ICOT, I appreciate your thoughts on the situation. However, I do feel that in this case you are patronizing me. What did I say that gave you an impression of my age? I don’t know how old your kids are, so I can’t say if you were right or not, but your assessment of my knowledge of feminism’s core beliefs with regard to Torah values assumes that I am going through a “phase” and simply need someone knowledgeable to sit down with me and correct my “backward ideals”. Respectfully, I take offense at this.
I also don’t believe that the “jewishabortionist02” example is a fair analogy. As anon4this pointed out, I have in no way tried to force my beliefs on anyone here. I did provide a website, which anyone who is interested can read, but I do not volunteer information on feminism because I sense that it would not be received well. I simply state my opinion on various issues as they come up in threads, and of course, when these issues deal with women’s role in Judaism, my responses will reflect my feminism. I do not pretend to speak for all feminists or all of feminism; as anyone who has studied feminism should know, there are various “streams” of feminism (liberal feminism, radical feminism, etc.)
When I created my account on this website, it did not occur to me that my username might be perceived as inflammatory, and I certainly was not “looking to cause trouble”. Perhaps I should have realized, given the name of this website and the background of its readership, what the responses to my username would be, but I did not. Still, I don’t think there is anything wrong with my username per se; I was simply identifying myself as a follower of a particular ideological movement. (Not the case in the other scenario; there is no such thing as “abortionism”!)
Finally, what troubles me most are the serious comments about my putting “sacrilegious, anti-Torah ideas” into “innocent readers’ heads.” I am not looking to corrupt people, and I don’t see how a humble person can state in no uncertain terms that he or she is right and everyone else is wrong. Of course, I believe that I’m right and you believe that you’re right; otherwise we would not act the way we do! But ultimately, this belief in one’s own rightness can only extend so far. We must all recognize that since we are not God, and since we have no direct contact with God, there is a very real possibility that we are wrong. We try as best we can to figure out what God wants from us and to do it, but perhaps we have misinterpreted what He wants or chosen the wrong outlet in which to carry it out. We simply do not know. So to state categorically that these two opposing viewpoints are not of equal stature is to place oneself on the level of a prophet or Mashiach or even on the level of God.