What is feminism? Because there tends to be some misconceptions. For those of you who fantasize feminists as women who grow hair like gorillas, and want to conquer the government in an oppressive, fascist, man free manner, then this article is for you. We are not waging a civil war. Feminists just want women to have equality and for some reason, that is a concept that the world seems to have a real hard time processing.
Equality, hmmm. equality? How perplexing. The thing is, it’s actually a quite simple concept. But since this is something that people have difficulties understanding, I will break down the concept into simple terms. The formula concludes that A=B, no matter the change in variables A will ALWAYS equal B, and this is the part people struggle with. So when A represents women and B represents men, according to the rules of equality, the equation looks something like this, women=men. It should not be women<men or women>men. We are not deformed or mutated version of men, we never were and we never will be. And if we were Jewish, or Muslim, or lesbian, or bisexual, or black, or white, or transgender, this would not change.
Because I am just as human as you, whoever you are, we are equal. With humanity comes a certain responsibility to respect others, no matter how different he/she/they may be from you. Your rights end where someone else’s begins, and the rest should not matter. Feminism is the promotion and support of women of all shapes, ethnicities, and religions to participate in society with an equal status to that of men. Women want the power to achieve whatever career they want with equal pay to men, to vote with equal recognition to men, to have sexualities just as erotic as men, and not be shunned for it. We want to not be told what to do, or how to do it. We want the world to understand that femininity and women are not synonyms, they don’t mean the same thing -- rather, they dance around each other like rhyming couplets at the end of a shakespearean sonnet.That being said, there is nothing wrong with femininity, but it is not exclusively woman, just like masculinity is not exclusively man.
We want to speak our mind without being killed or raped. We want a choice and we don’t want to be scorned for it. We want to untie our broken toes, and fill our bulimic organs back with blood. We want to be thought about as more than a picture of a bikini hanging too loosely. Is this too much to ask, for some privacy, for some recognition?
We are tired of being told that sexism is a fact of history. We are tired of being told that it is passing or, even worse, that it is gone. While society has improved tremendously over the years, we are very much the weaker sex, a sacred object that, in some countries, are only meant to be polished and sold only to be re-polished and resold again. This has been a fight since the beginning of time.
Women globally have used their fists and mouths to break away from the grip of sexism, and when that didn’t work, they used knives, and they still are because the equation is still greatly unbalanced. When I say I am a feminist, I mean that I want things to be different for women, I need things to be different for women. I encourage you to join our movement, to become a feminist too. I don’t care who you are man or woman, or somewhere in between, support us in our fight for equality. That’s right; sex doesn’t matter. Sex never should have mattered.
