@fionasfavourites,

Fiona, I love the way you write. You could write a chapter about tying your shoes and I'd undoubtedly be engrossed throughout.

>I consider myself a feminist but on the basis that **different is not inferior, it is different.** 

**If that was the reality of what "feminism" meant, who wouldn't be a feminist?** 

Unfortunately, that's NOT what "feminism" means anymore. It has come to encompass "Radical Feminism," of which there are at least a half-dozen different schools of thought. And "Radical Feminism" includes "Post-Modernism" which includes "Intersectionality (with its endless "Identity Politics") and ... naked "Marxism."  

The closest thing to what you describe is **"Equity Feminism"** of which Christina Hoff-Sommers is a champion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Hoff_Sommers Personally, I would gladly call myself an Equity Feminist. The problem is that the other feminists vehemently denounce her as an "antifeminist." To be a "real feminist," you have to believe all the other crap as well.  

For example, try attending a "feminist rally" ... wearing a Pro-Life button. If you do, many feminists will automatically disqualify you (if not assault you) ... *"You're not a feminist!!!"* You see, if you believe that "men and women are equal," then you would automatically believe that a fetus is just a bunch of cells, similar to an unwanted wart or a tumor, that may be excised at will without moral consequence. And, if you don't believe that ... then, of course, you're lying about believing "men and women are equal" ... and therefore not be a "feminist." This is exactly the kind of advanced logic that only brainiacs who paid $65,00/yr. at an Ivy League to obtain a much-in-demand Masters in Gender Studies, are capable of.  

Aristotle would have been proud.

The theoretical **"Equality Between Men and Women" argument** has become but a bumper-sticker talking point. There is a whole political/cultural/economic ideology that must be adopted as well.   

When a word becomes bastardized to this extent ... **_it loses its original meaning._** "Feminism" has lost its ability to articulate what it once did: **A belief in the legal, cultural and social equality of men and women, despite their differences.**  In a word ... it got "hi-jacked."

>That said, the other thing that struck me reading that was two things. Firstly, **that truth is scarier than fiction.**

If you used that story as a plot for a novel, people would throw it in the garbage bin. Yes, fiction requires "suspension of belief" ... but the plot still has to *feel plausible* given the context. No one in their right mind would believe that such a plot was plausible. 

>Secondly: how, there are times that I dislike my own gender.

It's **NOT** your gender that's to blame. Indeed, much of the most vocal criticism of this lunacy is coming from women. The purveyors of this nonsense are **ideologues (who happen to be women).** But just as men with mustaches are not evil because Hitler and Stalin had mustaches, women are not evil because a few of the more ideologically obsessed have jumped off the deep end. And, know that there are plenty of men peddling this stuff too.

*Quill*