The Dreaded "F" Word... Feminism. Part Three: Modern Feminism
Feminism
NOUN
The advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.
When starting this post I had no intention of making it a multi-part piece. However, the more I researched the topic the more I came to realise that in order to do the subject justice I couldn't cram it all into one post.
There is a biological difference between men and women that should be acknowledged but it shouldn't be an excuse for treating half the population as less than. The body is only a vehicle to get us through life and we can't choose the make, model, or colour. Misogyny, racism, sexism, and homophobia are all part of the same battle.
Want to know why we still need feminism? Just go to YouTube and do a search. Go on, I'll wait here... A majority of the results are something like, "feminist getting owned" or "feminism is ruining society." The third wave of feminism has been a response to the failings of and a backlash to the second wave. It is less about political change (although with the rise of Trump it seems we're having to go back and fight those old battles again and more women are definitely needed in the political sphere) and more about cultural changes, personal identity, and the inclusion of other marginalised groups including women of colour and the LGBT community.
If you think women have achieved equality then you don't understand the expense, risk, danger, expectations, and pressures that women face daily.
Being a woman is expensive. Even if you don't believe in "the pay gap," women simply have more expenses that come with being female. Between clothing, bras, makeup, birth control, and menstruation products women spend two to three times more than a man just to exist. In order to be taken seriously in many work environments a woman must put in far more effort into her physical appearance than her male colleagues.
Women are constantly judged, berated, and devalued for their appearance and it is a no-win situation. If a woman puts little or no effort into her appearance then she is a slob. If she puts in a lot of effort in she is shallow and "high maintenance." Shaming women for their appearance is regularly used tactic to control and silence. Women are constantly bombarded with unattainable images of women, aiding the diet industry in earning upwards of $60 billion a year. There has been a social backlash against fat and body shaming. Many companies now employ plus size models and more celebrities are speaking out against their images being photoshopped. It is a societal movement away from the idea that the worst thing a woman can be is fat.
Women's sexuallity is still up for social scrutany and this has been a fight women have been dealing with since the dawn of civilization. Women's bodies have historically not belong to them, but to male members of their families and were basically used as a form of currency. Shaming words like slut, tramp, skank, harlot, and whore are all gender specific with no male equivalent. And governments still try to dictate what women can do with their bodies. Legislation against abortion is a slippery slope that could lead to women's loss of body autonomy.
A report published in Science Magazine found that by the time girls begin kindergarten (we're talking 6 year-olds here) they already believe that they are intellectually inferior to their male counterparts. From the time we are born, we are surrounded with gender cues. We wrap boy babies in blue and girl babies in pink. We put them in colour coded nurseries and tell them stories where girls are damsels in distress and boys are heroes. And girls just don't have as many role models in what are considered "male" vocations such as STEM jobs. Some will claim that this is because girls just aren't interested, but it's doing girls a disservice not to consider the lifelong implications of our gender conditioning.
Women run a daily gauntlet of harassment from catcalling and being assaulted on public transit to online trolls and dick pics on dating apps. The men who commit these blatantly sexist acts usually will claim that it was a compliment, joke, or all in good fun. It is not uncommon that when women call out sexism they're labeled a humourless feminist. Women, however, know better. Women are taught from a very early age that they must be ever and hyper vigilant. Globally 1 in 3 women will be raped, beaten, or killed in their lifetime and most perpetrators will be known to the victims. In North America 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime and less than 2% of reported rapes ever end in a conviction. Victims are regularly shamed and their behaviour questioned while the behaviour of the offender is not. The narrative is usually what did the victim do or not do to bring on the assault, putting the responsibility and shame on to the wrong person.
For every “extreme feminist” there is at least one chauvinist a-hole out there, and who is really doing more damage to society? The one fighting against oppression and the subjugation of just over half of the population or the one who thinks it’s a-okay to waste so much potential based on something as trivial as gender? I dunno, that's a tough one.