@tehbumblebee:
Well said and +1...but I must ask in what way, after so eloquently stating part of its case, you're not a feminist?
I mean...I'm a feminist in the sense I support female empowerment, equality amongst the genders, and so on, but that doesn't mean I'm--to use a rather un-feminist term, I'm afraid, if only for expediency--a feminista, as it were, decrying all things male and masculine and burning in effigy just about every white male who ever lived before, oh, 1850 at the earliest, just about.
Shakespeare is often cited as an early "feminist" authors, as he has both strong female characters--Lady Macbeth IS the power behind the throne, and Regan, Kate, Emilia, Tamora and Cleopatra all follow suit as powerful, (mostly) three-dimensional characters--and very noble women who are both more dignified and more intelligent than their male counterparts and end up saving the day (I'd here cite Viola, Portia, and honestly, you can pretty much keep going through the Comedies that way, most of the Comedies have female protagonists like that.)
By that same token, Shakespeare by TODAY'S standards often does fall short of modern expectations for feminist characters--a look at the list above shows most of the "powerful" female characters to also be anti-heroes, antagonists, or something in between, and most of the women in the Comedies DO solve problems, yes, but it's also often the problems of men...so you can either take that as "women being empowered and solving problems men can't or don't" or "women are intelligent, sure, to solve OUR problems, the problems of MEN" (though I think this latter charge is really rather stretching it, and I'd cite Viola--maybe the greatest female character in the greatest of Shakespeare's Comedies--as a prime example, she solves EVERYONE'S problems, her own, Olivia's, Orsino's, everyone's, and she does it by owning both genders, she's a woman pretending to be a man, so for fans of the idea of gender being "performative" and gender identity not being fixed, Viola even today really does stand the test of time and serve as a great feminist character, in my opinion.)
I'd take issue with those who wish to retroactively burn in effigy an author like Shakespeare for not being feminist by today's standards when he WAS very progressive for his time socially (if not always politically) and I'd argue via Viola still is somewhat progressive.
When I think of a perfect representation of the sort of feminism I think is most productive of most admirable...I think of Virginia Woolf, who in her own writings acknowledges that, yes, Shakespeare was both progressive for his time and yet many of his creations and views are also products of his time, and to expect him to live up to a 20th century morality isn't a fair reading of the man. In addition, she certainly criticizes Milton's "Paradise Lost" on a feminist note, though here it's more an issue of quality and even for Milton's time rather a sexist take (and I think Woolf's perfectly right, I love Milton, but the man WAS a sexist, and you just have to face it) and she also does acknowledge he's writing in the 1660s and from a wholly-white, wholly-male, wholly-Christian background, so obviously some of that probably had some bearing on his views.
Further, I think of Woolf's own novels--"To the Lighthouse" is, I think, a great feminist novel, not by showing men as being evil or stupid or wicked, but rather as showing men as being different from women in some senses but the same in others, and realizing that it's the union of both sexes (hence the titular trip to the lighthouse, and I hope everyone can see the rather-obvious phallic symbolism of having a phallic object such as a lighthouse be bound by light to a classically-feminine symbol such as the water, those creating a union between the un-moving lighthouse and tumultuous waves two)--are great examples of feminism.
Finally, I think her approach towards writing the opposite gender--that men should try and not stereotype women as being overly-feminine and weak or that, conversely, women should compensate and write men as overly-masculine brutes, and that (much to Putin's chagrin) the answer IS moderation--is both a great testament to feminism's aim for moderation and equality as well as just good advice for writers on the whole.
For me, THAT is feminism.
THAT is what I support.
Characters like Viola, Portia, Irene Adler, Isabel Archer from Henry James' "The Portrait of a Lady," Virginia Woolf's female protagonists, some of Joyce Carol Oates' creations, Tess Durbeyfield/D'Urberville (ANGEL CLARE YOU REMAIN AN ASSHOLE HOW COULD YOU TREAT TESS THAT WAY?!) and so on...
THEY are characters I consider feminist and representative of feminism.
So if you're not a feminist...first I must ask how (you certainly sound like one) second I'd ask what you think of those characters and what they represent to you, if not feminism, and lastly, I'd ask what you do represent?
(Also--wow...another Jew...myself, SC, bo_sox, if I recall, you...we DO have a lot of Jews on this site! LOL) :)
@philcore:
Oh, AL, I read that as AI as in A.I., like artificial intelligence...lol...
Yes, I read and +1'd that response to Al's disgusting diatribe. :)
The 150 THings the World's Smartest People are Afraid Of
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