Feminists are Pro-Choice, unless You choose not to label yourself a Feminist.

I grew up in the 60's, surrounded by feminism. Our household was atheistic, so none of the misogynistic overtones of the Abrahamic faiths dominated the women in our house. I heard the news of bra burnings, protests for equal rights/equal pay, abortion rights, pro choice, women power and the NOW. My mother was the first feminist I knew, but she was a feminist in words only. I never saw her protest, never saw her do anything to advance the cause of gender equality. She played both sides of the fence, which ever was more advantageous to her at the moment. She lived by a kill or be killed mentality, which included her oldest daughter. As humanity goes, my mother was a nasty piece of work.

I had a very close relationship with my father. He had no sons and always encouraged me to be myself, pursue whatever interested me. He taught me how to mow lawns, work with tools, basic auto care like changing tires and maintenance. Yet, he was also the one to teach me how to cook and sew. He never once told me that I should not pursue track because I was a girl, or that I should wear more dresses, not play football with the boys in the neighborhood (I was a tomboy) or play with dolls instead of wanting a race track set or chemistry set. As a child, I had it made with his support. Some people might think that this not having sons might have played a part in his treatment of me as a child, that I was his surrogate son. Perhaps. But considering his support and encouragement of me, even if he did not agree with my decisions, I tend to believe otherwise.

When my parents separated, I chose to live with my father, my younger sister with my mother. This was nearly unheard of in 1975. It was difficult enough for men to get custody of children, much less a daughter. My father was in the Air Force, in the big military town of San Antonio, Texas. We had lots of racial diversity. It was also a large college/university town so there was also the diversity of thought. I did not grow up with racism, nor ignorance in our home. My mother was attending college when I was young (art major), so I saw the streakers, the skinny dipping parties at the house, the nude artwork. My father sculpted in wood and metal. As a result, I never grew up thinking that a womans body was shameful, simply beautiful.

This upbringing set the stage for my perspective on gender issues. On one hand I had a hypocritical parent that treated people in general like shit and on the other, a parent that taught me to judge the individual, not the group. So I have never seen men as a group, to be judged as a whole, by the actions of some men. My father always drilled into me, not to open my mouth unless I knew the facts, so that I dont put my foot in my mouth and look like a fool. Dont make generalizations; dont assume, and consider what it is like to walk in some elses moccasins. The feminists I had exposure to generalized men, did not have all the proper facts and most of the time, like the dirty cloud that always surrounded Pigpen on Peanuts, had a cloud of anger and hate. 

Fast forward to current times. For over 4 years I have been an active Redditor. Reddit is described as a social news website, a news aggregator, with over 67,000 subreddits to choose from. Not only can you read the posted or linked content, you can comment and redditors can upvote content or comments they agree with or downvote it. It is a very participatory community – a virtual microcosm of the real world. I fell in love with it the moment I found them. I hate mainstream news and had been going to a few independent news sites online for my news. Reddit was like a vast farmers market of independent news sources and information.

As a woman, my experiences are a wee bit different from the majority of redditors, which are men. But then again, as a woman, my experiences are apparently not the norm for women either. Due to my favored subreddits, the populations tend to be more male dominated and frequently I am mistaken for a man when posting, unless my post clearly states something about breast feeding or such. So if someone says, “Thanks dude.” I will casually, yet unoffendedly, let them know that I am a woman and they are welcome.

The biggest complaint of most female redditors is the rampant misogyny on Reddit. To be honest, I do not see that Reddit is any different than the real world, which is rampant with misogyny. I do not care for the woman hating, yes there is alot and frequently I have posted against it. The reality is, our culture, in the United States, is founded on the misogynistic patriarchal Indo-European cultures – it saturates almost all aspects of society. I have experienced more misogyny in the real world - in education, religious gatherings, marriage, and the work place than I ever have at the virtual world of Reddit. I had heard rumors of some really horrible subreddits that were dangerous to women and petitions to shut them down. After seeing the change.org petition and the links to the offending subreddits, I braced myself for getting pissed off and clicked the links. I was more saddened than pissed. It brought back memories of an abusive marriage.Those subreddits were horrid.

