Thoughts on Feminism

Tonya Krouse's post on Feminism proved to be very useful to my understanding of what it means to be a feminist. The way I always tended to define feminism in my own life typically always took a negative connotation. Today, through the media, feminists are viewed as dark, masculine, angry figures that lurk the streets with black combat boots on. I suppose the way I always pictured a feminist was in this light, because I thought that feminists, being against the feminine nature of women to be nurturing and docile as ingrained by society, could not be pretty or try to be pretty, for the sake of ruining their message. Because of this, a feminist must be masculine, in order to create any sense of equality between men and women. I always had a problem with this though, because I wondered why women tried their very hardest to be a man? Why couldn't a woman just indulge in the fact that she was a woman, different yet special, and be content with this? I understood the fact that feminists try to gain equal rights to men, but in the process of doing so, why must they become man-like themselves? In my own personal definition of a feminist, I always found the feminist's masculine approach to be degrading to femininity, at the very same time that it was trying to emancipate females lesser position in society. However, after reading Tonya Krouse's post about the many different feminist approaches there are, I feel as though my initial definition of feminism was very close-minded and media-fed. Krouse stated that in l'ecriture feminist theory, feminist theorists feel as though " 'writing the body' empowers female subjects." Therefore, females are allowed to indulge in their feminine sexuality and still hold a feminist stance that seeks to empower women. Before I always thought that to be a feminist meant giving away one's feminine sexuality and identity as a woman, in favor of a mans. But because feminist theory and criticism maintains such a broad perspective in relation to all the different types of feminism, a very close-minded interpretation of a feminist as merely masculine and angry is completely false. Now I feel as though a feminist can be pretty and nice and indulge in her femininity, while still holding true to the feminist cause. Thanks for the post Tonya!