Buffet Feminist

By: Liberate Zealot

The Patriarchy/Kyriarchy is pervasive, it is entrenched, and sometimes it feels absolute.  It's in the schools, the courts, in politics, in doctor's offices, in media, in pricing and advertising, in religions and atheist organizations, sex and dating advice, cultural standards and stereotypes.  The Patriarchy/Kyriarchy is in economics and banks, it's in psychology, and promotions and pay raises, nerd/geek culture, it's in grocery stores and the price of food, in personal interactions.  The Patriarchy/Kyriarchy is in every person, our selves included.

No person can hope to overcome the Patriarchy/Kyriarchy on their own.  And similarly no Feminist theory, or social justice group/movement, can address every aspect of the Kyriarchy. None of us can hope to understand, focus on, and fight against every aspect of the entrenched Kyriarchy.  And similarly, our relative privileges make us blind to many of the causes, branches, and results of the Kyriarchy.

Just as the Kyriarchy has many voices and arms (and heads) so must we who fight against it. We need Radical Feminism, and Liberal Feminism, and Communist/Socialist feminism, and Sex-Positive Feminism, and Womanism, and PostColonial Feminism, and all the branches of Feminism to combat the many permutations of the Patriarchy/Kyriarchy.  Similarly we need people and movements to address the areas that Feminism fails to address (while working to make ourselves better allies).

We need all the Feminist voices to shout out against the incessant drone of the Kyriarchy.  And we need to work to support new voices, and make sure our own voices don't silence the voices of other people who are unheard in the Kyriarchy.

And because I believe most deeply in this need, because I think Feminism is doomed without its many and ever expanding voices and branches, I am a Buffet Feminist.