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Bear with me, I am here to understand and not change or judge feminism. (Also excuse punctuation, still working on that).

Over the last 6 years I have been studying various cultures, ideology and concepts written in symbolic fashion and parables. In most ways I am still a student of this path. It is not hard for me to figure out certain broad aspect of the so called "mysteries" of our world. Though only now do I realize that all of these so called 'secrets' have been designed by men (and women who contributed to these already structured matters). By builders, by hunters and those who dared to push themselves to make "useless" tools and think maybe too much about the differences in this world. It is no wonder why war still exists, for the basic animal behavior of man is still untamed in most males. We as males find differences and like to compare them, to see which one is "better" or "worse". I can say that man loves to strive for the understanding of finding the "best" in whatever the main interest of that man may be. This striving for it causes man to also judge itself and others around them. We see the color of another and want to know, how is this individual such way and what indeed is the "best" color? Though we do not stop there, because we will compare and compare until it becomes a moral issue. Men who still possess the lower understanding (the animal consciousness one can say) will strive until they find out, that they have destroyed what they were looking for, including themselves.

About 3 years ago I stumbled upon the idea and concept of "feminism" and I have to say I still today do not understand it at all. It seem unstructured, random and even chaotic. Anytime I try to get an answer what exactly it is, it is broad, unknown and not clarified in the way a male (such as myself) would like to hear. There is no "leader" and no grade or structure of showing who knows "more" or "less". It seems that in this current "new" aspect of feminism that it is primarily focusing on 'equality' men are encouraged to join. But in the males mind, if it is about equality, why is it called "feminism" which is geared towards women? If it is about equality why is it about strengthening women and not men as well? If it is about equality why is there no "equality" group for the equal amount of men and women who can both say just as much and 'discuss' what should be 'right' and 'wrong' for everyone?

I have come to this conclusion.

Feminism stands for more than one thing and thus cannot be defined. It stands for the collective (even if not initially intended) collective thought that women may or may not share amongst each other. This is one thing I have noticed, that women are far more knowledge than most men assume, since women will most of the time will see the entire picture, where the male will find one small difference and loathe over it trying to prove it is "the best" solution. It is as if a woman find a garden and marvels over the differences and realizes, it is all part of each other and are equal. Where the male may take a liking to the flowers but wonder in its mind "which one is more productive? which one is more poisoning? which one thing is the best and the most admirable thing in the garden? How can I know which thing produces the most amount of flowers and why?"
It makes sense why NO man should ever intrude the collective spirit of women trying to see and understand the bigger picture. I have realized, there needs to be no structure, for structure defines it making it not ONE. That there needs to be no full purpose, for the purpose is all of it. There does not need to be a leader, for all are leaders and are equals amongst each other.
That truly is equality in its truest form.
There are some flaws that swim around in this collective bubble of feminism, but that is what gives it its charm. Contradictions allow the perception of everything. I feel a women thinks to herself, why separate something that is a part of it?
Man-hating is not "right" but it is not "wrong" either. It is not "hate" nor is it "love". Etc.

And as far as the name goes for the cause, 'feminism', it is truly correct, for it is an equal, unbiased, and true way for all women to help find the solution for anything and everything that concern them. This includes trying to solve the ENTIRE solution for equal rights of all forms of race, sex, cultural and religious perceptions.
Technically there is no need for male intervention or presence (though again, I feel that the "laws" of feminism will allow anyone in even if it causes some disturbances) in feminism, because the entire concept will push away (yet hold dear to it) those things that can and do cause harm to the entire existence of human life. For everything has a right to exist, wether it is 'right' (caring) or 'wrong' (hate) is not the question, it is how much more exists compared to the other which brings forth the most amount of love.

Maybe man needs to balance the amount of striving for the differences of life and look at the collective pictures these thoughtful and smart women paint for us. And not try to 'explain' what colors to use, how to use color and what designs to draw but to realize its purpose.


Is this close to what feminism means to you? Or what am I missing? What as a male, who thinks and acts a certain way naturally, do I need to do, to understand this to me chaotic and bizarre concept? And what do you think should be the male role in feminism who does not understand this at all?

