I don't know if there is a word for it (humanist is already taken), but my simplistic belief has always been if anyone has a right protected by law, then everyone has that protected right. The only exception is that some rights can be removed by judicial due process for certain, serious felonies, e.g. treason. You would think that the equal protection concept of US law would have settled all these disputes in my country, but it hasn't.
Feminist is too narrow. Whatever you call what I described above includes and extends protection beyond gender issues.
You… I like you.
This, in the broad sense, is my view as well. It seems only natural to me that all people should have the same protection of law and the same freedom from discrimination. Man, woman, gay, straight, white, black, trans, cis—what does it matter? People are people. Thing is, I feel most people agree with this in principle. Sure, a lot of people have specific hangups that introduce problems, but by and large, I don't feel people are bigots, or racists, or misogynists. Do those people exist? Of course, but they're not the majority, and with both education and exposure, I feel that most people can and will overcome the tribalist views that color our perceptions of one another—and I also feel the progressive arc of history bears this out.
Now, you struggle to find a term for this view, and I know many self-proclaimed feminists who would claim that 'feminism' is indeed the term for that view. But even if it wasn't also in frequent use, as Xoin alluded, for much narrower, much uglier ideologies, if that's truly what you want your brand to represent, why call it 'feminism' at all? Why apply a clearly gendered label to something you then spend a great deal of time trying to argue isn't really about gender? For this reason, it's a label I've neither liked nor identified with despite sharing the broadest goals of most self-identified feminists.
Of course, on the other end of the spectrum, I also don't believe there's a huge, misogynist societal conspiracy against women, either—the so-called 'patriarchy' against which modern feminists so vehemently rail. The mere existence of gender inequality in certain instances or measured by certain metrics does not necessitate the existence of widespread institutional sexism. Nor do I feel traditional gender roles are inherently oppressive towards women, and it likewise seems only natural to me that women and men, being different, might naturally fill different societal roles. Should they be forced into those roles? Of course not. But I do feel that, taken as a whole, the existence of gender roles is beneficial to society, and to men and women alike.
So… yeah. Not a feminist, and not ashamed of not being a feminist, and not going to be shamed by the likes of my Prime Minister who like to imply that anyone who refuses to identify as a feminist is a sexist pig. But I'm also certainly not against feminism, at least in the broader senses of the term.
And voidoid likes Ana. Best webmistress I know.
