I had promised myself, after the election, to get this blog rolling, so here we are.  Welcome.

This blog is called oldfeminist because I'm an old feminist.  Certainly not old by everyone's standards, of course.  But I'm old enough to be at the trailing edge of the Boomer generation.

And it seems to me that most feminist blogs are populated by, and focus on the viewpoints of, feminists who are younger than I am.

Younger feminists rightly become tired of explaining very basic concepts of feminism to those who stumble in asking, "why are all you feminists such man-hating hairy-legged lesbos?"  They also rightly want to talk about what they want to talk about, and not be told that their interests and viewpoints are unimportant, why aren't they talking about starving children in Africa?

I am just as interested in talking about things I deal with on a daily basis.  Aging.  Repeating history.  "Whatever happened to" people and ideas older feminists have in common.  And I'm also interested in being in a space where having embraced feminism during the "Second Wave" doesn't automatically make me a racist sellout in a suit.

It's not that younger feminists are constantly attacking older feminists.  Most are more concerned with what they're facing in their own lives, and don't have time to diss the women who came before them.  I would simply like to be somewhere where people are more familiar with older women's lives and histories.

Another aspect of most blogs, feminist or not, is a pugnacious attitude among commenters.  While I share that attitude, there is one aspect of it that I would prefer to lose:  ad hominem statements.  By that, I mean calling someone a troll, an idiot, an asshole, or anything else.  Attack the behavior, not the person. 

So read this now:

On this blog, ad hominem arguments and negative characteriziation of participants are not allowed.  You cannot say "you are an idiot."  This includes twisty but equivalent statements such as "only an idiot would say what you just said."

So what should one say when encountering a sexist attitude?

"That is a sexist attitude" works on this blog.  "You are a sexist" does not.  "That is a disgusting pathetic idea" works.  "You are a disgusting pathetic person" does not.  You can get as vitriolic as you like, just throw the vitriol on the idea.  Not the person.

We contain multitudes.  As a product of US culture, I am sexist, racist, ableist, looksist, and probably a dozen other -ists.  I don't want to be.  I know it's both wrong and illogical.  But it's part of my psyche, and I don't expect it will ever go away completely.  Bigotry leaves a scar.  The job is not to deny it, or believe it must be eradicated to be pure and holy and allowed to comment.  The job is to recognize it and fight it.  It's a lot harder to do that when exposing weakness results in a personal bloodbath.

There are a couple of topics I've been thinking about recently, and will be blogging about soon.

Porn.  The passing of Bettie Page has brought the issue of what porn is, what it used to be, and how it affects the way people think about women.

Patriarchal collusion.  There is a recent study that showed that workers who get the most money are those who are both male and treat men and women differently.  Men who were more egalitarian fared much poorer in the salary sweepstakes, and of course women get screwed regardless of their opinion on the matter.  How does this work, and how can we fight it?

The Unexpected, both good and bad.  The good:  I was looking at a "fun" website the other day which featured a rather sexist and stupid article.  I expected the usual mix of "this is sexist tripe" and "you're just an angry feminist because you're FAT."  Instead, nearly all the comments derided the article, many in obviously feminist terms.  The bad:  the New York times had a "fun" article about orgasmic birth.  The article was  bad enough.  The comments?  Yuck.

Anyway, I hope I will be writing enough here to keep your interest.  If you have ideas for posts, let me know in this thread.