Backstory: I was browsing
Anyway, in trying to work out what was going on, I came across a very interesting person called
Then I found this discussion entitled What is sexism? And I remembered exactly why I find so much of feminism so offputting. A few women, including the person who started the discussion, said that they didn't experience sexism in their own lives. And suddenly they're the enemy; the feminist home crowd aren't pleased to find women in good situations, they simply refuse to believe that it's possible to be female without being oppressed, and if you think your life is good, then you're either deceiving yourself or deliberately anti-feminist. So I joined in, just to see what would happen: I posted saying, yes, me too, I'm a woman and I think my life is pretty good.
Some people were polite to me, some people were rude to me. There were a couple of others taking the same view who got more stick about it than I did. That's just people, not feminists; some can handle polite disagreement and some are obnoxious (and there's also overspill from the original flamewar). But the basic message was the same: if you are female, you are ipso facto oppressed, and if you deny this you are anti-feminist. There's also quite a lot of feminist jargon and so on going on here; in a way that's to be expected given I gatecrashed what was basically a feminist discussion, but I get the impression it's being used deliberately to exlude those who, like me, are not on message.
Does anyone have any suggestions how I can dialogue with these people? I'm not prepared to give up holding my own opinions, but I'd really like to find some common ground if possible. I mean, I basically agree with the people in this discussion that oppression of women is a bad thing.