Kate Kelly's back in the news

Kate Kelly flew back from Kenya (Nigeria?) to help people leave the church. This despite her insistence for so long that she's not fighting against the church or trying to lead people away.

So that got me thinking about feminism in general again, and why I don't like it.

I concluded that part of the big issue for me is not the details or the deciding for all women what will make them happy (without asking the women involved).

I think the issue is closer to what a sister-in-law told me years ago: Feminism is a world view that teaches you to see everything in terms of power and oppression. If you focus on oppression, you will see it everywhere. And, as my sister-in-law observed, that doesn't make you happy. It ruins relationships; it destroys marriages; it crushes your children.

The world is not actually all about oppression and victimization, but so many feminists only see that. In everything. Every single interaction is about who has the power and who doesn't.

In the end, that's what feminism is about.

It's not about opportunity or equality or fairness or justice or living happy, fulfilled lives.

No, at its core, feminism is this: someone has the power, and someone else wants it, and who should we give it to?  Me.

That's the bottom line for Kate Kelly:  she perceives that someone else has power and she wants it, plain and simple. She felt justified. She used lovely rhetoric to convince a lot of unhappy people that more power would be the answer, and that power is held by people and we should go out and get it.

She completely missed that it's God's church and God's power in question.

But that's possibly because feminism doesn't think that way. If you listen to them, the entire world view is a discussion of oppression and power, and turning the victims into the victimizers (it's so very Puritan--leave England to escape oppression so we can oppress people ourselves, according to our own standards).

And, like my wise sister-in-law said, feminism can train you to see oppression. But then you see it everywhere, and it doesn't make you happy.

(I also found it amusing that Kate Kelly's standard for deciding to stay in the church or not had nothing to do with truth or Christ and everything to do with decluttering, as if the Church is an unmatched sock or a broken crock pot you finally decided to get rid of.)