What is your reaction when you hear the word feminism? A women’s rights movement? Crazy women who hate men? How many of you think “an equal rights movement?” Because that’s what it actually is. If Meriam Webster defines feminism as the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes, why then, do we know nothing about the work for men’s rights, or any other human, aside from women? Everyone who is reading this is affected by this movement. If its an equal rights movement, why aren’t we equal? If feminism is an equal rights movement, why do we not see equal representation of both gender's rights?
The feminist movement started with good intentions. Feminist leaders, such as Betty Frieden and Simone De Beauvoir, started the movement to get females out from underneath men. Both women wrote books on how to gain strength within themselves and how to speak out for what they wanted.
Simone De Beauvoir said, "On the day when it will be possible for a woman to love not in her weakness but in strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself—on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger." She is not saying that a man is suppressing her in any way, rather she is talking about how the female need not put herself in that position. She is saying that a women should speak up and become one with her husband, not better or worse in any way.
At some point in time the feminist movement has gone away from empowering women and encouraging self love and self motivation and it has turned into a man-hating movement. The feminist movement used to be a necessary thing to show women that they didn't have to fall in line with what society had become, but in todays society it is destructive and only further separates people; black, white, male or female, all together. According to today's definition of the word feminism, I am not a feminist if my husband pays for my meal, or I let a man hold the door for me. To me both those things are a form of respect, not expected but appreciated. Letting a man do things for you doesn't make you powerless or inferior. It shows that a man has respect for who you are as a women.
The gender pay gap no longer exists
How many times have you heard, “For the same work, women get paid 77-cents for every dollar a man earns.” Well the actual statistic comes from the fact that a 23-cent difference is the difference in the average earnings from a man and women working full-time. It does not take into account differences in jobs, positions, education or hours worked per week. For example: doctors, on the surface it looks like there is clear discrimination against women but when you dig deeper you find out that women are far more likely to enter lower paying specialties—such as pediatrics or family medicine—rather that cardiology or anesthesiology. They are also far more likely to work part-time, and women who work full-time work about 7-percent less than men a year.
There are exceptions to this rule, but once you account for all of the factors, in almost all jobs, the pay gap nearly disappears. Women’s rights groups would argue this and say that women take so much time off work and they work less to stay at home with their family, which is an invisible society standard. According to "The National Organization For Women," "Powerful sexist stereotypes steer women and men toward different education, training and career goals,” but perhaps the reality is that in the pursuit of happiness women and men take different paths. If the wage gap existed, and an employer could get away with paying Jill less than Jack, wouldn’t companies fire all of their male employees and replace them with all females?
Men and women issues are not represented equally under the feminism movement.
Did you know that nearly 140,000 men are raped in prisons annually according to the Human Rights Watch. That’s more men than women raped annually per year. Almost half of the abuse victims in the U.S. and Canada are men, yet there are no safe houses for them, no counseling or legal care like we have for women. Did you know that according to the Bureau of Disease Control, men make up 80-percent of suicides, 92-percent of workplace deaths, 97-percent of combat deaths and 77-percent of homicide victims?
Men are raped, objectified and held to ridiculously high society standards just like women, but they aren’t going to be taken seriously when they complain about it. No one is going to tell a female to suck it up when she makes a rape accusation, but they will definitely tell the male to be a man, suck it up, be grateful that a women has touched them. As a women, I know that I will almost always win custody in a divorce case, I will receive almost half the sentence a man does for the same crime, and there's a better chance that I will be hired for a government job to fill a quota. But I don’t see anyone holding picket signs for these injustices for men.
I am not trying to say that men have more issues than women, and I am not trying to say that there are not issues that need to be worked on. But as a woman, we need to not be fed propaganda that the media and high-end celebrities feed us, and make our own judgements about what issues we need to fight for. If you think women need more rights, call it a women's rights movement.
I am not a feminist because I believe women and men’s rights should be addressed equally. I am not a feminist because feminists are creating a world of reverse sexism.
Feminism is not a synonym for equality.
