There she sits at her desk from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., a regular eight-hour day. She's worked her butt off all day and is proud of what she’s accomplished. She’s the only woman in the office and knows she beat out all her male counterparts today. She should be able to go home with a huge smile, but she can’t and that’s the sad part of her life. She wasn’t rewarded for her hard work today. Instead she was almost sent home because she was "distracting" her male coworkers with her bra strap barely showing. The beautiful woman knows that, when she gets paid this weekend, her male friends will have made more money than her, but not because they worked harder — because they are men and she’s a woman. She knows it’s not fair at all, and that’s why she supports feminism so much for the equality of women compared to the men they work with every day. Feminism: A movement taking over the world again and rightfully so.

Feminism is usually talked about through the eyes of women, which makes complete sense because it is a battle for women’s equality, but the support for it is not a one-way street. Men have also come to join the fight for women’s equality and that can be a different story. When it comes from the point of a woman, they are talking about their own personal battles whether it is because they aren’t being paid fairly, being told they can’t wear certain outfits because they are supposedly distracting, etc. Coming from the view of a male, it’s not about being treated unfairly but realizing that seeing our female counterparts treated like they can’t do the work we do is simply ridiculous. We sit there and see Susan walking down the street and notice how uncomfortable she is because the two guys who just whistled at her about her outfit she was wearing. We are able to notice that we couldn’t go through this so why should they have to?

When some people ask me why I am so interested in feminism, it’s a pretty simple answer for me to give them. I wouldn’t want my mother or future daughter being treated like this, so why would I want any other woman to feel the same way? As a young adult in this world, I am very connected with my surroundings and with social media, so I’m almost guaranteed to notice sexist things more often. A prime example is from what was a trending hashtag on Twitter called "bodyposi." It was a movement for women to post pictures of their bodies, clothed or unclothed, because they loved themselves and were proud of who they were and how they looked. Like everything else in the world today, it couldn’t be taken positively and was soon turned into a negative battle with guys, some of whose profile pictures were of them shirtless, calling these women whores and such negative things because they were proud of their bodies. A sad thing to see when most of your friends are women and guys are telling them they can’t appreciate how they look.

Another form of current sexism is the pay gap between men and women in the common workplace. According to the Pew Research Center, women make 84 percent of what men make on average (and it's even less for women of color). This means that to catch up to a male’s full-year salary, they would need to work an extra 40 days into the next year to have an equal salary. A lot of businesses say this is because of things like maternity leave and such, which in my mind makes no sense because that means women are being punished for something that is done naturally. I do not know how much my mother makes in her line of work and do not think it is my right to know, but if I were to find out she made less than her male coworkers and the issue was because she was female, it would infuriate me.

The main reason I, a male, support feminism so much is because of my friends. Growing up, making friends was easy, and I became friends with plenty of people from both genders. It pains me to see one of my female friends being judged because of the way she looks or because of her gender. When they are afraid to show off their bodies because it’s going to be judged from head to toe, I feel for them. I couldn’t imagine being afraid to walk outside sometimes because someone is going to catcall as I walk down the street. Women should be judged on how hard they are working and not on appearance. As a man, I may not need feminism, but I do support in all its ways.