Why is “feminism” a dirty word? Why are so many women who otherwise view themselves as proponents of equality, freedom, and liberty still reluctant to be called “feminists”? Why are so many men who claim that same love of equality, freedom, and liberty so disgusted and threatened by feminism and feminists? It’s hard to ignore the negative connotation of the terms feminism and feminist, and I have to say I find that incredibly frustrating.
TFW someone acts like "feminism" is a curse word.
For a long time, though, I felt the same way. I’d often start my contributions to any conversations dealing with sex or gender with, “I’m not a feminist, but…” in an effort to distance myself from what I thought of as a sort of lunatic fringe social movement. I’d tell myself, “Feminism used to be necessary, but everything’s good now. Today’s feminists are a bunch of man-hating shrews who are just screeching to hear themselves screech.” Oh, to be that naïve again.
First, let me say that I don’t view myself as an oppressed individual suffering under the thumb of the patriarchy. In fact, I actually consider myself fairly privileged in the grand scheme of things. I’m (relatively) young, straight, white, highly educated, gainfully employed, well insured, happily married, (mostly) healthy, and well-housed; my parents are still married; I don’t have a criminal record; and my only addictions are caffeine and nicotine (and maybe Netflix). By most objective standards, my life is good—damn good, really.
But I’m a feminist.
I’m not out marching in a pu--ahem--pink hat or exposing my breasts to “free the nipple.” And I’m not lecturing men, either in person or online, about what a bunch of misogynistic, oppressive assholes they all are. I’m not even raising hell campaigning for my “reproductive rights.” But I’ll say it again, loud and proud: I am a feminist.
None of these people are me. But I dig that guy's straw crown, though.
What that means to me is that I call discrimination based on sex what it is: sexism. It means that I recognize the illegitimacy of power structures that purposely impede or even totally shut-out women for no other reason than that they are women. It means I value ability and merit over a person’s biological plumbing. It means that when I encounter sexist and misogynistic ideas in my daily life, I make an effort to address them when it’s practical to do so.
I don’t want, and I certainly don’t expect, some government intervention to level the playing field for women—mostly because I generally don’t want government intervention in anything. But I do think women should be concerned with promoting their own best interests, and I do think that far too many people, both men and women, are fostering woefully outdated and ultimately harmful attitudes about women and equality.
I’d like to share just a couple pieces of anecdotal evidence illustrating why feminism is important to me and why it’s not the boogey (wo)man many people seem to believe it is.
I had a student a few semesters ago (about 19 or 20 years old) turn in an essay arguing that women shouldn’t be allowed to fill combat positions in the US military. His position on the issue in and of itself wasn’t a problem; I can think of several reasonable arguments against it myself. The thing is that one of his primary supporting points for why women are unsuitable for combat was that they “lose half their power every month during menstruation.” I shit you not. This kid actually believed that a woman’s period literally saps her of 50% of her physical strength. Mind you, I’d never once cancelled that class or shown up to teach in a wheelchair during the 17-week semester, and Wonder Woman I ain’t. To make matters worse, he’d plagiarized huge portions of the essay (from a woman), and when I talked to him about it, he blamed his girlfriend, saying that he’d asked her to “check” it for him and she must have created all the problems in the essay in a misguided attempt to help him. And did I mention that the assignment wasn’t even for an argumentative essay? It was for a rhetorical analysis. I mean, really, c’mon.
These guys get it.
This wasn’t the only time I had major issues with work this particular student turned in, but he ultimately managed to squeak by with a D. At the end of the semester after I’d posted grades, I checked my student surveys, which are anonymous, and had no doubt which one was from him. It read something like, “She’s a modern day feminist. You’ll do okay if you’re a girl, not for guys.” And that sort of pissed me off. He didn’t get a D in my class because I just hate men and want to see them struggle; I didn’t give him a hard time because I believe in equality of the sexes. He did poorly in my class because he turned in shoddy work and refused to follow the assignment instructions, even after I gave him an opportunity to resubmit. But right there in black and white, for anyone at that university who cares to look at it, is an assessment of my abilities as a teacher claiming that my feminism damages male students’ chances of success in my course. Why? Because feminists hate men, duh.
A few months ago, shortly after I started in my current faculty position, I went out to lunch with several of my colleagues and the conversation turned to politics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of the people I work with skew liberal, so when someone brought up the rape allegations against Bill Clinton and how they might affect Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, I wasn’t particularly shocked when one of my more vocally political colleagues jumped to the Clintons’ defense. But then he said, “Bill Clinton was a very attractive man in the 80s; he wouldn’t have had to rape anyone, especially not someone like Juanita Broaddrick.” This tenured college professor was speaking to three women at the time, and he made this ridiculous assertion as though it were common knowledge that only men who can’t get a piece of tail the old fashioned way are rapists, and they’re only rapists because they have to be. It’s not like anyone could reasonably expect a man to do without sex even if he doesn’t have a consenting partner, right? Right.
Interestingly, this same colleague told me just this week that I’m “politically obligated” to view the upcoming Wonder Woman movie. You know, never mind that I far prefer the Marvel cinematic universe; having ovaries means I have to be a Wonder Woman fan.
Well...I do kinda like that bit.
I’ve got dozens of stories in the same vein, ranging from the time of my early youth to earlier today, and those are just the ones I can remember and could recognize despite my deeply ingrained tendencies toward conforming to gender expectations. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t see some blatant casual sexism (or even outright misogyny) in person and on social media. Even the feminism tag here on Steemit (which appears on only 189 posts) has more than a handful of posts mocking and/or bemoaning the Feminist Scourge. And some of the attacks on feminism are so ignorant it hurts; it's like a willful refusal to even try to understand an alternative perspective.
Please note that I’m not denying the existence of misandry; it exists, and it’s a problem. But that does not negate the ongoing problem of misogyny. And while I’ve noticed plenty of people in liberty-minded circles willing to acknowledge the dangers misandry poses for both young men and young women, I’m often disappointed by how dismissive those same people can be of legitimate feminist concerns, despite the fact that doing so is as damaging to men and women as misandry.
I’m advocating for a better understanding of feminism. Like most –isms, it’s got some pretty crappy offshoots, but I urge you to avoid painting us all with the same brush. Work against the cognitive dissonance required to maintain sexist behaviors while refusing to admit the reality of widespread sexism. More people should ask themselves if that bad taste in their mouths and that queasy feeling really come from the true concepts behind the words “feminist” and “feminism” or if they’re more likely the result of knowing, at least on some level, that this disdain for feminism is a knee-jerk reaction to the unpleasantness of genuinely examining their values and actions.
I’m a feminist because the reality of the world I live in is that women are, generally speaking, valued less than men; we are frequently less respected than men, we typically have more negative and unreasonable expectations placed upon us, and we often suffer more harm from long-established power structures and social conventions. Until those things are no longer true, I think I need feminism so that I can keep working toward making them not true. I owe that to myself and to my daughters, and I’m not ashamed to use the F-word.
