FAQ Roundup

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If you haven’t read it already, please read the Introduction page, which explains the purpose of the FAQs on this blog both for those wishing to know more about feminism and for feminists wishing to use the FAQs as a resource to direct discussions.

Below are the FAQs thus far (this page will be irregularly updated as FAQs are added). Qs in small font are in progress but not yet posted. If your question is not addressed in the FAQs below, please check the Open Suggestions Thread to see whether someone else has suggested the same question and/or provided a useful link to an article addressing that question.

Each of the FAQ posts below contain links to other material, especially other blog-posts, from other authors online. The comments threads provide links to further reading supplied by the readers of this blog. As the FAQ entries are meant as brief summaries only, if you want deeper understanding of the issues you need to follow these links.

There is some necessary repetition in some of the FAQs, because not everybody is going to read every Q, so material needs to be placed in more than one post to effectively cover various issues.

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NB: The FAQs attempt to be descriptive from a reasonably neutral position. There are other posts on this blog which are not FAQs which are intended as general feminist resources and op-eds: these posts are not intended to be neutral documents.

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Introductory:

Feminist Fundamentals

• What is feminism?
• What do feminists want?
• Does feminism matter?
• Can men be feminists?
• Why do some people talk of “feminisms”?

Things to know about feminism

• Isn’t feminism just “victim” politics?
• What do you mean by “Not my Nigel”? (feminist abbreviations/jargon)

What does all this mean to me personally?

• What can feminism do for me?
• What can I do for feminism?

Specific Issues:

• What is sexism?
• Why are there so many fights between feminists?
• Why do you feminists hate men?
• What is male privilege?
• What is the “Gender Gap”?
• What’s wrong with suggesting that women take precautions to prevent being raped?
• Isn’t “the Patriarchy” just some conspiracy theory?
• What do feminists mean by “reproductive freedom”?
• Aren’t you all just a bunch of “feminazis”?
• What roles should men play in feminism?

Clarifying Concepts:

Clarifying Terminology

• What is “sexual objectification”?
• What is the “male gaze”?
• What is “Post-feminism”?
• What is “internalized sexism”?
• What is “rape culture”?
• What is “slut-shaming”?
• What is “intersectionality”?

Clarifying Specific Issues

• Why “feminism” and not just “humanism”? or “equalism”? Isn’t “feminism” exclusionary?
• If women like sex just as much as men do, then why is rape so bad? It’s just rougher sex, right?
• How can femininity be “socially constructed”?
• If “gender is a social construct”, aren’t feminists saying that gender doesn’t really exist at all?
• What about pornography? (Open Thread: can there be feminist porn?)

Addressing Complaints

• I’ve got nothing against equal rights for women, but we’ve got that, so isn’t feminism nowadays just going too far? (AKA Why do we still need feminism?)
• Why are you concentrating so hard on “X” when “Y” is so much more important?
• I love women, women are sexy! Why is saying this anti-feminist?
• Can’t you take a joke? No offence meant…
• What’s wrong with saying that things happen to men, too?

Debunking Myths/Factoids

• But men and women are born different! Isn’t that obvious?
• Feminists just hate heterosexual sex
• Aren’t feminists just sexists towards men? (AKA Aren’t feminists just “reverse sexists”?)
• Some feminist said/did something offensive/stupid/crazy/evil, so isn’t feminism a failure?
• But don’t all these DNA exonerations mean that women lie about being raped?
• But doesn’t evidence show that women are just as likely to batter their partners as men?
• Don’t women have “female privilege”?
• Aren’t feminists just hairy-legged makeup haters?
• Didn’t feminists used to burn their bras as a political statement?
• Feminism Friday Open Thread: Misogyny in Political Activism
• Feminism Friday: Popularity of long-debunked rape myths: talk about disheartening
• Aren’t feminists all lesbian man-haters?

There’s also more exploration of specific feminist issues in the op-ed and Feminism Friday categories. (Read more about Friday Feminism here.)