Feminism - definition

peaceful-forest · Jan 24, 2026

How would you define feminism? Do you think feminism is good or bad?

I think the definition of feminism has changed over time. At one point it meant that a woman could decide if she wanted to be a homemaker or go into the workforce. Now it means being sexually immoral and pro-choice things.

PloverWing · Jan 24, 2026

I'm aware that feminists have had a variety of emphases over the years. My own focus is on equal rights and responsibilities, regardless of a person's gender, in civil law, in the church, and in general society.

There are a few areas of life that are not gender-neutral, such as the physical experience of pregnancy and childbirth. Even there, I work towards societal structures that avoid penalizing women for these aspects of life.

I see feminism as a good thing. It's certainly essential to my own well-being.

RDKirk · Jan 24, 2026

There are different identified and defined feminist ideologies. You can start with two of them right off the bat:

Liberal Feminism

Radical Feminism

There is also Black Radical Feminism

The differences are not merely semantic or esoteric, but fundamentally different world views and secular eschatologies.

Maria Billingsley · Jan 24, 2026

peaceful-forest said:
How would you define feminism? Do you think feminism is good or bad?

I think the definition of feminism has changed over time. At one point it meant that a woman could decide if she wanted to be a homemaker or go into the workforce. Now it means being sexually immoral and pro-choice things.

Feminism is
Equal rights for women

-Equal pay
-Right to vote
- Education access
-Legal identity like being able to own property and keep wages.
-Equal credit , the ability to open an account, apply for credit without a male cosigner.
- Able to serve on a jury.
- No fault marriage where women were able to divorce their unfaithful abusive husband.
- Able to receive military status.
-Married women's property act.The ability to own property.
-The end of coveture, husbands " owning their wives".
-The end of husbands having sole authority to sending their wives to mental institutions.

Paidiske · Jan 25, 2026

I would define feminism as the belief in the fundamental equality of men and women, and the commitment to creating social realities which reflect that equality. By that definition, I think it's not just good, it's absolutely necessary.

Of course there are different strands of feminist thought and we don't all agree on all the details. I tend to focus on access to education, to employment, and to opportunities for involvement in society (including the church), as well as safe and non-abusive household and family structures.

RamiC · Jan 25, 2026

I have always defined feminism as not wanting anyone, anywhere, to be prevented from doing anything that she wants to do because she is a woman.

I am pro-diversity and suspicious of "equality", but if some women someplace want to do a possible but harmless thing, I am so into freedom I have to say "let them."

Within Christianity, it is about Jesus thinking a lot more of women than the world tends to.

peter2 · Jan 25, 2026

I would say that feminism means starting by coming to terms with the natural condition of women.
This is obviously true for women, but it seems to me that, based on this starting point, all humans, and therefore all men, can also be feminists.

Next,
we must recognize that, historically, men have had the advantage of organizing societies according to their own needs, since military conflicts have always placed them in positions of power. The most Western of human societies have thus been organized around the male function, with times of peace being used to organize work with the same mindset.
In short, for me, wars have long placed women in the background in terms of strategic importance.

So I would say that being a feminist means being a pacifist.
Nor is it a female prerogative.

Finally, on a very personal note, I find women who aspire to be the partner of only one man, for life, very admirable. It inspires deep respect.
Aspiring to this is still not a female prerogative.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

stevevw · Feb 3, 2026

I think feminism is basically an egalitarian movement thats designed to dismantle the patriarchy. It has two aspect. Philosophically egalitarianism is about equality. But I think the stated goal of feminism is to dismantle the patriarchy as well to achieve that equality.

Because feminism uses the lens of the oppressor and the oppressed class. If women are the oppressed class then they are percieved to be oppressed by men. And men are the patriarchy. Therefore the patriarchy must be dismantled as part of equality for women.

PloverWing · Feb 3, 2026

stevevw said:
I think feminism is basically an egalitarian movement thats designed to dismantle the patriarchy. It has two aspect. Philosophically egalitarianism is about equality. But I think the stated goal of feminism is to dismantle the patriarchy as well to achieve that equality.

