Hate Speech Against Feminism? Meh!

At the risk of being a thundering bore, I should say this again: feminism is an ideology, and not a birth group. Nobody is born a feminist, and anybody can stop being a feminist by making up their mind to do so.

One is born female, or born black, or born white, or born with other indelible DNA markers - and you cannot "stop" being what these things make you. Or at least, no easier than you might reconfigure your chromosomes by mind over matter.

One is also born into a cultural tradition or nationality - e.g. Jewish, Muslim, Roma, French, Inuit, and so on. These things are imprinted on your your psychic DNA starting at a young age, and additionally, they are hallowed by historical duration stretching back hundreds or even thousands, of years.

Feminism is different. It is little better than a shoddily cobbled-together body of ideas which has been around for half-a-century at most. Some people have elected to download this shoddily cobbled-together body of ideas into their brains, but we must not forget that it was a conscious DECISION on their part. To be a feminist is neither innate, nor immutable, nor sanctified by any long ethno-religious tradition.

Again, feminism is just some stuff that you stuff into your brain. And none of it, I repeat, none of it, offers you any sheltered or sanctified status. Hate speech laws, as presently written, do not cover ideologies or ideological "tribes".

I grant you that anybody can speak hatefully of anything they choose - and they may choose to speak hatefully of feminism as they would speak hatefully of any other hateful (or at least unlikeable) thing - e.g. mobsters, arsonists, loan sharks, slumlords, the KKK, or whatever. But none of the foregoing are protected by hate speech laws, nor, to the best of my knowledge, is feminism. Nor SHOULD feminism be protected by hate speech laws - any more than mobsters and so on, should be thus shielded.

I realize that feminists often harbor a very lofty conceit of themselves, and get all huffy when you speak ill of them. But then, it is possible that mobsters would have a similar sense of self-worth, and they can get VERY huffy if you talk shit about them.

But that does not mean mobsters are protected by hate speech laws, any more than are feminists, who, come to think of it, act a lot like thugs themselves sometimes.