Alecia Simmonds is a feminist. Or at least she thinks she is one- and the proof is that she can get her rant on with holy buzzwords like ‘patriarchy.’  Simmonds rips through a guffaw-inducing conflation of veganism & feminism in a way that surely has feminist separatists hollering “right on, SISTAH!”

At the same time, Simmonds is boring ordinary, well-intentioned young women to sobs and lecturing them that to be a proper feminist, there’s mandatory hemp skirts, tofu granola, hairy pits and a phrasebook of chants, 80% beginning with ‘hey hey, ho ho.’  Simmonds worsens her lot by conflating feminism with veganism, invoking some sort of guilt on all of humanity for being at the top of the food chain  and damning women for participation in patriarchy by the mere act of having a ham sandwich.  I suspect that the majority of 20-something women reading Simmonds don’t get past her third graf before their eyes are rolling at 60 rpm.

Simmonds gets only one thing right in her whole Carol Adams-inspired opus but saves it for the last line:

“…it’s about believing that another world is possible. And the sooner we start living it, the better.”

That’s right. Start living like equality is the baseline and don’t take no for an answer. However, the rest of Simmonds’ dogmatic spew is ancient history and isn’t convincing young women to identify as feminists. In fact, it is putting them so far off that feminism is now the new ‘F’ word, never to be used in application to one’s self.

It’d be too easy for feminists of Simmonds’ persuasion to blame the evil PATRIARCHY for moulding opinion of feminism into some sort of epithet, but Ockham would have Ms Simmonds look in the mirror.

Case in point; when Trophy Housemate was in her mid-20s, as a single mum, she hadn’t a hope of getting a mortgage. However, woebetide the banker or building contractor, who in conversation with her esteemed Grrrlchild, now in her own mid-20s, demands to talk to her husband regarding matters related to construction of her new house.

Grrrlchild flatly refuses to call herself a feminist, but acts as if gender equality is her minimum expectation in her interactions with the world. Grrlchild is insistent, persistent, in charge and would be deeply offended at being expected to apologise for being so.  However, Grrrlchild is polished, girly, thinks hemp is something you make flour sacks from and sausages are symbolic of a good BBQ.

The struggle for gender equality is certainly far from won, but a point has been reached where women in 1st world nations can live their lives as though it has been, without adopting the sloganised language of victimhood.

It’s well past due time for the over-the-top perfect to stop damning the good.

-weez