Several of my friends shared the article "I Am A Female And I Am So Over Feminists " by Gina Davis of the University of South Florida, and as I read through it, I couldn't help but feel the need to tear my eyes out of their sockets. It wasn't because I'm a "man-hating feminist", but because I'm a feminist.
Feminists that this article referred to don't exist.
In the article, Ms. Davis talked about a class that her boyfriend attended where a discussion got tense due to female students talking about "how society is unfair to women" and "respect for the female population is diminishing".
She responded to this story as being "a load of bull" due to the facts like TV stations not playing female sports because not many females would watch it anyway, that there's nothing disrespectful about chivalry because men and women aren't equal physically or mentally, and how we should stop complaining because of how far we've come.
If I can be frank here, all that is a load of bull.
What Ms. Davis failed to understand throughout her article was that feminism isn't believing that one gender is better than another. Despite the word including the prefix "fem", the definition of feminism according to Merriam Webster is, "the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes". Equality, meaning that one gender isn't dominant, as she stressed so seriously, and therefore meaning that someone saying females are better than males isn't actually a feminist.
While this is the 21st century and we have come so far, that doesn't mean we should "stop complaining". In fact, telling feminists to stop complaining is throwing those old views right back into play. While women are more respected than they ever have been, that doesn't mean they're completely respected. We have a presidential candidate who openly said groping a woman because you're famous is okay. That's respect?
However, we can't expect this all at once, obviously. Respect takes time, of course, but women being newer to the work force, as Ms. Davis defended, isn't an excuse for the wage gap. If we should truly "relax", shouldn't we be able to be paid equally for the same work as a man? If we're truly "okay", shouldn't we be past this in the 21st century?
As for the point about chivalry being disrespectful, there is nothing wrong with a man "doing the dirty work or paying the bill". Likewise, there's nothing wrong with a woman doing it, either. It's the idea that women can't or shouldn't do these things is what's wrong.The "double standard" that Ms. Davis spoke of isn't coming from feminists, and it's disrespectful to feminists that they're being blamed for it.
The truth of the matter is, we still need feminism. It's not making men seem inferior, it's in fact doing the opposite - it's making men and women equal, because that's the way it should be. Genders aren't "meant to compliment each other" and therefore allow gaps. A gender stops at a person's personal mindset and/or physical makeup, and has nothing to do with society. That's why feminism matters, because gender is still seen as a bigger factor than it really is and it's still affecting a person's everyday life as a functioning human in society.
Even in the 21st century, even after how far women have come - feminism isn't something that can be shut down because it still matters. So for people to be "so over it", good - maybe then something will be done about it.