Firstly, as I understand it, most people will agree that feminism is not the concept that women are better, but simply that women are autonomous people and have the same rights as any other person. That is it. That is literally it. It gets too complicated if you think about it too much.
Some people in the early stages of feminism and women's suffrage disagreed with feminism and were arguing instead that women and men had different but equally important spheres( "separate but equal" one might say) and that women were angels of the hearth and that involving them in politics and voting would tarnish their roles as the moral center of the family. Let the men handle the dirty world, the women handle the home, and if they get beaten by their husbands well lets just not talk about that. If they pray hard enough they can inspire their husbands to quit drinking. But it wouldn't occur to sweet angels to hit their husbands, and if any man allows that to happen he is less than a Real Man. Other people argued that it is because of womens' point of view and moral goodness that they should be allowed to vote, they could make us better as a nation.( And finally rid the country of demon rum!) But women aren't angels, they're people. They're just as stupid and corruptable as men and so if men were allowed to run the country so should women. Not because their perspective provides a gentling creative and nurturing aspect to proceedings. It might do, sometimes, but that is irrelevant. The notion that there is an innate "maleness" and "femaleness" is only partially biological and I believe mostly socially conditioned. How do we know that women did not ever make tools or hunt? Were there no women with analytical brains or men with creative scatterbrains? Recently I read that women were most likely the ones that painted the cave paintings, due to the size of the handprints. Suddenly the instinct in me to analyze this comes up. My impulse is to joke,"Oh so while the men were away the gals did arts and crafts, that's nice". While suddenly I remembered earlier anthropological analysis I'd read of cave painting was saying something like "These abstract representation of inner thoughts are a huge step in the evolution of human psychology, they were probably done by men, look at the subject matter, mostly bison, they were probably documenting hunts or doing some kind of votive offering in the hopes of generating more food, this was the beginnings of early animistic religion, the artists were probably the spiritual leaders of the community and were revered". I wondered why even I look at things differently when I know men or women do them. I wondered whether this bias would affect the anthropologists who were studying this too. I don't know that much about anthropology though, but that doesn't stop most people from making broad generalizations about male-female relations based on stereotypes about "caveman days" gleaned off cartoons. So since we're speaking kind of stream-of-consciousness and off-the-cuff, yeah I make generalizations. Take it with a grain of salt. While we're on the subject of anthropology, I believe(though I may be wrong) it is generally thought to be the prehistoric women who gathered plants and eventually started an ancient feminine mystery of herbology passed on orally from midwife to midwife. So those women I think would be MOSTLY if not EXCLUSIVELY interested in what each plant can do, not just how they might fit into a flower arrangement. Deprived of the opportunity to read and write, they had to memorize literally everything and their brains were a datamap of connections unfathomable to our modern abilities. Men later felt threatened by their secret inscrutable knowledge, (mainly of abortofacients) and called them witches and burned them to prevent the spreading of women's autonomy over their own reproductive systems, and wrote their stories for them and cast them as inscrutable mystic gnomic wisened hags who speak in riddles, instead of, you know, as medical practitioners? Scientists? Sure they never wrote anything down, but neither did Socrates.

I think. I think differently than you, but I'm not sure how much of that is due to gender and my menses and Bitches Be Trippin and how much of that is just People Be Different Yo. I think we have to get to the point where all are completely equal before we can step back and see whether gender matters. The more I read about feminism, the more I think that the eventual goal should be to almost entirely do away with notions of what is "femininity" and "masculinity" which hurts women the most but hurts men too. The reason it is called "feminism" not something else is because it is the "feminine aspects" that are being degraded and devalued, in men and women. Men are so afraid of being compared to women. They have trapped themselves in a glass cage of their own making, their masculinity is so fragile. There are some cultures where this is so extreme that there is no word for vagina, it's so taboo to speak of. You are literally cursed if you touch women's underwear. But in America we're relatively progressive, I mean, a man can wear his hair in a bun --- if he calls it a "man bun". He can wear eyeliner if it's "guyliner"( and if he's Robert Smith ). But he will get some flack for it anyway. There's no womanbun, why is there a manbun? (WHY???)Do you know what I think is chaotic and bizarre? Patriarchal culture. The rules seem to shift from generation to generation. From person to person. It can be said of a lot of things, really.

Elizabeth wrote: "Firstly, as I understand it, most people will agree that feminism is not the concept that women are better, but simply that women are autonomous people and have the same rights as any other person...."

I appreciate your time for commenting on my writing.
And I do need to point out, yes we do think different. There is no way on earth that anyone thinks exactly the same as another person. It is merely one person being acceptant to themselves about a certain idea or concept.

Generalization. That is my entire statement in the above text. It is exactly how many if not most woman start their views, that is with a general explanation. My writing is not a generalization but a direct and separate view. My own.
I would like to talk about the manbun thing first. Why is a woman called a woman and not a man? There would be two man which again one could just say Human for both, right? Though as you might guess, this does not fit well with, at least to my male mind, because obviously there are physical differences. Why should there not be a different word for a difference? It seems completely illogical to call something same when it obviously is not. What is the same, is the idea that they are the same, but they aren't manifested the same.

Let me throw this out there;
This is what I have realized, women generalize first and then after confronted think about the singular differences. Where a male separates first and then after confronted thinks about the general.

And yes, obviously everyone is brought up differently and thus everyone will have a different view of things, but they all have the same rights. And yes, woman are human beings they can lie, kill and do horrible things just as any man.

The picture of the garden is not meant to be generalized as a real thing but as a separate almost view of a parable.
Oh and I do truly know that women are the offspring of all knowledge, yet without the male it wouldn't be as productive. And yes men are scared just as women are scared.
Men don't want to be generalized and like to be different.
Women don't want to be separated and like to be similar.
Does this again mean that women don't want to be different and men not similar. No, because both are equal but prioritize differently.
Women are strong but in the mind. Men are strong but in the physical. BY NATURE. Though, does this mean that a man cannot have a strong mind and women cannot be physically stronger than a male? NO! Both CAN be achieved, though what is fundamentally structured in the physical nature of things, one thing is "stronger" than another.

