(Please note that I fully support the
following statement.)
Feminism: the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of
political, social, and economic equality to men.
I brought this topic up for 2 reasons,
why don’t more men become feminists & to shed light on feminist radicalism.
When pondering the question if I consider myself a feminist I realized that a
lot of other males I know won’t identify as feminists. I remember a comment on
the gender equality myth or reality blog post had a few theories, but as a male
with lots of male friends and I feel these theories don’t apply to most males. After
brainstorming and thinking back on why they don’t like feminism I realized that
they don’t understand the difference between normal feminism and radical
feminism. They probably ran into these radical feminists and thought “Every
woman who supports their own rights will attack me like this, best not associate
myself with them.” Now some of you guys reading this might be wondering what
radical feminism is. Radical feminism is a call to reorder society to give
power over to women because powerful men use the current norm and the government
as a means to oppress women. There might be some truth to that statement, but
the main problem is their means of doing this. They decide to advocate the idea
by exerting dominance over men and oppressing them. They then go on to justify
this by showing this is the only way to even the scale. To them, having troubles with a small group
of people that are part of a larger collective is reason enough to attack the
whole collective group.
This is where the double standard comes from. There are
a lot of feminists who advocate rights for women because they claim that they
hate sexism, but do not attempt to stop sexism against men or lack of rights
towards men. For example the Selective Service System in the United States
forces all men between the ages of
18 and 25 to go to war if voluntary troops need backup. This is obviously
sexist as women cannot be drafted while men can even though women can easily become soldiers. If these feminists truly want
to have equality they must fight for women to be drafted or stop drafting all
together.
Still don’t believe me, watch this
video. (This video has mild swearing, if you are unable to handle that level of
content please do not watch)
From this video
you can see that there is a large group of radical feminists out there. Of
course many of you fight that does not represent all of feminism and you would
be right. Many feminists are good people who truly want equality, but in any
group the extremists speak the loudest. People, especially sexist men, can use
this as a way to demote feminism as a whole.
Their views even affect our own because we hold double standards with female roles even in normal situations. Examples being: ladies first, take all women and children to safety, a woman can slap a guy if she is offended by his dialogue, a woman can kick a guy for the same reasons, and many more situations like these. Here is a video that address the same issue. (This video has suggestive content, but no form of nudity. If you cannot handle this level of content please do not watch)
My ending point is this: feminism at its
core isn't bad, but can easily be twisted by the ones who practice it and the
ones who want to stop it. For me personally I found that being a humanist or
an equalist (keep in mind I couldn't find the exact term that explains this belief perfectly) is the best thing to be. This cause intends to give fairness and
respect to all ages, gender, race, sexualities, and other groups of people by giving everyone equal opportunity to prove themselves as respectable people, without bias based on who or what they are. Because
I try to focus on equality to all directions of humanity it cannot be swayed
one way or the other unlike feminism.
Now that you have ready my post here are a few questions.
Do you agree or disagree with my opinions of feminism? Why or Why Not?
What is your opinion on the gender role of the army and its Selective Service System?
If you are a feminist do you acknowledge that there are radicals out there and that is your job to stop them to protect your movement?
Works Cited
Harris, Tom. "HowStuffWorks "How the U.S. Draft Works"" HowStuffWorks. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2014.
"Radical Feminism." Princeton University. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2014.
Dean, Jonathan. "Radical Feminism: What It Is and Why We're Afraid of It."Theguardian.com. Guardian News and Media, 09 Feb. 2011. Web. 26 May 2014
"Different Types of Feminist Theories." Caragills. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2014.
Wow! Amazing blog post laksikan. This post really opened my mind because I never thought about feminism like this way. When I looked at your point of view, I have to say that I do agree with you(to some extent). I feel (after reading your post) that rather than achieving equality for females, feminism, archives inequality for men. Like you said, many tends to target a lager collective because they have problems with a smaller group. I don’t know about anyone else but to me that seems very unfair. However, if the feminist people demonstrated the feminism accurately then I hundred percent believes that feminism is beneficial for many.
ReplyDeleteIf I to speak honestly, then I would say when I Imagine army and soldiers, a picture of a men carrying guns comes to my mind. What I am saying is that I think I believe that men have the dominance in the army. For me for some reason I can’t imagine a woman holding a gun in an army suit though there are many women in the army today. You might think that very sexiest of me, well hey no body is perfect.
But when it comes to the selective service system, I feel it’s very unfair. When I did research on this topic to clarify it, I found out that there was a vote to confirm whether or not the women in army should be drafted. This means women had a choice whereas men have always been obligated to the selective service system.
Well, I don’t exactly call myself a feminist but I do support women’s right. And yes to some
extent I believe there are radicals out there, but I feel like it’s not just only should be my job to stop them, rather it’s should be also the job for the people who believe in true equality.
Yes I absolutely believe people should rally for humanism/ equal-ism rather than feminism that create inequality than equality. So overall nice topic you bought out laksikan, I would like to say that this post made me re-evaluate the definition of feminism I had in my mind.