but also because in my stress and anxiety over finding the pair I needed to go to a webcafe more then once to get details from an email. When I walked into the webcafes and the scruffy internet dudes talked to me about the fees and how they had snack, and that there was a quiet room in the back if I wanted it and I felt a small wash of relaxation. These people who spent so much time with computers, these nerdy types made me feel so comfortable. I swear if I wasn’t trying to get somewhere by a time limit (and failing horribly.) I could have just sat in those chairs and relaxed for hours.
Of course, most of the nerdy dudes I’ve ever met hate women hard, so I can’t embrace nerd-culture really. Not entirely. Still. My internet communities enrich me so much.

2. As people who read this blog reguarly might know, I have a problem with defining myself - especially as a radical feminist. So often I’ve felt like I’m not a radical. Like, sure I’m anti-pornstitution, sure I want to get to the root of problems, sure I beleive in structures and hierachies and whatnot, but most of the time I don’t feel “radical.” Not because I think radical means extreme or over the top, or scary, or rabid, or “man-hating.” It doesn’t.
It might be because I disagree with some radical feminists about trans issues, and I have a hard time ratifying that, since from a radical feminist perspective the attitudes I think of as transphobic make sense. Its internally consistant.
Anyway. Thats only a part of it, other things I can’t explain have made me weird about things too.

But: After today I think I’d be much more able to identify as a radical. Talking to these radical women, and being on the level with them. Something clicked in me. I mean. Argh. It’s hard to explain. The short sum of it is that while I’ve been apprehensive to describe myself as a radical feminist before, I think the label does apply to me. I can be a radical feminist and still have confused thinking on some radical issues.
So thats that.

3. Caroline asked me how I made the jump from liberal feminism to radical feminism and I told her I’d never been a liberal feminist, and had always been radical. (Given the above point, I’ll state at the time of the conversation I used the word radical to describe myself for ease of communication, but on reflection I should use it in a deeper way in future.)
She told me about some Twisty threads which I’ve not read that talked about a debacle over at feministing, and mentioned that Twisty said things she liked about feministing - that it got women interested in feminism who never had been.
We struggled over the word for the kind of woman it got interested. Young feminists? That doesn’t feel right. I’m a young feminist and I got drawn in by the awesome radical feminist Biting Beaver. Sam of Genderberg is a young feminist, and she’s one of the most active and dedicated anti-pornstitution activists around.
New feminists? Only, I was new when I started and I came to the radical side.
Mainstream feminists was the word I think we settled on, and I suppose perhaps it was the most appropriate.

Anyway. I was asked what I thought about it, like, what are the merits of people coming into feminism from a mainstream sparklepony perspective. Did it get more people in? Was it good?
I know radfem extrordanaire Littoral Mermaid came to feminism from the sparklepony side of things, and you know. She’s an extraordinary radfem, but liberal feminists and radical feminists can be such worlds apart.

At any rate: After thinking about how I became a feminist I wonder how liberal feminism attracts “New, young or mainstream” women, and whether they do in numbers enough to generalize like that.
I became attracted to feminism because I read Biting Beavers rapist checklist, and it resonated with me because it told me that coercing women into sex is rape, and my rape was like that. I’d always, always, always thought of it as rape - but no definition agreed with me ’till I found that. Her writing resonated with me because my issues were represented. On a deep level.

What issues resonated with the liberal feminists? I wonder? I’m not sure. The idea that you can be sexy and also a feminist might resonate with women who want to be sexy I guess. (A normal seeming to thing to want in a patriarchy. When women are valued and rewarded for being pretty and/or sexy of course there will be women who want those things. Society might actually value them and they can feel like they’re weilding the sword of power.)
Hardly gets to the root of the matter. I guess thats part of why I’d be a radical.

But my thinking is: New feminists, young feminists and mainstream women could be attracted to both radical feminism, mainstream feminism and any other kind and mixture of different feminisms. It depends on the views and experiences of each woman involved and what resonates/resonated with her. That doesn’t seem especially wrong. linked for relevance.

However liberal feminists come to their feminsim, and whatever issues resonate with them it doesn’t change what I beleive. I guess I’m committing those sins. I beleive that patriarchy opresses women with the sexy. and I beleive that sparkleponyism encourages this opression by trying to reclaim the sexy. I believe it doesn’t tackle the root of the problem. It keeps the status quo of sexy in place. It lets women and girls into the surface of feminism, but not enough to get deep into the roots of structures and systems.

Long and rambly, but its the best answer I can give.