I approach this topic from the point of view of someone whose primary goal is unity about fairmindedness. My own feminism started when I was a teenager. It was popular then. We all did it. For me it was always about fairness. At the core of most of what I consider important is the concept of fairness.

The boys, and later the men, weren’t so much with us.I remember having a discussion with a man in an English Lit class. He was an older student. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I know it was about women not having the same (something) as men. My response to him was, ‘I know you don’t mean that. You’re too smart to actually think that.’ He went quiet. I thought I was very clever, but I realize now that wasn’t the whole battle. Or perhaps ‘battle’ is exactly the wrong word.

Time passed and things got a bit better. We went through the time when women a few years younger than I was seemed to think it was no longer hip to be a feminist. Like maybe we’d achieved what we were trying to so we could shut up about it.

I remember having a huge argument with two male friends about whether women should change their names when they got married. I proclaimed that I never would. What should happen, but a few years later, one of them married a woman who didn’t change her last name. He laughed when I reminded him of the conversation. And then after I graduated from college, the next generation of women started to love the idea of changing their names to their husbands’. It was romantic. I was shocked. Wasn’t this a sign that all our progress had been lost?

This is the way history develops. This is the way opinions develop. We go back and forth. The tide of public opinion shifts like a pendulum until we find a place somewhere in the middle. Hegel would suggest that both the opinion and its opposite are synthesized into the ultimate conclusion, that it’s through a dialectical process of logically examining and reacting to both that we come to a final conclusion that’s greater than the sum of the two.

According to Wikipedia, “Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women.” (You can read the entire article at the link.)

The internet is changing the way we’re having this discussion. It’s being had by more people now. Not just students and activists, but anyone with an opinion. It’s being had outside the context of education and active, educated involvement. In other words, people who know quite a bit about it and people who know very little about it. It’s anti-intellectualism at its finest.

What the internet is doing to discussions of feminism is the same thing it does to a lot of other discussions. It polarizes. It sets faceless, unaccountable people against thoughtful ones on a grand scale. It creates an instant mob mentality. This is not the way to have such a serious discussion, but have it here we will because it’s what we’re becoming — the people of the screens.

I’m going to talk a little about this for a few days. I’ll divide it into sections to prevent tldr.

N.B.: These are just my own, evolving thoughts on this subject. I claim no superiority on the topic. I’m interested in approaching it thoughtfully, because what I see happening in the internet trenches worries me.

This is what happens when you Google cute. (If you see dinner here, you’re indeed a savage.)

I’ve been attempting to correspond with a stranger about something I’m doing in this novel I’m working on. It appears that the stranger would like to correspond with me as well, but for some reason, my email doesn’t seem to be reaching him. Is it because I’m writing in English? What are the rules? I don’t want him to feel harrassed. But what if he just isn’t getting my messages. Ugh. Technology leaves much to chance.

I only have time to show you the cutest of the cute.

We are in full on RIGHTEOUS ATTACK MODE. And it’s helping the disempowered battle the true oppressors. Protestors have been occupying Wall Street and High Street, marching on governments, expressing their outrage. We’ve prevented bad legislation from passing. We’re starting to be heard on issues all around the world. Hallelujah. FREEDOM.

Of course, this doesn’t happen without consequences. The fury of our rage is kicking up little dust devils left and right.

First, because women are the largest mass of voters,  lots of women’s issues seem to be getting stomped on by various governments, notably the American one. With Republican committees trying to make decisions about access to birth control without any women being present and so on. It just occurred to me that they’re trying to distract us. Is this misogyny? Or just a tactic to put us all up in arms so that they can do other things without us noticing?

The second dust devil of this situation comes from our own side. People are attacking everything. A male friend writes a blog post that says rape is an event in a story, not a non-event, not necessarily something that has no merit. His commenters tell him he’s sick, that he loves rape, that he finds it gratifying. Excuse me. What?

Being shouted at for attempting to have a serious discussion about a ‘forbidden’ topic seems to be the way of the day.

The internet is now full of peer pressure. It’s like being in high school. If you’re a feminist, you have to be against a lot of stuff. This is bad for women, that’s bad for men. It’s not just ‘if you’re my friend’ or ‘if you’re cool,’ it’s if you’re not a ‘racist’ or ‘if you don’t hate women.’ These are the strong-arm tactics formerly used only by bullies, but now the voiceless have intergrated these tactics and are using them to fight marginalization. The trouble is that there are places where lines blur. And we can’t even all agree where the lines are. It’s almost impossible to have a discussion about any of these topics where someone doesn’t become indignant or get hurt feelings. I mean, we’re talking about our identities here. It’s very strong stuff.

A lot of people don’t appear to be adult enough to discuss these matters without letting their emotions get the best of them. And that’s where things go awry.

Suddenly a lot of people have the equivalent of media training. They’re learning how to get their questions heard and how to diffuse the perceived other side’s points. And this is great for fighting the big guys. Or getting a message into the media. But it’s terrible for face to face discussions that will have any meaning. It just shuts the talk down.

The trouble is, everyone wants to WIN these discussions. But there isn’t a win in the usual sense. The actually win would come from people taking away an understanding or some new viewpoint. Change is hard enough when ou try to impose it on yourself. But when you try to impose it on others, there are repercussions. Ripples.

If you exclude the web trolls who leave hate-filled comments under YouTube videos, for the most part, in my opinion, though we may never reach exact agreement, we can increase understanding through meaningful discussion. But not with rabid yelling or with some people trying to shush others. There has to be listening. It’s not about winning an argument. It’s about making the world more accepting. And that, for the most part, is not done with a baseball bat of rage, but a calm, reasoned presentation of facts and (GASP, yes) thoughts and feelings.

There’s no simple solution to this. Some people will only respond to harsh tactics. Some people will crumble under harsh tactics, shut down. I believe, and yes, call me naive with a capital N, that we’re mostly all in this together. If we treat each other like family, not terrorists, we’ll make better progress. If you’re offended by something, you can just mention it. Usually a mention of your discomfort will get a person to rethink. Even if initially they seem to blow it off. You’ve planted a seed. To me, an explosive attack on something that is well-intended or relatively innocuous just sends the perpertrator into hiding. Behavior changes with attitudes.  The surprise ‘racist’ comments sometimes brought out in private emails? I hypothesize that these people have been prevented from discussing their racial fears and stereotypes openly. And I’m not trying to say that people should be allowed to put others down on the basis of their ethnicity or gender. I’m trying to say that ‘shaming’ doesn’t change anything in the unenlightened. At best, it will push it down where it will appear later like a curve-ball from outer space.

Awareness is a more powerful ally than shame. It’s not two faced. It’s transparent. We should be shooting for transparency, in all things of this sort. Governments, race relations, gender relations. It’s where the lines of communication get crossed that we get into trouble.