I don't know what you mean by "hardcore feminist." I am a feminist and I have argued about my beliefs before, but I don't see how stating an opinion is hard core, yet some people would call me hard core.
There actually are feminists who fight for the draft because if women are drafted into the army they get paid more and get better positions than they have now.
I stay out of certain male issues because I don't believe that I can understand how they feel, so I don't feel entitled to having an official opinion on it. Like circumcision. My brother is highly against it. He says to anyone who will listen that he feels like my mother mutilated his genitals and thinks that he doesn't desire to have sex because my mother destroyed his privates. (He's asexual.) My husband is on the opposite side of the argument. He loves being circumcised and thinks it keeps men from getting infections and actually makes sex more pleasure because there isn't a slab of skin in the way. I told my husband that I can not have an opinion on the issue and that he has to decide whether our sons someday get circumcised. Because I don't know what it feels like to have male genitalia, so I don't really feel like I should talk about circumcision as if I have any authority on the matter.
In the same way, my husband likes to stay out of the issues of abortion and birth control pills. He doesn't have a woman's body and will never know what it feels like to be pregnant. So he agrees with me and neither of us think it's right that the congress is filled with a bunch of old men trying to dictate these aspects of women's lives.
Some things about being a feminist I think would make things more fair for men as well. Like equal pay. If women were genuinely able to receive equal pay and equal job opportunities, it would get more and more difficult to justify things like alimony and child support. Because women would be able to equally provide for a child and for themselves as any man could provide for them, divorces, EVENTUALLY would stop ending with men having to pay so much money for women forever. It all happened in the first place because men were expected to be the providers, so they had to continue to provide even when the marriage was over.
And when it comes to dates, women will start paying more and more often. I wasn't treated like most women are treated. I was with an abusive man for years and was treated for many years as an ugly woman in society. Those of us who were treated this way are already used to the idea of paying for dates sometimes and not expecting men to hold doors open for us or go out of their way for us. And it's fine. It doesn't really bother me. I've been on first dates with guys that had no money and asked me to pay.
Also, my life experiences have made me a feminist in other ways. I grew-up around very religious Christians who would say all the time that a woman's place is in the kitchen. While I agree that most democrats and people outside of religion would not seriously say this to a woman, there are so many Christians in America who say things like this that it is a genuine problem. And the problem isn't with women being housewives. It's that people who say this will look you in the face and seriously say,"It's because women are emotional. They can't handle jobs. They aren't logical like men." So they literally believe that women can't have jobs because they are STUPID.
If I sat around all day and said things like,"LOL. Men aren't allowed to be stay at home Dads because they are violent neanderthals that need to go out into the world and fight for a living and they're too stupid to know how to take care of kids." That would make me an assh*le. But people say stupid sh-- like that all the time.
And because of people like this, I got myself into a five year relationship with a guy that would call me his b----, make me bark like a dog for his friends to prove he had complete control over me, brag to everyone he knew (in front of me) about how much power he had over me, and emotionally abuse me all the time. And the people around me approved of the relationship and told me all the time that the more submissive I was in a relationship, the better the relationship was. Until I started hating my vagina more and more and fantasizing constantly about becoming a man so that I could abuse women, too. It was really twisted.
But I met my husband, who is a feminist. I told him nothing about what happened to me, but he immediately could tell I was severely abused because of the weird things I would do (like getting down on my hands and knees with my face to the floor to apologize to him when I messed up, even over minor things like a misspoken word) and now we have a relationship based on equality. And it's really nice.
There's also a huge rape culture prevalent in our society against women. Like that guy in my apartment who was harassing me. I only told him a million times that I was married and showed him my ring and I was wearing baggy jeans and a loose shirt. My hair was a mess. I looked like sh--. (That guy must have been desperate.) But my neighbor still said that I was "asking for it." I guess because I was being polite and not cussing at him, I was asking to be sexually harassed.
It's because being raped is absolutely terrifying. And men don't understand the amount of terror women feel every day. All women get scared walking down the street by themselves. It's why I think we developed the group mentality, where we go everywhere, including the bathroom with other women and never by ourselves. Because we've learned that a woman standing alone is a target.
And it's not because we think men are gross or that all the men who do this are unattractive. It's because they look at us like we aren't human anymore. Like we're a piece of meat that they are going to devour. Like they could rip apart our insides for their own pleasure and leave us for dead as long as they got what they wanted from us. Like we aren't humans anymore. We are objects to them.