To get back to why witches were killed for being geniuses of their time. Having Power over the mind like that is simply frightening to a natural physical perceiver. It may seem supernatural or even demonic. Today, the women has impregnated the minds of men and have help them raise their general awareness.

To your stone age paintings, nobody is "generalizing" the idea that women stayed home and painted while not helping with the gathering of food (hunting or herb collecting) for I am pretty sure women were willing to do the "dirty" work because it had to get done. But, I cannot see a primitive man painting walls and it is idiotic of the assumption just because it was certain animals that it must have been a male painting. Times were different. Though what is not different is how men and women help each other raise their consciousness.

Another thing I have noticed (which also appears in your own writings) is that physical differences are not "important" or as important as the non-physical. This again, is generalization. Since, looking at the things outside of just the physical is seeing them as a joint and collective concept.

To me why feminism is chaotic and messy is because, it is generalized to be everything. Anyone can claim to be a feminist and yet turn out to be the worst person alive, since it is, so very broad. There is not "book" that lays down the rights, laws and moral code of feminism. To a male, that means it could and is anything and nothing specific at all. No structure. No way of knowing what is "right" and "wrong" except by popularity.

And I agree patriarchal culture is Bizarre and chaotic. Feminism is not a culture (I don't understand this comparison, though probably another generalization ;) ) it is simply a way of thinking. Non-Physical.

Album wrote: "Elizabeth wrote: "Firstly, as I understand it, most people will agree that feminism is not the concept that women are better, but simply that women are autonomous people and have the same rights as..."

I don't know if I understand what you mean by "that is exactly how many if not most women start their views, that is with a general explanation". I guess you could say that? You could say that of most men, too. You're doing it as well. I don't get why you're pointing this out as an especially female thing. When writing an essay, one starts with the thesis and then expands on that in specifics, then confirms the thesis with the closing statement. We were both trained to do that in school, so your statement and mine kind of roughly take that form. Obviously, I wasn't going for a very structured and logical form that would get a passing grade, or I woukd have done more research and cited sources, I was just taking your lead which seemed to more off-the-top-of-the-head to me) And can I be honest, I don't quite understand everything you're saying. It's a bit foggy to me. "This is what I have realized, women generalize first and then after confronted think about the singular differences. Where a male separates first and then after confronted thinks about the general. " what. What are you claiming here? I don't get it. It's a very broad statement and I think I need an example to understand it. ( this is not because of my female brain, rather the obtuseness of your words. You could be a modern poet. <--that last bit was a joke. I do make some jokes sometimes I don't know why I felt like I needed to point this out. END BRACKET).

On the manbuns and the question of language: why woman and man? I don't know, I would ask the Anglo-Saxons. I say this seriously and also facetiously. Because after missing the point about flower gardens now I have this anxiety I'm missing all the jokes and rhetorical points and metaphors again. I should warn you, I have been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome so for much of my life I second-guess my ability to ascertain whether people are speaking literally or not. Then recently I learned that Aspergers was taken out of the latest DSM and this means I'm just "somewhere on the spectrum". I'm going through an identity crisis. I don't know if being a diagnosable condition is really important to me anymore. I miss the days I never knew, the days in P.G. Wodehouse books for instance when people were just "eccentric" and that was it. Maybe you are "eccentric" too and you get what I'm saying? I have a feeling you are not unfamiliar with psychologists and prescriptions? If not, ignore me. This is just to say, this is who I am, as an individual, in case you need to understand me as an individual as we are all individuals. I have long rambling conversations at times. This is kind of my thing. Disregard this portion.

I feel like women impregating the minds of men is a very potent image, i like it, I just don't know what it means. It reminds me of Zeus. Very Classical.

You're right about stone age people I guess, I just got off topic there. People all probably did division of labour by whatever person was handy when stuff needed to get done. Perhaps it was the advent of agriculture that started the gender roles we retain to some degree today. I don't know. I need to read some more books on that.

So what you're saying overall is, you're trying to grasp feminism and its purpose, but it's difficult because as you see it there is no organization. It doesn't act like a religion or a country or somethibg like that. There is no dogma to follow, no Pope of feminism. No One True Feminist Club with a denocratically elected President of Feminism. There is no vetting process to determine who gets in the "club". All sorts of people call themselves feminists and confuse the issue. It's confusing but this is surely not the only movement which has a history of dissent and evolution. The civil rights movement and the gay rights movements are complicated and and have as much of a spectrum of personalities and ideas as feminism. There is not one book but there are many popular books you could look to for clarification on the subject, if you really want to know about the history of the waves and whatnot. And how they intersect with those other civil rights movements as well.

In any group, you are going to get a certain percentage of assholes, the larger the group, the larger the number of assholes is. The majority of that group is still just relatively sane moderate human beings. This is not just a characteristic of feminism.

Men are also feminists and always have been, for they have mothers but not just that, they have empathy for fellow human beings. White people also marched for Selma and Black Lives Matter. I don't understand what your original question is.

Shortly: it's not about term, but about intentions.

I personally find very curious the fact that feminism provokes so many discussions about itself, about its definition, borders, its right to even exist... instead of real actions. On every level. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing strictly against.