The human race has successfully – if a little scratched up – made it to 2016, and yet some have still yet to wrap their heads around the notion of Feminism.
Feminism is not the dirty word that you tell your child to avoid. Despite many things that you might’ve heard, it is not the practice of hating men, hating authority and simply growing your armpit hair. That is not what defines a Feminist by nature. Not all Feminists grow their pubic hair, and not all Feminists hate men. We need to eradicate this ridiculous notion that Feminists come in cookie-cutter format and are out to do some kind of disservice to the rest of the human race, dangly-thing between the legs and otherwise. For me, Feminism is the movement that attempts to give both women and men the equal rights that they are entitled to and I can’t for the life of me figure out why some people believe this could possibly be a bad thing.
I’m all for free speech and different perspective and opinion, but I can’t help wanting to shake all the middle class, middle minded, middle aged ideals out of the minds of people in this world and help them wake up and smell the proverbial coffee. We’re not in the midst of the Medieval period any more, and why should we act like it? Women have got things to offer and say – why shouldn’t they be able to express this in the manner they would if they had been born a member of the opposite sex?
As a woman I still find it bizarre that people look to me with some form of shock when I open my mouth and begin to talk about my opinion of the British government and my concerns about the Middle East. The reason they’re so shocked is because they simply cannot believe someone who is interested in makeup – typically, and wrongly branded as a ‘girly thing’ – and the like could possibly understand the inner workings of political mind set – oh no, you must pick one or the other. We can have no crossing over of the makeup connoisseur and ideas about anything else of any other nature! This for me is proof that some people are far too focused and concerned with the fact that I am a girl, and not what I have to say about anything meaningful – and make no mistake, this is not just limited to the mind set of men, but other women too.
This brings me onto the issue of girl-on-girl hate and women who consider themselves ‘Anti-Feminist’, i.e the aforementioned ‘quirk’ of Feminism.
Each time we bash another woman’s life choices: who she goes out with, who her friends are, who she chooses to engage in sexual acts with, every time we brand her a ‘slut’ a ‘whore’, we make it okay for other people to do so. We make it ‘normal’ to see women in this way, like we have some control over the choices she makes.
Each time a woman proclaims to all that she is an ‘Anti-Feminist’, she makes a statement that suggests she undermines the work done by influential equality figures and the progress we as a gender have made so far in reaching the equal rights that we do have. I often wonder if those women against Feminism could look their daughter in the eyes and explain to them that they can’t become a Police Officer, a Doctor, or a Politician. That they are resigned to a life of baby-making and home-making and that this is all they can ever hope to do in life. By no means am I suggesting that having children and becoming a home-maker is somehow lesser than any other kind of career, but what I am certainly suggesting is that the choice to do this should lie with the woman committing to do so. Although I am only the grand old age of 19 and do not have any children of my own, I know that as a society, we usually tell our children that they can be whatever they want to be – do whatever they want to do.
But hang on, only if you’re a boy… Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?
thedailymusings 