It's like if you were to watch a video of a guy getting kicked in the balls repeatedly and a woman were to rub your leg and whisper in your ear,"I want to do that to you. I want to hear you scream." No matter how attractive they are, that's not going to turn you on unless you're a masochist.
And then what if she were to do it and then while you were screaming in pain, people said to you,"You were asking for it though" because your pants were too tight and outlined the shape of your balls too much or something. They were just asking to get kicked. Or something stupid like that.
And in the same way, that one guy at my apartment was acting like he wanted to rape me and getting aroused as he asked me how scared I was because he WANTED to torture me.
And I just hear men saying this crap all the time. Like I have a friend who met this guy online in person and it was the worst case scenario possible. She met him and he raped her. And he said,"Most girls just want to be raped, so it's not really rape."
WTF? Raped means someone didn't want it!
It's just a blatant disrespect for women. That men should be able to say whatever they want to us and DO whatever they want to us and we should always thank them for it. That we owe them that and that they don't give a sh-- about our feelings at all.
What most men don't get is that you don't have to feel threatened by any of the things I am saying as long as you AREN'T doing those things. If you aren't going around raping girls or high-fiving your friends as they tell you detailed stories of girls they raped or shouting at girls walking down the street, then none of these things apply to you. As long as you aren't demanding sex on a first date because a girl "owes" you and it doesn't matter how she actually feels, then none of this applies to you.
That was the point of the "yesallwomen" hashtag. "Notallmen" (the other hashtag) are bad, but ALL women have had to deal with men who have no respect for them whatsoever. And all we want is for those men to be confronted by the law and other men and told,"Stop it. You're acting like an evil idiot." That's it, so that less women will be raped.
Men get so defensive about this because so many of them have just approached an attractive girl and had the girl go,"Ew, no." To them and think that the women getting angry at the hollars that happen in the streets are those kind of women. You think "Oh, all they are getting is compliments, I wish girls would compliment me. They always get angry when I compliment them."
But if men had more respect for women then this would actually happen much less. Women develop these sour attitudes because they learn that many men want to rape them, so they can't politely decline any man, just in caste. If you don't say,"F--- you! Get the hell away from me, you freak!" Like I didn't say to that guy in my apartment, then people will accuse you of leading the guy on when he's thinking about raping you, like they accused me. So we learn to be meaner and meaner and meaner to men who don't even mean anything by what they are saying because so many other men have pretended they just wanted to say hi or just compliment us when they really wanted to rape us or insult us. So we have to be mean just in case they want to hurt us. I can't even say "hello" to any guy in my apartment building anymore. My husband forbids me from even leaving the front door of the apartment unchaperoned. If it wasn't really a problem in our society, then these things wouldn't be happening.
What a lot of men also don't get is that feminists are angry at SOCIETY, not at men. And this means I am angry at female misogynists, too. Like I said before, I heard all the time that I needed to stay in the kitchen and be submissive by Christians. Some men said those things to me as well, but by and large, most of the people who lectured me about it were FELLOW WOMEN. When I was in college still (a Christian college), the teacher said,"Does everyone here agree that women are emotional and men are logical?" (If women are illogical, then that makes them STUPID.) Every woman in the room except me agreed that women were completely illogical. And I was thinking,"Maybe all the rest of you women are stupid and don't want to try to use your brains and want to be emotional all the time, but I'm a very logical woman." A lot of the sexist people we argue with are fellow women.
So it's not a man-hating thing. I get furious at my female friends all the time for being sexist. There's this thing in society where if a man speaks, most people listen to them closer than when a woman speaks. When I chose my friends, I get rid of all the women who do this. I don't care if the men do this as much because they have more in common with my husband and other men usually than me, so I understand why they naturally gravitate to my husband more than me. A lot of women I make friends with wind up meeting my husband eventually and I pay attention to them. They have more in common with me than with my husband, so if they address him more and listen to him more, then I know they aren't my real friend. They care what a man has to say more than what a woman has to say, so I can't be their friend anymore.
So no, it's not about man-hating or saying all men are the same. My husband is the most wonderful man in the world. I make jokes to him all the time (although I'm halfway serious) about how he should teach courses to people on how to be a proper man and human being because he's so superior to everyone else. He is very diplomatic, much more so than I am. He's strong, but also sensitive. He has a big smile and a great sense of humor. So when I talk about these problems in society, I am never, ever, ever talking about him or lumping all men into a category.
