Feminism at it's Worst

I am a woman.
I have had many conversations with women in the past, and as soons as I hear them say, "Men are stupid," I reply with, "Not all men are stupid. Some men are stupid, just like some women are stupid. Simply because we are women does not automatically make us intelligent." To which their retort is almost always, "are you a feminist?"

This is where it gets difficult. Feminism has come to be tautological with man-haters. At least in my experience. Feminism used to be a fair-minded enterprise, but now it has become an exclusive mindset with rules and, the most damaging thing of all, excludes men.
To begin with, feminism was a movement to provide equal opportunity, education, and political power for women. To make life more fair for women who wanted to better their own lives, to give them the freedom to better their own lives as they pleased, and to basically make it a constitutional given that if all men were created equal, then so were women. After all, all men come from a woman's womb, correct?
And techinically, in eutero, all humans begin as a female. It's only after they have had development in the womb their chromosome changes and the little fetus becomes male. I'm no expert at genetics, but these are the basics, people.
So, it makes sense that men and women are equal.

Then came the popular, "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus", and the sexes have gradually been more accepted as different species rather than different genders. The most popular phrase, when a man makes a mistake is, "Boys are stupid," harking back to kindergarten and the playground romances of young children. Not every woman says this, but we have all probably heard it, or a variation of it. This is what I call the "Us and Them" syndrome. Here we are, "Us", on one side of the street, and there they are, "Them", on the other side of the street. Somehow, this makes each side of the street superior and the other side of the street inferior. It's a flaw in human nature that is difficult to avoid, in fact I have fallen into the mistake myself. The reality of the situation is the road is the same road we must all walk down (cue Bob Dylan music here), some people just never cross the road to the other side to actually understand what's over there.

Exclusive Feminism, or Xtreme Feminism, as I like to call it, does not good for the cause of humanity. It only sets up an already strained and confusing relationship between the sexes. I understand the importance of "girl power", but when does girl power become a practice of sexism and discrimation? And I hate to point fingers in the community, but the U of I Women's Center is, in general, I find, hostile towards male involvement. Perhaps if feminism was a more inclusive philosophy, rather than a defensive, "Uterus Only Club", men could learn more about what women go through, rather than being frightened away by all the anger bombasted at them from the Xtreme Feminists. And, in return, a woman's knowledge of man could be improved as well, because as much as we like to pretend, we women don't know everything. I know I don't, anyway. And being a woman, I think I can guess the rest of us don't either.

The human race can not exist without men and women. Yes, we are different, but neither of us are devoid or deficient of emotions or feelings.
So, when someone asks me if I'm a feminist, I say, "No," because feminism is the same as machoism, in that it severely limits my perception of life. I believe we all have our mistakes, our triumphs, our perfections, and our faults. And none of "us" are superior to "them" in any way.
So, I would like to suggest a new kind of "ism" and call it "humanism". Maybe we can change the negative, "Us and Them" syndrome into a more positive, "We" syndrome.
Yes, the sexes are equal.
If we are not equal in perfections, we are at least equal in faults.