Clichéd Responses to any Mention of Feminism

People, mostly males funnily enough, need to get over their fear of feminism. True enough, it is an umbrella term that encompasses a wide range of perspectives including some fairly extreme positions. However, let's be realistic. The feminists I know are not "man-hating lesbians." Most of them shave their legs (and it's hardly your problem if they don't). None of them want to enslave you after confiscating your barbeque, asking for those bloody directions and chopping your balls off and wearing them around their necks so other blokes don't get any ideas. All the feminists I know stand for the not-so-outrageous things like pay parity, equality in distribution of domestic duties and the end to the ridiculous notion that women in miniskirts are at fault if they get raped by predatory rugby league teams. In fact, feminism is such a large umbrella that you might find - and I hope you're sitting down - that you're effectively a feminist under a mainstream conception of the word. Welcome to the club and see you at the next meeting.

As an example of a woefully construed take on an aspect of feminism, let's examine this letter to the editor in the May 19 edition of The Wellingtonian:

Advice for Slutwalkers

I write regarding the May 12 issue, and those two young ladies quoted and pictured, specimens of people upset by the recent commonsense advice of a Canuck policeman.

Why don't they all put it to the test by not dressing like sluts? That way we would soon see whether this would result in a significant reduction in the number of actual or attempted rapes and indecent assaults by males on females.

H Westfold
Miramar (abridged)

In other words, according to H Westfold (who has cowardly hidden their gender by providing only a first initial) if you dress like a slut, it's your fault if you get raped. By wearing a short skirt, you've consensually waived your right to not get raped. Seems a little unfair to us. If I wear a bone carving, have I waived my right not to be called a n****r? In other words, get with the fucking program.

Then again, since we gave women the vote we've had two world wars, a holocaust, the rise of numerous dictatorships and the emergence of several economic downturns. Coincidence? No way! Think how many lives and how much grief women could've saved if they weren't such selfish feminists....