I Am (Wo)man

I was recently reminded of the song "I Am Woman," and struck by how much it affects me:

Honestly, I don't see how anyone with an ounce of humanism can fail to be moved by the impulse toward freedom it expresses. Indeed, I see from the comments that some people find it personally inspirational for reasons unrelated to gender, and even when they themselves are male. The thrill it gives me is not so different from that I get when Alison Tieman -- one of the most intellectually creative men's rights activists, and my personal heartthrob -- explodes about something in one of her "Ragening" videos.

So, how does confessing this feeling square with being opposed to feminism? Quite simply, by understanding the distinction between that primal impulse, which at a particular historical moment took the form of a widening collective rebellion against gender-based discrimination as experienced by women, on the one hand -- and, on the other, an ideology that captured that movement and framed it within a false narrative about the history and present status of gender relations, one that wrongly counterposes women's liberation to men's liberation instead of recognizing them as complementary objectives to be achieved by overthrowing a gender system that oppresses both sexes in different ways -- and which, by so doing, has actually become detrimental in many ways to women's liberation, as well as being harmful to men.