Being a research author, I frequently post some of my research findings in comments that are applicable subject matter. Sometimes that brings up the patriarchal Indo-Europeans. I came across a subreddit as a result. Like the White Supremacists, who adamantly deny that the holocaust ever happened, that it is a lie made up by the Jews, there is a Mens Rights group that patrols some of Reddit and claims that the patriarchy never existed and is a feminist lie. Shocked, I promptly reply that one - there is overwhelming documentation of the patriarchal Indo-Europeans; and two - I am not a feminist. They dont care about facts, nor that I am not a feminist, I am a woman and that is bad enough. I am the enemy in their eyes. These men exude anger like the early feminists I grew up around.

After a couple years on Reddit I heard about a subreddit, TwoXChromosomes. The first comments I heard were derogatory, about the rabid feminazis at TwoX. Finally, I visited TwoX. TwoX is not just a subreddit, it is like a female version of all of reddit, without all the subreddits for easier surfing. So you might get a really great article posted and lively discussion as a result, or you could get some teenage question about her boyfriend and what she should do. I have never bought or subscribed to womens magazines, so I have a wee bit of difficulty when I wander into TwoX with some of the nail polish, hair, bathing suit or relationship posts.It is not just populated by women. There are men there as well, that help add balance and a healthy perspective - men who do not agree with misogyny.

Hoping that the egalitarian issues I research about would be more accepted at TwoX, I began participating on posts that dealt with gender issues. Again, I am always honest and lay my cards on the table when the pertinent subjects come up, I am not a feminist. I believe in the equal rights of all genders. As a result of all my research, I no longer believe in a two gender world. I believe in an egalitarian culture and fight for the equality of all its members. Well apparently this regularly pisses off some of the feminists at TwoX, who downvote those posts in great number. But, as I stated before, Reddit is a microcosm of the world. This pissing off of some feminists is not just a virtual experience for me.

So recently there was a great post titled, “Feminism Without Judgement” - the article, This Is How It Feels to Be Free, Feminism can be a prison if it’s all about the anger by JessicaH. This article I could relate to, having seen the anger of feminism and was glad to see a feminist writing about her earlier angst and letting it go. I could respect this woman and this post, so I replied:

“One of the reasons that I have never called myself a feminists is because of the hate I saw so prevalently in the women that fought before me. I view myself a humanist because I fight for the rights of all genders from the patriarchal oppression. I have been doing archaeological/historical presentations for Historical Baggage and one of the most validating comments I keep hearing is that I am not man hating and that more and more men are spreading the message of what I am teaching as a result. Because men have also been subjugated by the hierarchical, patriarchal Indo-European culture.

I understand the angst that goes with feminism. I understand the frustration of thousands of years of fighting against this oppressive patriarchal culture that subjugates, rapes, and at the very least turns a blind eye to the oppression enabling it. I understand the desire of some women to overthrow a patriarchy and replace it with a matriarchy, though I would not want to replace one oppressive system with another. 

Denis Diderot, a French philosopher in the 1700's, began training in the Catholic clergy but had to leave. He could not tolerate it. He then got into law and could not tolerate the injustices there. He wrote,'Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.' Now, if you understood the connection between the king and priesthood, the first 2 of 3 caste systems set up in every fucking patriarchal Indo-European culture, the 3rd being the subjugated, you would understand Diderot's statement. As a woman and researcher teaching about these subjects, I struggle on a constant basis with this thought - if only we could remove the kings and priests from the equation! 

I would dearly love to see people free and I know the source of this subjugation and its thousands of years history. I am so angry that the first recorded word for slave is a pictograph of the word woman and a pictograph of the mountains because they would go to the mountains to capture the women for slavery; I am so angry over the tens of thousands of women, young children, and the young males that were (forcibly castrated) enslaved in ancient sweat shops by this patriarchal Indo-European system in ancient Mesopotamia (2100 BCE); I am so angry at the two Catholic asshole priests that wrote the Hammer of the Witches and embarked on a campaign of torture and murder against primarily women (sometimes men were also murdered), across Europe, killing nearly a million women in a few hundred year period of time, sometimes wiping out all the females (daughters included) in a whole village. 

