I’m sure we all recall Emma Watson’s killer speech about her campaign He For She and how it gave new light to the feminism discussion. If you haven’t seen it, here is the video, and here is the TL;DW version:
Feminism benefits everyone, regardless of gender, and even if you don’t associate yourself with a gender at all. Some of the biggest problems in our society (besides the obvious gender inequalities) are the ones that often go under the radar, such as male sexual assault and the stereotyping of males as emotionless rocks who can’t feel anything else except an urge to be the dominant gender because that’s what society assumes is the correct fixation. Men are currently four times more likely to commit suicide than women because we aren’t supposed to express our feelings or emotions without fear of being deemed “feminine” or being a “pansy.”
When most think of feminism the immediate image is of a radical feminist. These feminists give everyone else a bad name like the Westboro Baptist church gives Christianity a horrible image. These often deemed “man-hating” extremists are sometimes the outspoken ones of feminists that go out of their way to find every snag in our society and turn it into a feminist issue for (most of the time) no reason. It’s kind of like the thumb and finger rule. Not every finger is a thumb, but every thumb is a finger; every radical feminist is a feminist, but not every feminist is of the extreme variety.
Now that we’ve gotten through the what, I want to dive into the why. I want to be a parent one day — not anytime soon, don’t worry Mom. I want to have kids of my own like we all might someday, hopefully a boy and a girl.
Imagine, the boy comes home from school one day, rushes to his room, buries his head in his pillow, warm tears run down his face as quiet as possible because he was told by the other kids at school that boys shouldn’t cry after answering a question incorrectly and getting laughed at. This type of unfair, outdated gender stereotyping is toxic to developing kids, and we as a generation can embrace feminism to stop him from getting picked on. Why can’t we embrace differences, feelings and emotions instead of rigid structures and boxes that we tend to put others in to make ourselves feel a little bit better about ourselves? It doesn’t seem like a silly concept when you read it, but unfortunately it has been hard to translate that into action.
Moving on to the hypothetical daughter. She just got picked to be the director of the elementary school play. While giving instructions on a certain scene she is told by the teacher that some of the actors that she is too bossy and that someone else will be the director. Downtrodden by this news she goes home, never tries out for theatre (something she was starting to love) again, and now she gave it up because women can’t give out instructions without seeming intimidating to men. If a man had that kind of power and authority, we would reward them by calling them a strong or powerful leader; however, when it is a woman her power is received negatively. We as a society are under the assumption that with women in power are very different from men in power. As of April 3, 4.6 percent (24 companies) of S&P 500 companies had women CEOs. That means there are more deaths caused by jellyfish each year (30 deaths) than there are women leading top companies.
Break down those gender barriers. If not for us, for the next generation. I, for one, don’t want a world where feminism is associated with outspoken extremists. I would rather feminism be linked with a movement that bettered our society with gender norms that didn’t necessarily conform to a specific mold.
