A brief essay on feminism.

I'm interrupting my 10 bands list because frankly I'm swamped with the end of school and finally I've decided something has motivated me enough to write a rant. Feel free to comment on it at any time and share it to any one you think would be interested in it, I'm always interested in feed back, and I realized I had anonymous posting turned off so now it's back on. Well...let's begin!

I have absolutely no problem with feminism. According to dictionary.com, the definition of feminism is "Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes." I find the concept to be absolutely wonderful as I am essentially a hippie egalitarian. I think everyone should have equal rights until they have given people just cause to remove or limit their rights. The concept of feminism is perfectably acceptable as a theory, just as acceptable as the concept of Communism.

I do, however, have a problem with femists. To begin, the term "feminist" is of itself rather hypocritical. "Feminists" often claim that they do not enjoy being labelled by others as they feel it demeans women. Similarly, they do not enjoy when people make broad generalizations about women as it removes their individuality and does not take all aspects of each person into account. By applying the term "feminist" to oneself, however, they are labelling themself and placing themself into a category, therefore doing exactly what they are trying to revolt against. On this same note, feminists, in my experience, despise generalizations especially when a man makes a remark involving all women. Feminists, however, have no problem using the generalization of the term "men" when discussing the patriarchal society that has oppressed and is oppressing them. Thus, they feel they are granted a privelege that allows them to make generalizations while people of the opposite gender are not, therefore creating a double standard. A double standard is inherently contradictory to any form of equality and therefore females that call themselves "feminists" are essentially misandrists trying to overturn a society founded upon patriarchy into a matriarchal based society, or rather simply they do not want equality they want women to be the dominant force in society.

This desire by "feminists" leads to many illogical, asinine demands that asks for all the rights of men and more, but does not entail any of the responsibility. For example, in 1998 Karla Tucker was the first woman in Texas ever to be sentenced to the electric chair. The outcry against this execution was not simply anti-death penalty people proclaiming the electric chair was evil, they were simply against executing a woman. Regardless of whether you agree with the death penalty or not, the woman committed a crime a male would've been executed for and there would have been minimal to no outcry against it, as it is with most executions. Instead, it was purely based on the fact she was a woman. If women want equal rights, why are they not willing to accept equal responsibility? Another personal example was a video I watched junior year of high school I still remember vividly. The video was about a group of feminists that argued that the physical requirements the fire department had in place for its firefighter training course discriminated against women. These "feminists" were demanding that females should have a separate, gender specific set of physical requirements. They did not realize that in the case of an emergency, perhaps a 250 pound person would not drop 75 pounds and lower themselves in the building a few stories solely because the firefighter attempting the rescue was a women. This issue stuck with me because it does not discriminate against women based on an inane argument that consists of something like "women are emotional and can't handle the stress of the job," it was simply that women could not meet the demands imposed upon everyone and therefore decided it would be equal to make the requirements for the genders unequal.

Criticizing women that enjoy dressing up, shaving, and doing things that are essentially considered "normal" by society's gender roles does not mean that a woman is not low on self-esteem or conforming to patriarchal society. Not shaving your legs and getting a unisex haircut does nothing to promote equality and if anything just furthers the divide between genders. Frankly, by doing these things it furthers the "feminist" stereotype and does even more to make men, and many women, look down upon self-proclaimed "feminists" leaving them further from their goal.

I have met a few women that I would indeed call feminists and they would be willing to accept that label. They understand that with equal rights comes equal responsibility. It is the self-proclaimed "feminists" that often take a wonderful idea and misconstrue its meaning into something that advocates exactly the opposite of its intention, similar to the idea of "straight edge." I agree that often it is the fanatical, vocal majority that give the entire idea a bad rap, however, you can easily counter this by having rational, logical discussions with people and reaffirm our belief that there are still people out there that understand the concept and don't bother talking the talk, they just walk the walk.

In the end, my stance is this: If you advocate feminism, that's fine, but do so in a rational, logical way. If you want the rights, take the respsonsibility.




I don't know really know what I was trying to accomplish with this post but frankly a couple classes at this university along with a lot of ignorant girls promoting women's empowerment by ranting about how men ruin society in many classes forced me to express my ideas through some outlet and this was the most readily available.