Also, by providing just-for-women courses in tech, for example, you're creating an inequality for men at the same time... you can't fight men-focusing with only focusing on women.
While it is disingenuous of critics to treat those as representative of feminism in general, it is equally disingenuous for feminists to act like they don't exist.
A prime example of the nutters below; If you are not familiar with Dworkin, she is famous for many stupid, stupid things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin#Intercourse
"In the book, she argues that all heterosexual sex in our patriarchal society is coercive and degrading to women, and sexual penetration may by its very nature doom women to inferiority and submission, and "may be immune to reform""
Turns out, ideologies are rather good at branding themselves to appeal to all kinds of people, and at first blush, most ideologies sound eminently reasonable. That in no way implies that the actions of adherents to such ideologies are the same, or that the overall structure of the ideology couldn't lead to disagreeable outcomes.
The whole declaring equality and rights for all is the easy bit; that's just the ultimate end. The means, the dirty work of "defining, establishing, and defending", is where everything can and does go to hell. Feminists are just as susceptible to this problem as everyone else, and when they get it especially wrong, they create the blowback you are seeing.
I've had conversations with people who also considered themselves marxists where our only point of agreement was that in "their" ideal society I'd probably be considered a criminal dissident, and would probably be involved in armed uprisings, and that they'd very much enjoy to see me locked up.
For a while I tried to fight the "wrong" usage of the term and related terms. Then I thought about picking other terms myself.
But eventually I realized that what worked best was simply to acknowledge the "wrong" usage, and distance myself in suitable way depending on what I write. E.g. by also using a more descriptive term, such as liberal socialist or left-communist, that most people either know or have to look up, that does not have the same immediate connotations.
Interestingly, I've basically never seen anyone refuse to accept feminists who think this way as feminists, except when it's inconvenient for some argument they're making about feminism being all sunshine and roses and equality. The net effect of this is that nominally reasonable feminists - like presumably yourself - are actually supporting these extremists by protecting them from criticism.
People who don't define it that way. Or people who (as in pretty much any controversity) feel compelled to see everyone who doesn't agree with them as an enemy to be taken down.
Well, if we're going to just redefine words we can say anything. I hate those ultra-vegetarians insisting that static typing is the only way to go.
In the face of people redefining words to mean whatever they want, all I can do is suggest that without a clear definition, communication becomes meaningless anyway because I will just redefine "feminist" to mean "a kind of blancmange popular in the former Yugoslavia", so in the absence of anything better I'll use a series of dictionaries as my first stop. In this instance, they're pretty clear on the definition.
Good luck with that... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription
The problem is real feminism got stained.
"Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women"
From her Wikipedia page:
In the book, she argues that all heterosexual sex in our patriarchal society is coercive and degrading to women, and sexual penetration may by its very nature doom women to inferiority and submission, and "may be immune to reform".[59]
Wikipedia citation for that is a b Dworkin. "Occupation/Collaboration". Intercourse. Retrieved February 14, 2013.
I'm afraid that isn't actually given.
That is your working definition, however, over the years there have been numerous "waves" of feminism and numerous often contradictory interpretations of what feminism and, even equality means.
Andrea Dworkin for example identified as a feminist, and is identified by some others as such, yet has written extensively about things that are far from simple equality. (Quite frankly, in some cases, anti male hate-speech)
Erin Pizzey, the founder of UK's first domestic violence shelter for women received bomb and death threats when she realised that equal protection from dv meant men should have shelters too. The self identified feminists who campaigned against her did not have the same definition of equality.
Even online dictionaries disagree with you on the meaning of feminism.
Google define feminism and you'll see that it says that it is the advocation of women's rights with respect to men.
Equality is in the definition, but what it leaves out is the acknoedgement that there are some conditions where women have significant advantage over men.
There are branches of (self proclaimed?) feminism that have different interpretations of that.
There are some branches that blame men for all the worlds woes.
Some that say a woman could never have as much privilege as a man.
The definition of feminism is so diluted as to be virtually meaningless without secondary descriptors.
What 'wave' or type of feminist? Radical? Radical trans exclusionary? Sex positive? Second wave? Third wave?
I'm sorry, I can't accept that "feminism means"
Why what about the campaign "feminism is simply the belief that women are people"?
Yet another definition.
Stienham through Paglia to Hanna Roisin (who recently declared men not equal but obsolete), feminism means a lot of things.
See her views on general relativity and fluid dynamics (both of which are apparently inherently sexist).
Source: here's[0] the best example I've seen, skip to minute two to see a man get physically prevented from entering a talk about some men's issues. You can also watch the actual event[1] and decide for yourself if it was or was not misogynist. You can also read about Warren Farrell, the speaker, and decide for yourself if he is for or against rape.
I am a feminist by your definition, but I am also concerned with, e.g., statistically more men seem to commit suicide and thought that talk was interesting, so those feminists in the video might say I was a rape apologist.
[1] See for instance Natalie Reed's blog post: http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/12/13/complicit... Bear in mind that Cathy Brennan publicly outs trans women, encourages others to harass them, contacts their workplaces in order to try and get fired and their doctors in order to get them denied treatment. Somehow this is less objectionable - and more feminist - than the people she's targetting complaining about it.
http://www.believermag.com/issues/200311/?read=article_tea
http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2013/05/28/it-w...
Yes, the range of people with radically divergent, often incompatible, and sometimes nearly diametrically opposed views fighting for control of the word "feminism" is pretty broad.
You see the same thing with, say, "socialism". Or "Christianity". Or, really, lots of other things.
"Feminism" is sometimes somewhat more problematic than many of the rest because, for a variety of reasons, there hasn't been as much development of secondary terminology that is less contentious which helps discuss and identify the various competing factions clearly, so, when we try to discuss them, we end up having to say things like "Feminists who believe x, y, and z" and then half or more the discussion gets sidetracked into an argument of whether or not belief x, y, or z is necessary to, compatible with, or opposed to "true feminism" and whether, therefore, it is correct to use "feminist" to describe people with that view (or, OTOH, whether it is redundant to qualify "feminist" with reference to those beliefs.)
And finally, this happens: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939