Because feminism uses the lens of the oppressor and the oppressed class. If women are the oppressed class then they are percieved to be oppressed by men. And men are the patriarchy. Therefore the patriarchy must be dismantled as part of equality for women.

Dismantling the patriarchy does seem like a necessary step towards equality.

I'm going to clarify a fine point, though. You say "And men are the patriarchy." That's not strictly correct, as I use the terms. Men exercising power and control over women is the patriarchy. But there's no reason why any particular man, or even men as a group, should choose to be a part of that. Men can be egalitarian too.

stevevw · Feb 3, 2026

PloverWing said:
Dismantling the patriarchy does seem like a necessary step towards equality.

I'm going to clarify a fine point, though. You say "And men are the patriarchy." That's not strictly correct, as I use the terms. Men exercising power and control over women is the patriarchy. But there's no reason why any particular man, or even men as a group, should choose to be a part of that. Men can be egalitarian too.

Does this mean that a patriarchy can exist that is not 'exercising power and control over women' ?.

RDKirk · Feb 3, 2026

PloverWing said:
Dismantling the patriarchy does seem like a necessary step towards equality.

I'm going to clarify a fine point, though. You say "And men are the patriarchy." That's not strictly correct, as I use the terms. Men exercising power and control over women is the patriarchy. But there's no reason why any particular man, or even men as a group, should choose to be a part of that. Men can be egalitarian too.

stevevw is talking specifically about Radical Feminism ideology, which is a specific ideology of feminism. It's also the ideology that is being primarily taught in academia. How you use the terms is irrelevant. Stevevw described the way the term is being taught in colleges across the nation.

Radical Feminism is a variation of Critical Theory, postulating men as the inherent, eternal Oppressor class and woman as the inherent, eternal Oppressed class. An important point of the ideology, and the DNA it carries from Marxism (Critical Theory is based directly on Marxism), is that this is an eternal conflict, inherent in the male character. Thus the aim of Radical Feminism is not equality, but permanent suppression of males in society.

And you don't have to take my word for it. All you have to do is read the seminal books of Radical Feminism. (Well, I said "all you have to do," but to be frank, that's some turgid reading.)

RDKirk · Feb 3, 2026

stevevw said:
Does this mean that a patriarchy can exist that is not 'exercising power and control over women' ?.

My daughter speaks of the very obtainable state of "benign patriarchy." That's where the West has been headed for half a century, although the US had lagged somewhat behind some European nations.

But that progress has been retrograded by Critical Theory in Radical Feminism in much the same manner that racial reconciliation has been retrograded by Critical Race Theory. Both of them are based on achieving the impracticable end states of absolutely subjugating the Oppressor Class (somehow without the Oppressor class realizing it before it's too late).

PloverWing · Feb 3, 2026

stevevw said:
Does this mean that a patriarchy can exist that is not 'exercising power and control over women' ?.

Patriarchy without power and control seems like a contradiction in terms, but perhaps you can describe for me what you have in mind.

PloverWing · Feb 3, 2026

RDKirk said:
My daughter speaks of the very obtainable state of "benign patriarchy."

Can you describe for me what "benign patriarchy" means?

RDKirk · Feb 3, 2026

PloverWing said:
Patriarchy without power and control seems like a contradiction in terms, but perhaps you can describe for me what you have in mind.

PloverWing said:
Can you describe for me what "benign patriarchy" means?

Any kind of "-archy" is a structure of community power and control. Patriarchy or matriarchy, both require community power and control. I say "community" because neither "patriarchy" nor "matriarchy" functionally exists at the household level. At the household level, it would be merely a "house boss." A patriarchy or matriarchy is the structure of relationships across households, over generations, and the function of the community as a whole.

In the real world, however, matriarchy requires an environment of non-conflict and abundance; patriarchy works best in an environment of conflict and scarcity.

Slight side note, one of the problems with the black American community today is that there is neither patriarchy nor matriarchy. Very deliberately, an ideology of chaos ("Cain' nobody tell me what to do") is effectively destroying the black community, and I trace it to a permutation of Critical Race Theory that postulates any concept of social conformity in the black community is "respectability politics" or acceptance of the culture of the Oppressor and must be rejected.

