@Buttermilk,
Quote:Although it had to take a class for me to recognize my own male privilege I however, like a lot of men do see contemporary feminism as a threat.
It just shows how deeply embedded, and taken for granted, the notion of "male privilege" is in some men's psyches, that you didn't even recognize it in yourself until you took a women's studies course. That's not unlike why "consciousness raising" groups were helpful to women in the 1960's--it helped them recognize their lack of privilege relative to that of men, in its various manifestations politically/socially/economically in our society.
Why do you, " like a lot of men"... "see contemporary feminism as a threat"?
Why are the
ideas --of even someone like Catherine MacKinnon--who many other feminists do not agree with--threatening?
You sound somewhat like the whites in the 1950's and 1960's--who preferred to ignore the more moderate voice, and non-violent strategy of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and focused instead on the initially more alarming and radical rhetoric of Malcolm X, in order to claim that the entire black civil rights movement was a "dangerous threat".
Both of those men were challenging and indicting the white power structure--just as feminists challenge the male power structure--but they were extremely different in both their thinking, strategy, and pronouncements (particularly before Malcolm X substantially altered his own views)--yet they were constantly lumped together, at the time, as evidence of the threat posed by the black rights movement. Just as black rights leaders, both past and present, held/hold different views, so do feminists, both past and present, hold differing views. And the most radical among either group does not represent the entire movement.
The main feminist advocacy organization is N.O.W.. What on their Web site do you find "threatening"--and why?
http://now.org/
