There has been a lot of comment about a recent Michelle Goldberg piece in the Nation on feminism in social media and how incredibly unpleasant feminists are to each other.
That is not entirely surprising, in one sense. All political ideologies are wracked by internal struggle, especially those that reach an impasse in their goals. And Twitter is full of angry, self-righteous eejits. But there is also something uniquely intolerant about feminism in the online age.
Partly it seems to be because it is much more dominated by one-upmanship over victimhood; the ground war of the sexes was won a long time ago, but what has followed is a deluge of un-winnable everyday injustices, things that no amount of legislation will ever solve because they are a part of human relationships. Maybe the atmosphere of almost permanent anger and offence-taking reflects the frustration of living with this reality.
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