All of these sites were different in their approaches to feminism. Some of the sites were more extreme in their presentation, from activism to sordid (quasi-humorous?) machoism. What I concluded, after seeing how much discrepancy there is amongst these websites is that the public is genuinely confused about who a feminist is, and what feminism entails.
I was exposed to new concepts on the website (http://home.earthlink.net/~mawam) I could not believe the extreme natures and the degenerative views that some of these sites have about not just feminists, but females. The site about MAWAM introduced me to a side of feminism that I doubt I would have sought out or come across on my own. Although the site is portrayed as being humorous, and tongue in cheek, it is not a humorous site. Such a site could never be constructed about any other type of civil rights issue! The site ultimately treats women exactly the way that feminism intends to prevent. The site glorifies the Hate Mail, and again disregards the damaging nature of this type of ideology. I was also exposed to some enlightening new vocabulary: pussyfication, femibitches…
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A Male perspective is also unfairly depicted on this website. I think a majority of men would disagree with the tonality of the website. The website condemns men as much as it condemns women to the stereotypes both genders have fought to escape. It’s damaging to males to be stereotyped as well; for this site classifies males as a group who must unite to fight the savage females.
However, the more scholarly and reserved sites, of the .org nature, provided some interesting new concepts as well. These concepts were ones that I was familiar with, but provided a new perspective. On the site:(www.eagleforum.org/publications/column/republicans-debate-women-drafted.html) there is a debate about a topic that I hadn’t considered. The topic is whether, in the interest of equality, a draft should include girls.
For class discussion, I think this issue needs to be explored. I am uncertain on this issue; possibly this is not a political rights issue (since women could join voluntarily) but more of a physical capability issue. It is unclear how far political equality should extend until basic biological differences are ignored. This is not to say that females can’t perform in the military; I certainly believe so. It’s to acknowledge that a primary number of females are not of the physical capacity to endure combat. Also, it is a biological inequality, not a political one, that females are the ones who reproduce slowly, and on a biological clock. If we sent all of our future mothers to war, there would be a possible generation decimation. One man can produce many children, and therefore, a man’s life (as a soldier) is more biologically permissible then a women’s. Again, I argue this as a biological difference and not a political one.
On this site the male perspective is explored, as well, because both men were put on the spot to publicly claim one view or the other. Both men have daughters and wives and female voters. This question, about the female draft, was presented recently to the presidential candidates Chris Christie and Marc Rubio. Both men, have draft-aged daughters, and both men perceived that the appropriate answer was to say yes. They both believed that the political equality was more of a concern than the biological inequality.
There are key differences is in the presentations of these sites, because some of the sites were informal, such as MAWAM, and others were formal and legal, such as http://now.org/. I also noticed a different organizational structure between the .org and .com; most of the .coms were not scholarly and included slang and a blog type organization. However, many of the more scholarly sites are membership oriented, so there were incentives for the articles and views to be presented towards the goal of membership. Another site: http://now.org/media-center/press-release/an-open-letter-to-uva-president-teresa-a-sullivan/ presents a letter to the UVA Dean regarding sexual assault. This site has other such legal actions outline as well. The structure of this site is a cache for legal policies and implementation. This letter admonishes the dean to react appropriately to this case based on previous wrong doings in another sexual assault case. The nature of the presentation is to alert the dean that the actions are being monitored.
As far as a website that hosted my conception of what feminism is, and also appealed to me most was on Bitch Media (https://bitchmedia.org/article/you-can-be-feminist-and-not-support-hillary-clinton). This article is pertinent to the election was the one that related to me the most. This is an interesting perspective on how to view the election. It is easy to get side tracked by the notion that Hilary Clinton could be the first woman president instead of focusing on the issues and her views on the issues. In this perspective, it is not a feminist ideal to simply vote for Hilary because she is female. This perspective is unique, because a long-term goal for feminists it to have a female president. This article points out that Hilary must win based on the same criteria as the male candidates and not simply because she is female. I think this perspective opens up a new way of viewing Hilary as the first female president; female voters should consider Hilary’s views and Hilary’s viability, not just Hilary’s female sex. If Females vote for Hilary only because she is female, the voters will be committing a feminist fallacy.
