History & Perspective On Feminism
My Perspective on Feminism
In class, we discussed an inherent “negative space” that separates individuals from one another because no one has the same experience in day to day life. There are many components that increase the negative space, such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, and more. While we can lessen the intensity of the negative space, it will never fully go away, because, even if two people have the exact same experience, our brains are going to interpret it differently. I have learned to embrace this difference, to look for more aspects of life that make us different, and in doing so I have realized so much about identity and gender.
Women and men are irreconcilably different. They always have been. From the moment they began existing, they were never the same. Whether that means with Adam and Eve, or the first Australopithecus, everyone is created entirely different from the next, and gender is just one of the many facts that separate us. With this thought, I began to look at feminist ideologies.
Feminine ideology has been around for centuries, but was popularized by women like Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony during the Seneca Falls Convention in the 19th century. During that time, women simply wanted more opportunities to succeed economically, educationally, and politically. Because of this, monumental groups such as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) were formed and helped to push for equal opportunity for women. The NAWSA put great effort into rallying for female suffrage in the states, and because of this, women started to gain the right to vote. This led to the first woman in congress in 1917, Jeannette Rankin, and so on. The achievements made during this time ensured a better future for women in America.
Furthermore, in the 60s, women protested against unfair working conditions, pay, and laws that allowed for legal abortions and birth control. Similar to the movement in the 19th century, this 20th century movement was more about women being treated as equal humans to men, but involved more social issues than political ones. The legislation to come out of this movement was extremely impactful, from the first birth control being passed by the FDA, the Equal Pay Act, and most importantly the right to legal abortions in Roe V. Wade.
Women during this time helped build upon the changes made in the 19th century, and their effect on legislation helped women become more integrated into societal norms, as well as assured a better life. Today, there is another wave of feminist ideology sweeping the nation. In this essay, I will be discussing how the fact that females and males are inherently unalike makes it difficult for us to be equals, along with how the current feminist movement is more focused on social acceptability and social justice, which has become more difficult to advocate for than the past movements, as well as the flaws in today’s feminism, and how that has exacerbated the negative space we all exhibit.
As I stated before, men and women are separate organisms. They both think and act unalike, have different characteristics, along with a long list of qualities that make them distinct. Up until recently, many people believed that these differences were influenced by culture and social norms, but there have been many studies to prove these “sex-based cognitive differences” exist and have shaped the characteristics of gender (stanmed.stanford.edu).
For example, children often have difficulty determining gender in their early years, so male and female infants were told to choose which toy they wanted to play with. The males chose the stereotypical boy toys, while the female opted for the girly ones. While this study proves that polarized behavior develops early on in humans, it also hints that, biologically speaking, men and women are not the same. Because of this, males and females will unavoidably have different experiences in life. Even if they weren’t influenced by culture and social norms, their genetic makeup alone causes differences in behavior. I think that this presents a challenge for the feminist movement. Because men and women are inherently not the same, as the evidence suggests, it is impossible for them to be made “equal”. Yes, there could be equal opportunity, but that still causes problems because males and females will always interpret it differently and behave in ways that are unalike. On top of this, males were always made to be more powerful than females.
In ancient Mesopotamia, wives were referred to as property, while the husbands were “owner of a wife”, and women were expected to accept sexual gestures with at least one stranger in her life in exchange for a silver coin in order to please their gods (ancientmesopotamians.com). While this system is not the prettiest, it is what has become socially acceptable; men have always been the dominant gender, and once feminists recognize that this did not happen by force, and that women in these societies allowed for it to go on, then maybe there could be an alteration of discussion and a change in perspective on the patriarchy. A social norm is defined as “an expectation about appropriate behavior that occurs in a group context” (Crandall and Mcdonald 147)..
Whenever someone wants social justice, they will have to face the fact that a society has a list of what is socially acceptable and what is not. Trying to change this list has proven to be difficult, because it is something that we as a society have been building since we formed. Like I stated previously, the patriarchy was not only built by men, but the women who either directly supported it or said nothing at all. Current feminists seem to not recognize this, that even during previous movements there were groups of women who did not want to push the boundaries, and instead wanted to remain the loyal housewives.
One of my favorite anti feminists was Phyllis Schlafly, who, during the 60s, advocated against legalizing abortions and the Equal Rights Amendment. While she was greatly disliked for her extreme hatred of feminism, some of her arguments were very well thought out and relevant. She claimed that “feminism is doomed to failure” because it was just “an attempt to repeal and restructure human nature,” which may come off as harsh, but greatly applies to the feminist movement today.
The main goal is for women and their lifestyles to become socially acceptable, but in order for this to happen, we would have to break down what has been socially acceptable for the past decades, things that have become “human nature” to us. This fact has become one of my main reasons that I do not support the feminist movement. The current feminist movement has become known as the movement advocating for sexual harassment in the workplace to stop, as well as a social campaign for sexism and discrimination to end.
While more and more people are starting to jump on the bandwagon and fight for social acceptance, many people have become unsupportive of the movement and the implications behind it. Many female celebrities have spoken against what today’s feminism stands for, such as Joni Mitchell and Geri Halliwell, explaining that they aren’t into the labels, because right now feminism is labeled as “bra-burning lesbianism” or “a posse against men”.
While these critiques are viewed as mordant and harsh, I cannot help but agree with these women. While I think that current feminism is similar to past movements in the sense that women want to become more equal to men in terms of power, acceptance, and politics, I cannot ignore the fact that today, there are more than a few women who come off as “strident bitches”. The accuse men of sexism whenever they lose to one, they brand themselves as victims, and say that men are sexist perverts who only want to exploit women, and they jump to any conclusion that makes a man seem guilty just so they can say the sexism has to end, when it wasn’t present in the first place. Even though these aspects are not the central goal of the movement, they have become well known with the help of the media.
Because of this harsh representation of the movement, people feel disconnected with it and automatically assume a feminist is a misandrist who wants men to fail and women to prosper. One prominent example of this is the #MeToo movement. In the beginning, it was just one woman who spoke against Harvey Weinstein, and soon after a multitude of people joined in. Even though the accounts were male and female alike, the overall tone of the movement seemed to be that men in power always use their influence to sexually assault women.
In the beginning, I believed the accounts, and even sympathized with women who were taken advantage of by men in power. But then I realized that there was really no justice involved in these stories, it was just people saying what happened to them, the internet agreeing, and the accused being pushed out of their community.
This social justice did not seem appropriate for such a horrific crime. I quickly learned that some of these people aren’t telling their story so they can bring the attacker to justice, they just want to point a finger at a powerful person, say they did a vague sexual misconduct, and see them be stomped on by social media. That is not a movement to me. That is not something I want to stand behind and claim that it is making the world a better place.In this day and age, feminism has come to mean more than women receiving better opportunities to become just as successful as men.
I believe that it has started to shift into a social reform, where women want to be able to say and do what they want without facing repercussions, just because it is okay for a man to do it. While I believe that an egalitarian society seems nice in theory, it is only a theory, not a fact. The fact is that a complex society such as our own demands a hierarchy, which we see in all aspects of life. In my opinion, feminists must open their eyes and actually think about what has been deemed socially acceptable and find ways to alter these social norms without branding themselves as misandrist, then begin to incorporate everyone into this conversation instead of excluding the people who oppose the movement.
While feminists who read the paper will accuse me of being conservative, or sexist, or against their movement, I think that’s false. In fact, there lies the biggest problem. When we have an actual conversation involving all types of people with different perspectives, then a compromise can be reached, where everyone feels safe and free to think however they choose.
