Feminism vs Modernism

In my tomb raider post, I ranted a little about the modern state of Feminism. A few friends told me that my point didn't really get through, and I agree. I made little sense. So I'd like to clarify my feelings on the subject.

To reiterate, I don't consider myself a feminist, but I do think most modern young people are basically feminist. The fact that we don't all think women should stay in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant basically makes us "feminists" by the strictest and original definition of the term.

The reason I don't consider myself a feminist is because I don't believe it's a valid word any more. It certainly doesn't describe one specific movement or train of thought. To one person, "feminism" means that you believe women should be treated exactly the same as men, in a professional setting, and that women have the same civil rights as men, in a governmental setting. With that brand of feminism, I'd agree. But really, I think most people do, these days, so I don't really think of that as feminism so much as modernism.

To other people, feminism means that women should be given special treatment because they're women, and they should be "equally represented". If there's a group of men, you're obligated to remove one man and put a woman in his place. If you have two job candidates in an all-male business, you're obligated to hire the woman for equal representation. I understand this view, and I do think it has its place just to buffer against the anti-modern holdouts who are going to fight like hell to make sure women are excluded from their club. But mostly, I disagree with this because it's treating a symptom rather than the cause. Why would a business or club or whatever have only men? well, because women aren't applying in the first place. Why aren't they? because their parents are entering them into beauty pageants and sending them to proms and telling them that the most important thing in the world is finding a good man to take care of her.

And finally, there's the extreme feminism which is a lot more anti-man than anything, where everything in the current world, which sucks by the way, stays the same except that women are in charge and men are what women used to be 50 years ago. That to me is just stupid because it's not even treating the symptom, much less the disease.

So no, I'm not a feminist, and I think that modern "feminism" is often a horrible mish-mash of all of the above. Most people (I mean, men and women alike) don't understand that there are different strains of feminism, so even when a girl starts questioning why she should get entered into beauty pageants and why she'd not encouraged to pursue computers and technical skills, all she gets back is this bug mutated lump of "feminism". It usually ends up as a series of combo moves. Press button A to Hate On Men. Press button B to Rant About Pay Scale Inequality. Press button C to Shop For Shoes. I mean, wtf.