Egalitarianism. I've only heard the term sparsely, which got myself enthralled in an enlightening discussion with Dave (he preferred a fake name), who I’ll henceforth refer to as Dave. I thought it nice to do something different rather than another article: to record our conversation and share it with readers, as I didn't expect this discussion to take place. Dave gave me permission to record and recount (cleaned up, of course, for fluidity and comprehension) here on Odyssey Online. I hope you'll find it as interesting as I do.

(After a few minutes of playful banter, Dave mentioned that he is an egalitarian.)

Wait, you're a what?

I am an egalitarian

Well, I'm pretty sure I know what that means. But explain.

I am an egalitarian.
I believe in human rights. I believe in equality in the same way the French did. I believe it is a goal worth fighting for, where possible, using lawful civil disobedience. And where not, using unlawful civil disobedience.

…

There are several people who have said to me that I am a feminist, because I advocate for a woman's right to bodily integrity, because I maintain that the workplace is not an appropriate venue for sexualization of people. I have marched for women's rights, and am likely to continue.
I am not a feminist. I do all of this because I'm an egalitarian.

I don’t know, that sounds sort of naïve to say, and I’m not saying you are at all, just hearing what you just said. I mean, think about it. Interest groups who know more about specific rights issue will practically always need to exist because human nature is difficult to control and fractal. Infinitely fractal, at that. Denying one in place of another, exactly the same, just seems ignorant of you, on top of the somewhat bad reputation the movement has.

(For those who don’t understand, I use the term “fractal” because it’s defined as a natural phenomenon or a mathematical set that exhibits a repeating pattern that displays at every scale. It makes sense in context.)

Look, I’m not speaking for the egalitarian movement, such that it is.
There are definitely assholes in it. There are definitely people who have coopted the term who do not behave in a manner compatible with the movement's French origins and I have called them out before and I have let myself get dragged in to arguments with people about how egalitarian is a code word for meninist.
It is not. Plain and simple.

Well I get that technically it’s an ideology, but to be honest it seems more like a clique than anything else. At least to me.

What do you mean?

Sort of like how there is an organization for the LGBT, but it doesn't include all actual LGBT people inside of it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I get you.

Wouldn’t you say you’re a feminist, then? You don’t believe women should have less rights than men. Seems to me the breakdown is that all egalitarians are feminists, but not all feminists are egalitarians.

If it were just a case of philosophy, I'd agree. But there's a whole political movement, not all of which I agree with, and a nomenclature issue, and the right to self-determination.
I am not a feminist because I opt not to be. And I’m not going to say that the feminist movement needs to subsume itself to the egalitarian movement superset. For the same reasons you stated earlier, fragility. But, I will say that if it did happen, it would be so much easier to drum up support, particularly from men, for egalitarianism than it is for feminism. There's way too many factors that alienate men in feminism and it seems like feminists achieve instilling new-found bitterness towards their group in men as often as they achieve anything else they set out to accomplish.

Well within your own movement, there are various sects you don't agree with either. You said it yourself.

Frankly, a whole political movement that is not very receptive to my input because of my gender? I can’t do that. Which is why feminism is a no.

But again my point still stands. The most vocal sects, being against males, doesn’t mean the whole movement is. And that correlates to the relationship between feminists and egalitarians in my mind.

I hold that the issues that I’ve combined with my lack of dedication to the subset in specific are reason enough for me to consider myself not a feminist.

Here’s what I think. Now keep in mind what I’m about to say is only my thoughts on the matter, backed up by some digging I’ve done for class. I don’t definitively identify myself aligned with an ideology.

I think Egalitarianism ignores a ton of historical context when it comes to things like feminist thought, affirmative action; you know that sort of stuff. And my reason in thinking that is because a lot of self titled “egalitarians” choose that term to separate themselves from what they see as “unequal” treatment in feminism, Black Lives Matter movement, and so on.

You presuppose that Egalitarianism seeks to replace feminism. Feminism, Black Lives Matter, they all should be subsets of Egalitarianism.

Yeah, but egalitarians almost always seem to be silent on these issues and instead bring unnecessary into the equation. I remember scouring sociological forums for assignments last semester and always seeing egalitarians complaining that feminism doesn’t do enough to combat men’s issues, which are a real thing, but something feminism is at least attempting to cover.

Okay, okay. I'll tell you this. You show me where feminism is calling for similar penal sentences for women who perform the same crimes as men? Or rates of incarceration at all?
I feel that feminism is literally incapable of dealing with toxic masculinity, male suicide rates, the stigma surrounding male rape or a whole host of men's issues that are ancillary to this thread. And, in fact, the attempt to do so would only make things worse.

Well you’d be hard-pressed to find feminists who want to increase prison sentences for anyone in general. And I understand how you feel about feminist inability, but literally everything you listed is a result of our patriarchal culture, which hurts both men and women, but specifically holds men up to dominant standards while oppressing women. A very feminist issue.

Men will compete with each other, whether there is a patriarchy or a matriarchy. Whether or not women rule society change nothing about the reality of biology. This is the breeding ground for at least two of the issues, not just the patriarchy implicitly or explicitly.