But my anger is not against men in general, nor limited to that gender. I know that not all men are that way. I also know that too many women have participated in/enabled this system as well. My anger and revolution are against a hierarchical patriarchal Indo-European culture and I daily fight against the empathetic angst, tempering it with love for an egalitarian culture, so that people might have ears to hear - because the hate causes walls to go up and block ears.”

As usual, I got downvoted. Years of this have never stopped me from speaking the truth and my opinion of the necessity of fighting for the egalitarian rights of all. Though I have kind of walked on eggshells and tried to be more diplomatic about it, to not incur their wrath, rather than simply pissing them off, generating a downvote. But, it does make me feel like the creamy filling of a bloody oreo cookie with the angry mens rights group on one side and the angry feminists on the other. This time, one beautiful woman (at least I think she is a woman based on her username, PriscillaNumerion – you never can tell online) replied, “I love how you got downvoted because you don't call yourself a feminist. That was a beautifully written post, Diderot is a badass motherfucker.” And then, “The funniest one, for me, are those women who say 'Feminism is all about choice' and then, when you say that you don't call yourself a feminist for reasons x and y, they reply 'Well, that makes you feminist because x and y are what feminism is about!' So it's all about choice, unless that choice is not labeling yourself a feminist.”

I sat and thought about her comment for a couple of hours, coupled with a comment my older daughter wisely spoke to me before the last Historical Baggage presentation at the library a week before – “Mum, dont apologize for your research, even if it pisses them off. By apologizing, you are taking responsibility for their reaction to the truth. They are responsible for their reactions, not you.”

I have done nothing wrong by presenting the truth of equality. I should not have been apologizing at presentations for potentially pissing people off and walking on eggshells on Reddit. I have not participated in misogyny, nor misandry. I have fought for the rights of individuals to be themselves. The healthier culture is that of the egalitarian, not a patriarchy, nor a matriarchy. I have the fucking right to choose, as a human being, and I have chosen Egalitarianism!

In light of these two comments, I decided to do something about it. I know my research pisses people off and my egalitarian perspective angers some of the two genders. So why settle for just pissing off a few people at a time, why not go for the shotgun effect and piss off larger groups of people enmasse – just rip the bandaid off quickly. With that in mind, I decided to create this blog. So I dedicate this to my daughter Leviyah and to PriscillaNumerion of Reddit, who have inspired me.

I am a rabid, organic dark chocolate addicted researcher, promoting egalitarianism, taking on the angry patriarchal Indo-European culture and I am not apologizing for it anymore!

EDIT: 12/8/2012 d/m/y - I just found out something humorous on TwoX today. It turns out that the reddit user PriscillaNumerion, which I mentioned in this post might be a female based on the username, was a man doing research. He created an obviously female username to post the same comments he had been as a male, to gauge the reactions. Reddit TwoX post by Priscilla Numerion. "You may recall, about a month or two ago, there was a post wondering whether women get treated better (ie, more upvoted) here than men do. A couple of people said they would create new usernames and pose as women, obviously I was one of them. Here I will outline my findings." Within minutes of posting his findings, the post was removed by the moderators and he got banned from TwoX.

This especially makes me smile because I had done the same thing many years ago at the Hoods Woods Survival forum (I love paleo skills), to prove to myself that the treatment by the male dominated forum was due to my being an obvious woman (registered with my real name and mentioned in applicable circumstances that I was a woman - didnt hide it), and not the content of my statements nor questions. Posting under a masculine sounding name, and never alluding to being female, I posted the same content I had under my real female name and was warmly received and treated like one of the guys". I thought about telling them, to prove a point, but then I thought that they knew exactly what they were doing and did it anyway, my pointing this out would not open the eyes of a single one of them. Perhaps it might have. 

At any rate - PriscillaNumerions comments are still applicable, appreciated and inspiring and I doubly dedicate this blog inspiration to HIM. Thank you.

Kathryn QannaYahu