Sexism is bad. Happy Gender Equality day.

This is why I don't call myself a feminist.

You can argue all you like that a 'real' feminist is only in the middle section where the red and green circles cross. You can also argue that the word 'cool' REALLY refers to temperature and people who use it to mean 'trendy' are using the word wrong. It doesn't change the fact that if you say 'Today was cool' I will have NO IDEA if you mean you had a good day or if you are talking about the weather. If you tell me you are a feminist I HAVE NO IDEA if you care about gender equality or if you think men are scum. It tells me you care about women's rights – that you are in the red circle. It no more indicates that you are ALSO in the green circle than that you are also in the pink circle.

The point of language is to communicate with others. The word feminist does not communicate what you think it should. It could mean too many different things. It's a woolly word – too broad to be useful. (If you want to bemoan this fact then I suggest that you speak out against the pink circle not the green one.)

And another point. If you say 'Today was cool. I wore my hat'', how can you NOT realise that wearing a hat implies you are talking about the weather, not your funky new hat that made you feel great? If you say 'I'm a feminist. Women need x, y and z.' you are implying that you are using 'feminist' to mean that you care about women's rights NOT gender rights. I actually believe that the VAST majority of self-proclaimed feminists are egalitarians. I ALSO believe that most MRAs are egalitarians. But then, I'm an egalitarian.

If you tell me you are a feminist – you are NOT indicating that you are an egalitarian – even if that is your intent. It is not a logical inference to make. Maybe it sucks, but that's the way it will be unless you manage to prove feminists are egalitarians - maybe by NOT using sexist language all the time. Like having campaigns to stop domestic violence rather than ones to stop domestic violence against women. Which I'm afraid implies – I assume unintentionally - that hitting men is A-OK. Laws should not be sexist. Not even accidentally. No person should be allowed to hit their partner. And yet it's tolerated – even expected – for a woman to slap her cheating boyfriend's face. I've done it myself when I was a teenager. (Sorry Dave - you lied to me, hurt me, and treated me very badly - but I had no right to hit you.)  No normal western man could possibly not know that hitting their wife is not ok. MANY women don't realise it's actually not ok to hit their husbands.

I'm an egalitarian. It's a clearer, cleaner word than feminist. If I want to stress I'm talking about gender rights rather than race, sexuality or something else - then I can call myself a gender egalitarian. I find the word 'feminist' just as jarring as the word 'masculinist'.

So there you go.  I am NOT part of the sisterhood - I have a brother, a husband and a son.  I believe they should enjoy the same freedoms I have - to choose whether to prioritise family or career, to choose what clothes to wear, whether to grow their hair long or to speak out without being mocked if they are raped or abused.

Welcome to the siblinghood.

In defense of guilt

No one can *make* you feel guilty... You must KNOW that you are doing something wrong, or you wouldn't care what other people think. The truth hurts, doesn't it? Don't shoot the messenger. Get angry at the people who encouraged you to formula feed, not me.

If a formula feeder tells a lactivist 'stop making me feel guilty', someone will always make these comments.

And in my not-so-humble opinion, this is an enormous load of bollocks!

Try this on for size:

No one can *make* you feel embarrassed or humiliated when breastfeeding in public. If you are embarrassed about it when someone says that you should stop or cover up, you must KNOW you are doing something wrong, or you wouldn't care what people think. Truth hurts, doesn't it? Don't shoot the messenger.  Get angry at the people who encouraged you to NIP, not me.

Ok? It's not kind, it's not fair, and it's not true.  Quit it, guys. 

And now for the metaphor part:

Imagine a classroom of students. The teacher asks them to answer some very simple true/false questions at the beginning of the class, by a show of hands - the students are instructed to put their hand up if the statement is false.

He holds up a blue ball. 'This ball is red.' He says.

Alice puts her hand up confidently. She is the only one in the class who does so. She looks around in confusion.

The next statment is 'This ball is blue'  Alice's hand goes down, and every other hand in the class is raised.

The teacher reminds them, looking at Alice, that they should put their hands up if it's false. This pattern repeats, over and over again. How long until Alice starts to distrust her own eyesight? Or wonders if she is somehow confusing the meanings of true and false?

We know this happens, this scenario has occured, as a pyschological experiment. It's a test to gauge Alice's reaction.  (The other students have been asked to get every question wrong deliberately.)  Alice might figure this out, since she is in a controlled setting - but even if she suspects it's a trick, she is going to find it harder and harder to raise her hand every time.  She will lose confidence.  The normal response is to doubt oneself, and either lie to fit in, or get angry and defensive.  Could you honestly tell her that no one has 'made her' doubt her eyesight, that if she believed her eyes were perfectly fine before hand, she would never have worried about it, that she must already be worrying that her eyesight is bad, or she wouldn't care what other people think or say... 

And Alice at least has a chance to believe that everyone is lying to her. She has NEVER had her knowledge of the colours questioned before, she has had it confirmed to her every day. This is a one off situation, in a controlled environment, and she is STILL extremely likely to have her feelings about her own competence shaken. How much worse would it be if it was a less familiar colour (say 'teal' or 'vermilion' or 'aqua')? If it was an online, open site and she knew that everyone else genuinely believed what they were saying, and some even linked to websites showing that aqua is a shade of red?  If she came across people with differing opinions about colour all the time? 

So, if a formula feeder gets a bit defensive - can we all please shut the hell up about 'own your own feelings' and 'no one can make you feel guilty'?  We are social beings.  Our feelings are ALWAYS affected by the words and actions of others. Yes, I suppose that very strong, independent, self-assured, arrogant people can just shrug off the roomful of people telling them the ball is red when they know it to be blue. But they are the exception, not the norm, and frankly, I wouldn't want to be so damn cocksure that I would just ignore everyone else and think I knew better without even trying to open a diaologue about it!  If I am SURE I'm right, I'll defend my position, I'll explain it to others who believe I'm wrong... I don't think that's a bad thing. Engaging in the discussion is the only way I'll learn if I *am* wrong, and that won't happen if the others don't engage with me, but simply dismiss my viewpoint, and me, for being 'defensive'.

By the way - the actual quotation frequently cited is 'No one can make you feel guilty WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT.'  And it's true. But irrelevant. Just as 'No one *made* you do it' doesn't really excuse people who were pressuring their friends to get drunk/take drugs/etc.'  It may be ultimately the responsibility of the person who did it, but it wouldn't have happened without the peer pressure, and those peers are therefore not entirely blameless!

Having said all that, even though we ARE making them feel guilty, that is an unfortunate side effect, and NOT a good reason to stop.  Another example - I'm an ex-smoker. If I see a cigarette (for instance, on an anti-smoking ad), I often crave nicotine.  The ad 'makes' me. I wouldn't have felt that way if I had never seen a cigarette, so yes, seeing a cigarette - in conjunction with being an ex-smoker - does 'make me'.  I don't think anti-smoking ads should be banned because I am reacting to them in this way. But nor do I think that it'd be a sensible response to tell me that if I was confident in my decision to quit, I wouldn't feel that way.  If I knew quitting was the right thing for me, I wouldn't be doubting myself? Um, no. I'm human.  Self-doubt is not peculiar.  Guilty feelings for something completely outside of your control, and/or something that you know was the lesser of two evils, are not peculiar. And it is not an admission of wrong doing to feel guilt.