Comrade Malkin, so glad to have you.

I've heard at length the separation period in feminism. I often think of a new movement as almost like a individual in and of itself, which is prone to have reactions and emotions. I think of the separation period as the reactionary period, the dawning of a new movement, a stage of enlightenment for many women. They reacted as any person would react. I liken it to finding out a loved one really doesn't have your true interests in mind, which I think was a feeling these women were truly feeling in their place in life.

The movement has grown and changed and continues to expand in many different ways.

I think focusing too much on ones frustrations with a movement can really do injustice for a movement that's given us women so much. Its so easy to focus on the negative sides of feminism, but we forget what we have in common, we forget whats is really at stake today.

For Example:
  • How many women and girls suffer from anorexia and bulimia because they don't fit into the mainstream media's beauty idea?
  • How many welfare mom's get stereotyped over and over again for being bad mothers when the fathers receive little if any repercussions?
  • Why do we still disallow gay marriage in most of the country?
  • Why is viagra covered under insurance, but birth control is not?
  • Why are women continually objectified in all forms of media? We've started to think little of it because now more and more men are being objectified as well, but just because the objectification is becoming more uniform doesn't mean its still not wrong


I am leaving out a lot of racial discrimination, but as a white women I am privileged and do not know the issues many black women must face.

Someone mentioned earlier that man are oppressed as well. I do not disagree one bit. I believe that being in the consumerist society is greatly oppressive to men, no doubt about it. I'm of the belief that capitalism is at the core of the issue, but the oppression of women developed as an expression of the oppression men felt in such a society. The oppression of women is an expression of hurt, of pain that men felt. Women in turn were devalued to be little more than possession. Today of course we've come long way. Women are valued more, but we're still socialized to think its ok to objectify women, to believe women are less than men. Continuing this can be damaging to men, and that's something we often don't address.