Today I copied and pasted a poem into my Livejournal from this blog and changed the text of the title to that of the original work, "Pojo". After I had posted it I discovered that the title was a link to this weblog. While I wasn't planning to openly advertise this place, I refuse to delete the offending link - it feels too much like hiding. Sometimes mistakes are meant to be made.
I am not one to buy much into classifications and titles, or the act of belonging to a particular group of people who support a specific cause. Debate kid, Anarchist, Republican, Satanist... It's too easy to associate so many connotations both negative and positively inaccurate when applying a label, and I believe that in associating under these words we assimilate aspects of philosophy that we never really believed in. Political parties are especially bad, even though no one really seems to really ever know what they stand for. I'm a firm believer in finding middle ground, in searching philosophies for the pieces that agree with you and building something out of that. It's as Walt Whitman says: "Re-examine all you have been told at school or at church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem."
That's as good a place to start as any. Today I'm going to look at one of the labels that I perceive myself as falling under, that of the feminist.
I don't necessarily know that I qualify to be classified as a feminist - as I am, of course, male - but I can tell you that I support most movements associated with feminism and share most of the same ideological concerns. Therefore, the assumption made by certain factions that males cannot be feminist would be the first thing that I dismiss, for simplicities sake if nothing else. The other thing is that apart from a few very specific ideas I take from feminism my philosophy equality in all categories. Still, seeing as females are still not always treated equal a stance that supports equality could be considered feminist. So, yes, call me a feminist as you will.
What that entails to me, in summary: I believe, first and foremost, in the protection of all rights granted to men and women alike, life, liberty, and the pursuit of whatever-the-hell-you-please. I believe that the founding fathers wrote all "men" are created equal because "persons" doesn't scan, and that no one should be discriminated against for any reason save their actions. As the defining quality of feminism, I believe that identities are constructed on the basis of gender and that those identities should be celebrated, not dismissed. Finally, I believe that phallic imagery is far too present in literature and that we need to get some critics who don't see penises in every paragraph.
My own identity I would not qualify as being based on gender. I do not do things because I am a guy, or because I am straight. I dislike many things that are often associated with men, such as sports, and I appreciate many things that do not involve violence, struggle and competition, or other traditional "male" categories. While I buy that men are more inclined towards those categories, I don't believe that they should belong specifically to men, and I believe that physical factors are only a small part of the established mindsets we divide ourselves along.
To sharpen the classification, we go to our lovely extension of the brain, Wikipedia. From there I can point you very easily towards the type of feminism I associate with the most: individual feminism, which seeks to celebrate or protect the individual woman. Most of it is pretty textbook what I am for, though some of it (say, legalizing prostitution) is more of a sidenote under other philosophies that I espouse (if it hurts no one's rights, it should not be illegal - at some point I will discuss this in a little more detail). Above all else I believe in the individual, that any established identity should be protected and not absorbed or repressed by categories and organizations. People are people. Let them be as they are.
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