That darned f-word

The Canadian Blog Awards are up in the air and the progressive left is demonstrating its usual solidarity and unity, and that last bit is sarcasm. I wish I could do sarcasm the way Canadian Cynic does sarcasm, but this will have to do. And it's all about--

[cover the children's ears, please]

Feminism. There, I said it. God strike me dead, I said it. Feminism. Feminism. Woo-hoo!

Funny. Nothing happened. No lightning bolts, nada. Hmm.

The story has been overtold by now, so I won't repeat it. Suffice it to say that in 2007, nearly 2008, there are so-called progressive men who still flinch when they hear the f-word. And all that word means, dammit, is women striving for equality with men. There's been movement after movement to implement this idea, which, as Chet Scoville points out, began more than two hundred years ago with Mary Wollstonecraft. And it still hasn't been implemented, not by a long shot. Women are still raped, beaten and killed--because they're women. They are denied access to abortion. They get paid less. They still do most of the housework and parenting, besides working for wages. They get disrespected in a thousand ways, large and small. And they can't even count on men on the left to be allies.

So some of them continue to fight back. They self-identify as feminists. They start blogs. They develop networks and chat boards. They are, to put it mildly, a presence in cyberspace. There are good feminist blogs and bad ones, and a whole lot in between. If best blog categories are to be created, this one's a natural.

Ain't gonna happen.

Know why? Because some proud progressive boyz made an error in judgment, and instead of simply saying, Whoops, we goofed, they stood their ground like men. They will not be bullied, nosiree. Hey, just throw the girls in with the GBLT folks, they'll be at home there. We all know that "feminist" is just a code-name for lesbian, right? Well, OK, if the chicks don't like that, what about an "activist" category? That's so big they'll just disappear, and the sooner the better.

But these women are still not satisfied with all that compromising and outreach by the boyz. Odd, that. Sure, they could have come at this a little more gently, perhaps--I recall getting raked over the coals myself a couple of times over the issues, tact not always being their strong point--but are they right or wrong about this? That's the only question worth considering, isn't it? And aren't we, er, men enough to to answer it correctly?

Good grief, Suzanne Fortin must be having the time of her life about now. And for that alone, these progressive men ought to be strung up by the nads.

This is not my Christmas message. Just let me calm down a bit.