For his 55th birthday last week, President Obama penned an essay on feminism in Glamour magazine. Granted, the bar wasn’t set too high, but Obama did a masterful job painting his perspective on gender.
Like the president, who mentions his two daughters and the First Lady in his piece, I’ve grown up surrounded by incredibly strong women, sometimes (especially considering the gender breakdown in my family: males are outnumbered almost 3:1 on my mom’s side) exclusively women. I’m proud to say that one of the biggest role models of my life, the one who sparked my interest in social justice, was also a raging, unapologetic feminist.
What’s more, I’m thankful and amazed that I came of age in a society that is becoming ever more tolerant of fluid gender roles. Men can be stay-at-home dads, and women can aspire to the presidency. Currently, we have the first president ever to self-identify as a feminist. Thankfully, our queen identifies as one, too.
So why does this matter? As an only child growing up in a family full of girls, I had very few references for overt masculinity. My dad, a former cop, seemed to make up for it by tinkering with motorcycles, going to the gun range, and literally painting our house red, white and blue.
I am also Filipino. Growing up Filipino means you also, by association, raised Christian. My uncle pastored a church that I’ve gone to my entire life. From there, the message about men and women’s gender roles were clear, even if presented ever so subtly: men be strong, women be quiet.
With all of this added up, I was constantly reminded of how far I fell out of the typical mold for a man--even as a young boy. Boys were supposed to be loud and rambunctious, I was quiet and sat next to my mom at all family parties. Boys were tough and strong, in first grade I was pretty much the class crybaby. In college, while my fellow male friends took science and math classes surrounded by men, I took social science and humanities classes where I was surrounded by women. When they moved onto fields dominated by men, I moved on to education, a field still dominated by women (and all the financial and cultural issues that implies). In short; as a male, I felt I didn’t fit the typical mold of a male. And that’s all it takes for a person to not feel like one. And not feeling like you belong presents some very serious consequences for young adults.
At home, my father still remains an amazing role model. He’s taught me how to stretch a dollar to the thinnest of margins, how to read a map (an actual, old-school, paper map) and how to handle a handgun. Yet looking back, he too fell victim to society’s expectations of himself as a male. Whenever a household chore didn’t meet his standards, he berated me by saying I did work comparable in quality “to a lady.”
That’s all behind me now, as along with this country, I’ve made progress in defining personhood. That includes not falling victim to the old notion that not thinking, looking, or acting a certain way makes me any less worthy of being a person.
I also learned about the advantages that being a male gave me: I would never be the victim of a bad driving joke, never have to answer for a “mysterious” mood, or never be at-risk for losing my job because of my gender. I would never be the focus of a school dress code. I would never be catcalled for wearing shorts because it’s hot outside. I would be paid more at work, and be more likely to be successful than a female doing the same job.
As I learned all this, it dawned on me that, even if I had no choice in the matter, I too was contributing to society’s lie. If I wanted people to see others as more than just an arbitrary set of gender roles, I had to side with the gender that had been oppressed by those roles first place. I had to side with women.
That’s why I’m a feminist. Because all of this doesn’t only affect women, it affects men, too.
Today, we live in a world where feminism have progressed remarkably since women won one of the most significant victories in their movement. The federal government has banned sexual discrimination in public schools, women now have the right to serve their country in more military roles than ever before, a woman will appear on our currency for the first time and a woman holds a major-party nomination for the presidency.
Yet there are still many indications that we’re not where we need to be: people trying to out-slut shame each other on Twitter, women getting paid 79 cents to every man’s dollar, men subtly trying to restrict a woman’s right to choose and the president being called out on his sexuality because apparently supporting equality for females automatically means you’re gay (news flash: it doesn’t).
We cannot restrict young boys and girls the right to their own aspirations any longer. The burden undoubtedly lies on millennials, the "p**** generation," the first ones to unbound themselves from the rigid gender roles of their parents and grandparents. Males need to feel like themselves no matter their choices in life, and females need to feel like themselves regardless of their choices in life too. And even if you don’t fall into that strict binary, you need to feel like yourself too.
There needs to be more accountability for the system of patriarchy this country still promotes, and we all need to help in fixing it. We need to fix the myth that anti-choice means pro-everyone. That only men can be CEOs. That somehow a woman’s success is unbecoming of her character (unless of course, a few favors were exchanged). That somehow full, unapologetic equality for women is somehow a threat to our society (read: threat to men). That men should aspire to greatness while a woman should only aspire to marry it. That women breadwinners somehow undermines the workplace. That somehow how much skin a woman shows is directly correlated to how many men she sleeps with — while a man is rewarded for the exact same thing.
We need to recognize that there is way more than one way to celebrate your personhood, and it need not be restricted to wearing a certain color or playing with a certain toy. Because humans are way more complex than the set of plumbing they own between their legs.
And the only way to do that is to admit you’re a part of this type of thinking, and offer your hand to help fix it, to make sure everyone is equal. That’s what feminism is: recognition that women don’t want to burn men on the stake along with their bras--they simply want to be treated equally. This comes with the recognition that historically, they haven’t been treated as such.
President Obama won’t be living in the White House for his 56th birthday. It could very well be someone different — someone who sets us back generations in gender equality. That’s why the issue of feminism is more important than ever.
I’m a feminist. Self-identifying as one doesn’t make you any less of a man. But, as the president says, it makes all of us a little more free. And it makes me a lot more self-secure.
It’s time more young men and women feel the same way.