Paidiske · Feb 3, 2026

stevevw said:
Does this mean that a patriarchy can exist that is not 'exercising power and control over women' ?.

No, it means that within a patriarchal society, it's too simplistic to say "men are the patriarchy."

Patriarchy operates mostly at a higher-than-individual level. It's about legal structures, institutional policies, social norms, cultural attitudes, stereotypes, and so on, and as @PloverWing points out, individual men can choose to align themselves and cooperate with those patriarchal ideological outworkings, or not.

RDKirk said:
How you use the terms is irrelevant. Stevevw described the way the term is being taught in colleges across the nation.

Well, this is problematic on two fronts.

Firstly, because this thread is entirely about inviting discussion on how we use the terms. And secondly, because @stevevw is not in America, and has not described the term anywhere near accurately to how it is used in his own social context. I am much closer to his social context than you are, and I find the description that feminism is about "absolutely subjugating the oppressor class" to bear no relation to feminism as it is either discussed or practiced here; so much so that that description reads to me more like a parody designed to discredit feminism as a serious school of thought, rather than an accurate or fair description.

RDKirk · Feb 3, 2026

Paidiske said:
Firstly, because this thread is entirely about inviting discussion on how we use the terms. And secondly, because @stevevw is not in America, and has not described the term anywhere near accurately to how it is used in his own social context. I am much closer to his social context than you are, and I find the description that feminism is about "absolutely subjugating the oppressor class" to bear no relation to feminism as it is either discussed or practiced here; so much so that that description reads to me more like a parody designed to discredit feminism as a serious school of thought, rather than an accurate or fair description.

Read the seminal works of Radical Feminism. Radical feminism is a distinct strand of second-wave feminism that locates women’s oppression in sex-based power relations rather than primarily in class, law, or culture. Its core claim is that patriarchy is a fundamental social system, prior to and embedded within capitalism, the state, and other institutions. It is not the same thing as liberal, Marxist, or postmodern feminism.

Try "The Dialectic of Sex" by Shulamith Firestone and "Radical Feminism" by Ti-Grace Atkinson.

Paidiske · Feb 3, 2026

RDKirk said:
Read the seminal works of Radical Feminism.

Bold of you to assume that I haven't. I've read widely from a range of feminist authors, radical and otherwise. I do not see them arguing for the subjugation of men, at all. Rather, I see an appreciation that patriarchy also harms men, by forcing them into rigid and restrictive roles, and that dismantling patriarchy will benefit men by allowing them the freedom of the full range of their humanity.

Arguing for the abolition of a system which makes social distinctions out of biological differences is not arguing for the subjugation of men.

stevevw · Feb 3, 2026

PloverWing said:
Patriarchy without power and control seems like a contradiction in terms, but perhaps you can describe for me what you have in mind.

So what about say a situation where men are the majority such as the building industry. That seems a male dominated patriarchy. Though women can become builders.

Its controlled by men and has been for 100s of years.

Paidiske · Feb 3, 2026

stevevw said:
So what about say a situation where men are the majority such as the building industry. That seems a male dominated patriarchy. Though women can become builders.

Its controlled by men and has been for 100s of years.

And there are barriers to women's participation. That's not an absence of "power and control over women."

Eg: see here: Victoria's Women in Construction Strategy

women do not get or keep the jobs. While the number of female students enrolled in construction and trade courses at registered training organisations (RTOs) is rising, there is a severe discrepancy between the number of female students and the number of women employed in construction for a sustained period
women are in less secure, low-paid positions. Women are more likely to be employed in ancillary roles. This contributes to the limitation of career progression for women in construction and affects the overall poor level of retention
women are excluded and made to feel unwelcome. Rigid work practices, a traditionally masculine or sexist culture, exclusion, gendered violence, inadequate work facilities and equipment, and informal recruitment processes have all contributed to the low numbers of women working in construction.

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Feminism - definition

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