Wow, didn’t take you long to get personal with your replies huh. Keep blaming the terrible image of the feminist movement on ‘misogynists’ all you want, but it’s misandrists, TERFs and other bigots in the movement who give it a bad name, as well as the people who only respond to criticism of the movement itself with deflection, accusations and ad hominem.

Anyway, it’s not like I care anymore what the image of the feminist movement is; I stopped associating with it ages ago. Do with it what you will.

The ‘worst people’ shape the image of the movement. The core of the argument still doesn’t change, no matter what you say. The ones defining feminism as ‘women who hate men’ aren’t misogynists alone; it’s the misandrists within the movement itself.

Look, it doesn’t matter what you want the movement to be about or what you think TERFs are. The reality is that TERF isn’t a self-given label, radical feminist isn’t a self-given label, and more than a few notable individuals in the feminist movement (a movement that, at its core, is about womens’ rights) are misandrist. This is a reality that, no matter how much you pretend is fake, is still real.

And if feminists spend more time denying this reality than actively changing it, the movement itself won’t change, nor will its general perception.

lol I love how you’re using ‘TERFs’ as a scapegoat while ignoring that TERFs are, quite literally, Trans-exclusionary Radical Feminists. They’re not ‘masquerading’ as anything, they are feminists and have always been. They’re also mostly women, which means these specific women are being held accountable for their own behavior. To claim otherwise is to infantilize these women and take their agency away from them.

Lemmy and its ‘77% male userbase’ can hardly be blamed for the real and enduring shortcomings in the feminist movement itself. It’s not a problem that should simply be ignored or handwaved away if feminists want to get rid of the stigma their movement carries.

‘Trans-exclusionary radical feminists’ are, as much as you hate them, ‘feminist’ by definition. They’ve been part of this movement since before the term was a thing, and continue to be part of it. Hell, the term itself wasn’t even meant to be derogatory when it was conceived.

Yeah, why do that when you can let women who hate men define feminism as ‘women who hate men’ lol

Like seriously, are we just gonna pretend that the feminist movement doesn’t have a ton of loud, hateful bigots who often take way too long to be kicked out? Hell, even TERFs still get to call themselves ‘feminists’ somehow.