There was a time I was afraid to use that word in the company of some people. It has a certain connotation with my generation, because we grew up in a post-women's lib world which included a little trope known as the straw feminist. The first and most memorable straw feminist I encountered was the unreasonable alarmist Jesse Spano on Saved by the Bell. Remember her? Wasn't she annoying? And then she became addicted to caffeine pills and that was mildly disturbing yet weirdly amusing...
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| She was so excited, SO EXCITED! |
Anyway, she used to call Slater a pig and rant about the inequality of society, but, as I'm sure you'll recall, all of her arguments were stupid. Just stupid. Because of this type of insanity, the pervading idea of the time is that "feminists are illogical, angry, and a nuisance." I never bought into that lie, but I was afraid to align myself with the movement for fear of being painted with the same ignorant brush.
Not anymore.
Here's the truth: A feminist is a person who believes that people should be treated equally regardless of gender. That's it.
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| This guy is my favorite. |
There's nothing in there about stupidity or man-hating. Nope. I am happy to claim feminism now. My tweets and Pinterest boards are full of feminism, and for awhile, I tried to restrict myself in the number of feminist things I shared, particularly on Twitter, but not anymore. If someone doesn't agree with me, they can unfollow me. Not hard.
I am done apologizing for standing up for what I believe. I am done feeling like I'm somehow in the wrong for thinking this way, and I am done with believing that there's nothing I can do to change things.
We live in an unbalanced world. We live in a world that teaches us that to be feminine is to be weak, a world that teaches little girls that the best thing they can be is pretty, and that if they aren't "pretty" by society's standards then there's something wrong with them. We live in a world that teaches us that a girl with no sexual experience is worth more than a girl with much.
Why do we accept this crap? I'm fed up. I'm done with it. I'm done with hearing my friends tear themselves down, because they "aren't good enough." I'm done with teenage girls telling me about their anorexia and bulimia, their binge drinking just to forget everything they feel, and their cutting themselves just to feel something. I don't want to hear about another friend who has been harassed, or assaulted, or abused (emotionally, physically, etc.), or raped. I'm done with a culture that allows this garbage. Are you?
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| This is the right time for a Doctor Who moment, right? |
Wanna know how to fix it? Wanna know something you can do?
First, what you have to understand is that the little traces of sexism we see are indicative of a much larger problem. We see women objectified and sexualized daily. Advertisements with a half-naked woman as the selling point, or with a damsel in distress and fictional images of women who are hot but kinda stupid, "strong" but overtly sexual, or smart but sexually fixated, like Amy Farrah Fowler on Big Bang Theory, who is terribly funny but makes me want to scream... are a huge part of the problem; these images are deeply ingrained in us both individually and as a society. When a woman is portrayed as an object, she no longer has the ability or right to make her own decisions. When a woman is seen first and foremost as sexual, as opposed to as a person with a brain and a soul, it makes it "okay" to treat her as less than human, less than a man. This is the kind of thinking that leads to sexual harassment, domestic abuse, and rape among other things, because "she was asking for it," "it's no big deal," "she's over reacting."
Now, here's what you can do: When you see sexism, don't condone it. Yep, it's that simple. If a TV show or movie has female characters who are objectified, degraded, hyper-sexualized, etc., don't watch it. If an advertisement is denigrating or misogynistic, don't buy the product it's selling. If these advertisements appear in a magazine you read, tell the magazine to stop running that ad. And if the magazine won't..., stop buying the magazine. Call out sexism on Twitter and Facebook. Miss Representation has a wonderful #NotBuyingIt campaign designed specifically for this purpose. Get other people on board with you by starting a petition if necessary. Money talks, and if these companies know that they aren't going to be making as much of it, they change things.
Another thing you can do is tell people when they are being sexist. Tell a man that his catcalling isn't a compliment; it's harassment. Teach boys that you can't touch a girl without her consent and that sending her text messages asking to see her boobs is also harassment. Teach high school guys that "no" means no, drunk means no, unconscious means no, "I don't want to" means no, "please stop" means no, and any other greater or lesser indication that she might not want to do that with you means NO.
We can stop this. We have more power than we believe. We can change the culture in which we live, and it is high time that we did. We can make a better world for women and girls, and if the world is better for women and girls, it's better for men too.
