I am sick to death of hearing people criticise feminism, it is ridiculous and many of the reasons given for these criticisms are sexist in themselves. One of the most popular reasons I have been hearing of late is that feminism discriminates against men. This is wrong, period. Feminists believe that women should have equal rights. The same rights as men. If you want to change it and pretend that it means something else then I have to really question your purpose in doing so. Apparently one of the top reasons that people profess to hate feminism and feminists is that feminists hate men. This is a lie. Feminists do not hate men, if we hated men why would we want them to have rights equal to ours?
Then of course I have heard the stories about how what feminism really is, is defined by radical man hating women who took actions, or said things that the hater in question didn’t like. I have even heard people tell me that feminism exists for the purpose of hating men and destroying them. Any idiot with a dictionary can quickly discover that the words feminist and feminism are in the dictionary. The definitions of these words have not changed just because there are those who may have misused them for the purpose of pushing extremist or political agendas. I have heard people claim that feminism is not about equal rights but is actually about women who wish to have more rights than men. Another lie.
Are there people in the world who have said and done ridiculous things in the name of feminism? Yes there are, but like I said, anyone who is capable of using a dictionary should be able to quickly discover that any form of sexism is a distinctly non feminist act. The key word here is EQUAL. Anyone who does not support equal rights for men and women is not a feminist. You have no right to discredit an entire movement just because of a few idiots who, like you, did not use a dictionary before deciding to use the words feminist or feminism.
Consider the logic at play here, there are extremists within every single group, movement or organisation that exists throughout the entire world. Trying to void the very principles of equality just because someone misused a word and you believed them instead of finding out what it meant for yourself is ignorant to say the very least. If you were to apply this same logic to the animal rights movement then you would have to assume that all animal rights activists are vegetarians that protest outside of butcher shops or undertake other extreme activity. Many animal rights activists are very extreme and have taken extreme actions, does this mean that you hate animal rights activists?
In my opinion, the word feminism is hated because it contains the first three letters of the word female … and an organisation that stands for the rights of women clearly offends some people, without even knowing what feminism is people are offended because they assume that the mere usage of the letters FEM discriminates against males. This, once again is ridiculous logic!! Do you assume that animal rights activists discriminate against humans just because there is no reference to the fact that they don’t in the phrase “animal rights” ? Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it …. yet it is the same logic being used by haters of feminism.
Another popular criticism of feminism is that feminists do not do enough for men … well HELLO that is not their purpose. Do you hate activists that protest against the slaughter of whales because they do nothing for elephants?? When did feminism become responsible for monitoring and representing every single thing that is wrong in society?
Feminists do not discriminate against men, period. Any gender based discrimination is not feminism because it directly opposes the singular purpose of feminism which is EQUAL rights. If you need to look up the word EQUAL in the dictionary….then please do so. If you need to look up the word RIGHTS in the dictionary than please do so …. facts, you can ignore them but they don’t go away.
One Little Voice 