From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   One major tenet of feminism is that the Western cultural and literary legacy   
   is patriarchal and racist.    
      
   That some influences in a legacy of a culture were patriarchal and racist does   
   not begin to damn the whole culture. By that standard American, German and   
   Spanish people are pricks because there have been slave trade, Nazism and   
   colonialism.   
      
   There are influences transformative, and there are influences destructive.   
   Some movements seeking change are rightful and some aren’t. And so far, for   
   the most part feminism has been a destructive influence. I haven’t seen   
   anything from it at nearly    
   the level of Sistine Chapel or Othello. Probably the only piece of art worthy   
   of the name that has had feminist themes has been the movie The Bratz. In it,   
   girls from unusual backgrounds, who would normally be getting picked on, found   
   a way to be cool.    
   That is a rightful and noble message, and I hope to see more work along the   
   same line.   
      
   I therefore believe that feminism and the art world should work together. More   
   precisely, I would like to see more good art with correct feminist message.   
   More work should be produced advocating for better relationships between men   
   and women. And more of    
   everything, including the arts, but also including real-world political   
   changes, should be done to affirm the woman’s right to a safe life inside   
   the home and a fulfilling life outside the home.   
      
   For as long as feminism insists on attacking beauty, kindness and love, that   
   will alienate the artistic and intellectual types. It will make enemies of two   
   of feminism’s greatest allies – the artist and the intellectual. The   
   people who support women†  
   ™s rights because they do not like seeing people being mistreated will be   
   alienated from ideologies that teach women themselves to mistreat people. When   
   people accuse someone like me of being a misogynist or a sexist, racists and   
   misogynists laugh. I am    
   someone who detested violence against women since I was 3, and I have done   
   things to fight the problem, which people who accuse me of such things have   
   not.   
      
   With Nazism, Islamism and any number of other things, we see people trying to   
   bring about a state of affairs that is vastly inferior to the status quo. Both   
   the people who advocate rebellion for the sake of rebellion and the people who   
   think that    
   rebellion is evil are wrong. Sometimes it is rightful to support the status   
   quo; sometimes it is rightful to seek a change in the status quo. I do not see   
   why there be a correlation, positive or negative, between what one is as a   
   person and whether one    
   is a conformist or a rebel. Sometimes following the line is right; sometimes   
   it isn’t. Sometimes challenging the line is right; sometimes it isn’t. The   
   people who’ve lived through a successful revolution or a coup d’etat have   
   seen both the old    
   order and the new order, and they were rebels in one situation and conformists   
   in another. Throughout they retained the same character. They didn’t change.   
   The context they lived in had.   
      
   Which leads me to a related issue: The relationship between feminism and   
   family. For a long time feminism was anti-family and saw family-minded women   
   as “breeders.â€� For a long time I was anti-family as well, then I had one   
   of my own and realized how    
   foolish that stance was. What we see here is confusion between a value and the   
   misuses of the value. Wrong things done in the name of family discredits   
   family. The solution is not doing away with the family and child-rearing. The   
   solution is improving    
   the way in which family and child-rearing is done.   
      
   Feminism should therefore stop attacking love, beauty and family. It is to   
   direct people interested in such things into family situations and to be there   
   to assist them in whatever challenges they may face in that role. Women who   
   have children aren’t    
   breeders; they are mothers. Looking good is not selling out to men; it is   
   being one’s best. And being kind or helpful or altruistic is not being weak   
   or stupid or having a low self-esteem; it is one of the best traits a person   
   can have.   
      
   Is the Western cultural and literary legacy patriarchal or racists? It   
   includes many people who are neither, and some of these people have made a   
   strong stance against racism and patriarchalism. Some – such as Mark Twain,   
   John Stuart Mill, Charles    
   Dickens and Edna St.Vincent-Millay – did so while pushing the message of   
   fighting racism and patriarchalism in their literary work. A Buddhist on the   
   Internet once wrote that Western philosophy is contradictory. There is a very   
   good reason for that.    
   Western philosophy owes to many different and unrelated sources. It is not a   
   monolithic work; it is a result of many people’s efforts. And many of these   
   people would have beaten each other to a pulp.   
      
   So we have some using the presence of racism and misogynistic language in the   
   works of some Western writers to damn the entire Western literary legacy. That   
   is, once again, foolishness. These people had different message from one   
   another. They did not    
   collaborate with one another. They came from different places and went to   
   different places. The presence of such language in some Western works does not   
   damn the Western legacy. We will find bad boys everywhere, including in all   
   sorts of places where you    
   wouldn’t expect them to be.   
      
   Such as, for example, feminism.   
      
   If feminism is serious about reshaping the Western cultural legacy, it has a   
   tall task ahead of it. It is not at all easy to produce work comparable to   
   that of Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Bethoven, Anna Akhmatova or John Keats. I   
   want to see more good    
   feminist-themed artwork. That way feminism stands to be a transformative   
   influence instead of a destructive influence.   
      
   The result will be better culture and better feminism.   
      
   Now that is something worth striving for.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)