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lrperry's picture

I don’t see how you could

I don’t see how you could possibly separate your definitions/ideas from politics! How could claiming the label of feminist not be political? I’m not saying that you’d have to run for office, but that part of being a feminist is engaging with the world around you… Not engaging in a superior way, not thinking “I must educate the ignorant”, but in the way where because you adhere to a “doctrine of choice” as you put it, you live your life in a certain fashion and interact with the other people around you as a feminist. Thoughtful and deliberate choices are a part of your "doctrine of choice" too, and those choices that you make in how to interact with your world (where to donate money, for example, taking it back to Woolf) are political choices.

The other thing I realized last night was that I don’t think all your definitions have to cancel each other out. My definition of feminism doesn’t fit into the sentence construction “Feminism is”. I think you can have different sentences floating around in your head, and you can be comfortable in your uncertainty. Because as soon as you say “Feminism is…” you start leaving people out. I know that a clear definition of feminism might be easier politically, but I just don’t think it works.

 

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