Hey Girls,
Recently I have seen a lot of hate rhetoric on feminism and even harsh things said to those women who support feminism wholeheartedly. I get it because feminism has recently been seen as a dirty word, but it is not, it is about equality. EQUALITY of the SEXES. Feminism does not mean we are standing in the street telling men they ruin the world, we are not burning our bras, we are not telling you to have an abortion.
Fem·i·nism: the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.
Now more than ever we need to have each others back, we need to stand together in the targeting of women's reproductive rights, and yeah you might not support abortion and that is fine but their is going to be a war on women's healthcare and these women are your peers, your sisters, your best friends, and for them to not have accessible health care access is not acceptable. Now more than ever there needs to be unity, there needs to be an understanding, we need to stop fighting.
It is 2017 and we are looking at the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned; that's right o-v-e-r-t-u-r-n-e-d. Then what will happen? Yeah Planned Parenthood can possibly be privately funded but what about those in poverty stricken areas, what about those girls in rural Mississippi where there is only ONE clinic in the entire state. ONE. What do they do? I know the comeback for that is "well don't have sex if you don't want to face the consequences'' screw the consequences, accidents happen. condoms are not 100 percent effective even if you use them perfectly every time they are 98 percent effective but people are not perfect so in reality they are only about 82 percent effective, birth control is pretty effective but it still fails on occasion according to Planned Parenthood.
We need feminism because women make less than men. In 2015 according to The Institute For Women's Policy Research full-time female workers made 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man, equaling a gender wage gap of 20 percent.
We need feminism because women still are seen to some as objects. Women are more than objects, they are more than sex symbols. We live in a screwed up world where people still think sexual assault is okay, where they still ask what she was wearing when it happened, where they blame the girl for getting assaulted, people are all about teaching girls how not to get raped, but what about teaching boys how not to rape girls? Just on college campuses alone 23.1 percent. of undergraduate females will experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, incapacitation, or violence according to RAINN. These are your hall mates, your roommates, your sorority sisters, your peers. I know men are raped too but and these instances go unreported due to embarrassment or the fear of not being believed, these cases are just as important though.
There are people out in the world who say all feminists hate men, and that is not true, at all. A lot of the discussion I have see has mentioned the feminist's believe they are superior to men and in no way is the true. Again all feminism is the equality of sexes, not men being better than women or women being better than men.
Please stop making excuses for why you cannot and will not be a feminist. I am not writing this to say your opinion is wrong of course we are entitled to our own opinion. But please do not discourage those who are strong, passionated feminists. Do not say they are wrong for wanting equality. Just because you say you do not need feminism does not mean someone else does not. Feminism is about equal rights, equal representation, it is about reproductive freedom, a pay gap, the end to getting blamed for a rape that is in now way their faults. End the stigma, get over yourselves. Fight for your equality, fight for the reason you currently have the rights you have now.