That may be true. Feminism though, ideally, is the idea that women of all races, sexualities and expressions should be on equal level in society to other genders, meaning the same for males as well. Do all people who call themselves feminists adhere to this? Absolutely not. But that doesn’t warrant a term and political identity that separates itself entirely from feminism. Doing that will naturally draw disputes, because if you believe in the level of equality that you say you do, then the term feminism suits you. Nothing about your views goes against anything feminism stands for. So I ask you, are you separating yourself from the movement or the ideology?

Feminism is the political and activist movement surrounding the idea of gender equality. And since the political and activist movement of feminism doesn’t exist in a historical context and contextual vacuum, I have problems with the movement, not its ideology.

(When Dave uses the term “vacuum” he means a “space devoid of matter”. What he’s saying is that if we didn’t have gender inequality and other social problems, the very things feminism cover, feminism wouldn’t exist.)

Many feminists are just radical radfems, and by that reasoning feminism is sexists, justifying even more that I want nothing to do with it. And I certainly could disagree with radfems and still call myself feminists, but that would be disingenuous of me to do.

(A "radfem" is one who seeks to discover and examine the root of women's oppression by men and the sources of male power in radical ways.)

What are we even talking about now?

Nomenclature, I guess.

(We laugh as our boss comes in and tells us to stop sitting down on the job.)

For those who are wondering what actually happened here, fear not! I feel I'm unable to really break down in a simplistic way my conversation with Dave, so I asked my friend Bob (Bob also preferred a fake name) to weigh in. After re-reading through our conversation, I feel I was more pressing Dave as to why he wasn't a feminist, rather than or in addition an egalitarian. That being said, I felt another set of eyes from afar would be greatly beneficial.Here's what he had to say.

To me, there seems to be two kind of feminists. The first is the feminist that wants equality for men and women. The second is the feminist that believes society's social constructs of gender are a detriment to society. Now, there are also "feminists" outside of these two realms that advocate for matriarchal societies and for women to be propelled to a position above men (with the mindset that they're currently seen as beneath men). I think Dave sees these "outside" feminists as those representative of the feminist movement as a whole. Thus, he doesn't want to call himself a feminist. Egalitarianism and true feminism are exactly the same thing, just different motivations. Feminism came from women, for women. Egalitarianism, disregarding its origins, currently seems to be used by its followers as a counter to the feminist movement, as if egalitarianism is more enlightened. Both have the same goal: equality for everyone.

So there are two kinds of real feminists that I've noticed. One is more practical, one is more ideological. Dave seems to trend more towards the practical one. He is indeed more ideological than he is practical, that is true. However, he doesn't seem to want to dear down societal constructs. Rather, he wants to elevate each construct to the same level, which in my opinion, is a more pragmatic goal. I've come to think the 'split' in feminism stems from a division of philosophy and ideological movement, and that Dave is alienating himself from this division and identity. He doesn't want to be identified with the types of feminism that he disagrees with, even though he believes in the overall philosophy. And considering he calls himself an egalitarian, he is very concerned about what he identifies himself as.

Though I was appreciative of Bob's insight into my conversation with Dave, I was more concerned with what Bob's own personal opinions were concerning the matter. As I respect his opinion, I wanted to hear what a 'different side' had to say.

But what are you really thinking? There's got to be more you have to say personally. What's your position?

Well I've always found it interesting that feminists fight for transgender people instead of going against them. They are the antithesis of what they believe in. Feminists believe that gender is a social construct that society should move away form and stop defining. Meanwhile, transgender people feel that they are a gender not associated with their original biology. Thus, as transgenderism proliferates, the philosophy of feminism becomes increasingly illegitimate.

But what about this supposed ‘shared ideal’ between Egalitarianism and true feminism? Equality for all?

Equality of men and women is inherently impossible to achieve. Men are different than women, as seen in their biology. It comes down to body composition as well as hormone production. Legal equality can be achieved (though it essentially is), but societal equality will always have a fence of biological differences preventing it from happening. Men perform better at some things women and vice-versa. That’s how gender roles were developed in the first place. The notion that women are treated worse than men, in my mind, is a fallacy in our society. They are treated different, as they are different from men. Whether that’s a good thing or bad thing, I can’t say.

I felt this whole process of transcribing, analyzing, and listening was a real treat. I do expect some readers to have solid opinions about what's been discussed here, and others who won't have a foothold on anything, and that's perfectly alright. But I feel it's important for all readers (in this specific context) to do just that, read. Acknowledge and attempt to understand these different viewpoints.

As Patton Oswalt says, you don't have to agree, quite frankly you're never required to respect an opinion, but at least acknowledge an opinion that isn't your own.

Me personally, I don't know what to identify myself as. I'm still in that 'middle area', agreeing and disagreeing with both sides of this particular discussion. Probably because I tend to think that its sort of foolish to have final definitive thoughts on issues such as these. Honestly I find errors in my own logic/reasoning all the time. For now, I watch and observe, listen and acknowledge, but never decisively conclude. The same applies for Bob, and definitely tons of other people across the world.

I hope you enjoyed reading this little 'adventure' as much as I enjoyed participating in, editing and discussing it. If you feel so inclined, discuss this topic with your friends. You never know how much you might learn.