Richard Dawkins recently received a lot of flack for discussing "a certain kind of feminist": those who don't respect women, but patronise them as victims.
The atheist community (and those who seek it harm) immediately pounced upon the tweet, one of many criticized comments Richard Dawkins has recently posted.
P.Z. Myers, an unfortunately prominent atheist blogger with something of a hate-crush on Richard Dawkins, wrote the following in his gallant defense of feminism:
"Who are these mysterious patronizing feminists? They don’t actually exist. You are echoing a strategy of denial: you approve of feminists, but not the ones who actually point out sexist problems in our culture, or fight against discrimination, or point out that they’ve been raped, or abused, or cheated in the workplace, or any of the other realities of a sexist culture."
I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that these "mysterious patronizing feminists" DO exist, and would direct you to the below post, in addition to the post's comments.
http://witchwind.wordpress.com/...
Here are just a few quotes from the page...
Intercourse/PIV is always rape, plain and simple.
...
(I)ntercourse is NEVER sex for women. Only men experience rape as sexual and define it as such. Sex for men is the unilateral penetration of their penis into a woman (or anything else replacing and symbolising the female orifice) whether she thinks she wants it or not – which is the definition of rape: that he will to do it anyway and that he uses her and treats her as a receptacle, in all circumstances – it makes no difference to him experiencing it as sexual.
...
[I]ntercourse is inherently harmful to women and intentionally so, because it causes pregnancy in women. The purpose of men enforcing intercourse regularly (as in, more than once a month) onto women is because it’s the surest way to cause pregnancy and force childbearing against our will, and thereby gain control over our reproductive powers.
...
The fact intercourse causes so many infections and tears and warts attests to the unnaturalness of intercourse, that it’s not meant to be.
...
There’s a reason men need to groom us into it, and why this grooming takes so long- because it’s so grossly violating and traumatising that we would otherwise never submit to intercourse. The only reason we may now not feel raped or have the impression we desired or initiated PIV, is because men broke down our barriers very skillfully and progressively from birth, breaking down our natural defences to pain and invasion, our confidence in our own perceptions and sensations of fear and disgust that tell us male sexual invasion is painful, harmful and traumatic.
Through an all-pervasive and powerful male propaganda, they stuff our minds from infancy with the idea that PIV is normal, desirable and erotic, before we can even conceive of it as something horrifying, and make sure we never see any alternative to their lie – or that if we do, we can no longer take in the information, are punished for thinking and saying otherwise. The fact we may not immediately feel raped doesn’t mean it’s not rape, objectively speaking.
...
Lastly, from a structural point of view, as a class oppressed by men, we are not in any position of freedom to negotiate what men do to us collectively and individually within the heterocage. Men, by whom we are possessed, colonised and held captive, are the sole agents and organisers of PIV. Men dominate us precisely so we can’t opt out of sexual abuse by them; intercourse is the very means through which men subordinate us, the very purpose of their domination, to control human reproduction.
I've cut out a significant amount of the article for space purposes. I would have cut more, but felt it necessary to quote the worst of it, and in this regard, MOST of what was written was 'the worst of it'.
The linked article is not a highly nuanced understanding of patriarchal discrimination. It is not a highly logical revelation of an unfortunate truth. It displays gross ignorance, in addition to a complete lack of understanding of both history and biology. The position held by this woman (in addition to that held by the few individuals she approves the comments of) is, in a word, insanity.
Feminism is important. It's one of the most important branches of all of humanism, as many of the most egregious injustices in this world are visited upon the female half of the species alone. It is PRECISELY BECAUSE of how important feminism is that it becomes utterly necessary to speak out against the kind of insanity espoused below, which at the very least threatens to co-opt the public perception of feminism (indeed, it has already succeeded in doing so to a great extent).
It is unconscionable to label as 'anti-women' all criticism of any belief system, no matter how insane, that declares itself 'feminist' . For the feminist movement to remain effective, and to avoid the risk of becoming internally and externally corrupted, extremists of this nature -must- be pointed out and denounced for what they truly are; not feminists, but misandrists.