Frequently in my blog posts I talk about feminism and how I find it almost an unnecessary movement in Western or more specifically, Canadian culture. I am also one of these people who says "What about men?" whenever there is a Women's Appreciation day of some kind or another.
I don't necessarily want to take back any of the things I said, yet I want to re-appropriate them.
I do not think the modern feminist movement is completely useless. Of course I want genders to be equal to each other, and I think we are darn close to, if not, we have reached it but I just openly hate "extremist" feminists.
My personal definition of an extremist feminist is a feminist who:
- Goes out of their way to put down men
- Goes out of their way to bring up women
- Does not work towards gender equality
- Acts irrationally
- Dedicates their entire life to the feminist movement
- Outwardly hates men
- Simply just pushes things "too far" by fighting harder than women are being fought against
I think this kind of feminism is completely irrational. Honestly, I do hate the term "feminist". Egalitarianism is more what I would prefer this to be called.
But I will acknowledge there are many women being mistreated by men. Some of it doesn't even have to do with misogyny though, it has to do with disrespect. Sure, there are tons of accurate and inaccurate social studies that show women are being abused by men but that doesn't directly mean that the abuser is a misogynist, maybe he just can't manage his anger and he is just abusive to all people, even men. Studies aren't reliable.
I think the things that do need to be fought are in our courts and the american courts. Cases in which men get away with beating their wives, women can't use self-defence and the judges and juries are misogynistic.
Gender equality in the workplace is a battle not worth fighting, unless the inequality is in pay for equal work and when there is equal seniority and experience. Having 50/50 employees in some workplaces doesn't make sense. Men can lift boxes better, more women are librarians. Deal with it. Affirmative action can suck it.
The only other thing I hate doesn't bug me too much, but it bugs me that it bugs other women. It's guys who shout "blow me" or "suck my dick" or "I wanna fuck you" or "You are cocksucking beautiful" or any derogatory thing men yell at women from their cars, the streets, anywhere. This doesn't bug me (usually) because I either ignore them or yell "suck MY dick" back at them, but there was a time in which this would bug me. I just think it's weird how men shout stuff at women but women don't shout "fuck my vagina!" and embarrass guys over it. I mean, I'm sure that has happened but I just think it's weird.
Dear Guys,
Stop being dicks by yelling "suck my dick" at us from your cars.
Love,
Your mom (who is a woman who obviously didn't suck dad's dick because you piece of shit were born from my vagina and I don't know where I went wrong when raising you because you turned into a dick).
I am a pretty tough girl. When a guy is being weird to me I am able to ignore it. Girls shouldn't have to feel targeted and subjected at work when a creep is talking to her and she can't walk away because her boss won't let her. I can take it, but not everyone can. I would rather tell girls to "man up" than to tell a guy to "Cut it out" just because of my "fight" response to most things rather than flight, but honestly, this is all so stupid.
I am not a feminist. I am not even a mens-rights activist. I just think everybody should fight for what they want. I am not a liberal in the sense that everything should just workout and be equal, I am more of an anarchist because I think people should literally fight and shoot for what they want. I guess that's why gender equality doesn't concern me as much as it concerns other men and women.
Do you agree or disagree with my thoughts on feminism and/or gender equality?
1. Please give me SPECIFIC examples of people who meet your definition of "extremist feminist". I'm looking for either names or DIRECT personal experience here (so no "I've heard about these people"). I am a feminist, and I've meet a lot of people who identify as feminists, and I've never encountered anyone who hates men or "doesn't work towards gender equality". Also, you do realize that "working towards gender equality" is KIND OF THE ENTIRE POINT OF FEMINISM, right?
ReplyDelete2. It's called feminism because men are the ones who have privilege and power over women in our society and therefore it's women who need to be the focus of gender equity movements. Yes, men face a lot of real gender-related problems, but they are all caused by rigid gender roles (eg. women have an advantage in custody cases because of their societal assumption that women are more nurturing and therefore better caregivers), which feminism seeks to dismantle. So-called "egalitarianism" completely misses this point and is therefore completely useless as an activist movement.
3. Do you really think domestic violence isn't a gendered problem? It's about men being socialized to view women as being objects for them to control. If it was just about anger problems, perpetuation and victimization rates would be relatively equal between the men and women. But domestic abusers are overwhelmingly male, and their victims are overwhelmingly female, so clearly there's a gendered element to it.
4. Pay equity is still a real problem, and yes inequities exist even when men and women have the same level of experience and seniority. And yes, there are physical differences between men and women, but these differences are relatively small, and there's more diversity in physical strength WITHIN the genders than there is BETWEEN the genders. So while having a small majority of firefighters being male would be reasonable, having the vast majority of them being male is not. Also, socialization and the teaching of gender roles of girls and boys also comes into play here, but I won't go about that. You can look more into it if you're interested.
5. Why should women have to "man up" to sexual harassment? I think starting to teach men to respect women and not harass them is a much better lesson, and it puts the responsibility where it should lie: with men.
1. Well since my definition of an extremist feminist involves people who hate men, I have simply twitter searched "I hate men" and come up with many interesting examples:
Deletehttps://twitter.com/MenHatersClub
https://twitter.com/BisHilarious/status/377279274958327808
Or perhaps this website, http://www.ihatemen.org/
2. How the heck does egalitarianism miss the point? It IS the point. Gender equality.
3. Sure, some men do hate women as I have just proved some women hate men. Do I want this to change? No. But my point here will be provided with an example. My dad abused my mom. My dad respected his mother, me, his daughters, his female boss, but he was an abusive alcoholic. He did not slap my mother because she is a woman, he slapped her because he was angry and/or drunk.
4. I don't think the hiring of people in any position or to go with your example of firefighters, I don't think the hiring of men over women should be legal, but I also don't think that affirmative action should ever butt-in and hire a woman over a man when the man has higher qualifications or ability, or vice versa.
I am aware of the socialization and teaching of gender roles, boys with blue cars and girls with pink bows. I just am not arguing anything here because I think that teaching children to act a certain way in relation to society's expectations is too conformist.
5. Woman shouldn't "have" to man up, I am just suggesting it. It works.
Just raising a completely random unsupported point, but perhaps men are just driven by their sex drives more than women are and they can't suppress their emotions/sex drives as easily as women. Perhaps by telling men to stop we are socializing men to become unnatural and to act within social standards rather than natural ones. I'm not saying this is a legitimate point, I am just raising the question "What if?".
In response to your second comment, my generalization of all feminists being the same is the same way that in your comment you generalized all men to be the same.
Sorry for commenting twice, but I also wanted to point out that feminism as a movement is incredibly diverse and there are a lot of people with different (and sometimes conflicting) views within it. So talking about "feminism" and "feminists" as if they're a monolithic group that all have the same ideas and priorities isn't the best way to criticize it.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, there are valid criticisms of feminism as a whole and specific feminist movements, but "discrimination against men" isn't one of them.