Feminism

Let me start off with a story, a story of a freshmen boy who was working on a paper for his English 104 class. The boy was writing an annotated bibliography on female doctors in the early 1900’s. It was during this time that the boy made a startling revelation about himself, he was a feminist. The revelation was so surprising that he said it out loud to a room full of peers. Several audible gasps were released, he couldn't be a feminist! He was a boy and feminist had a rap for being unreasonable and extreme! The boy was shunned, never to be heard from again.

It’s time to come clean my friends, that boy was me. Okay…so I wasn't shunned and I don’t think there were several gasps heard throughout the room. I get a little dramatic sometimes. The point of the story is that people did treat my new found feminist perspective as a bad thing. Like I had jumped into some irrational cult or something, or I was claiming something crazy. I thought my respect for women's rights would be a good thing. Nope. Feminism is  treated as a devil term and I’m not sure why.

I don’t find it unreasonable to think that men and women should be equally. We are raised in a society where equality is praised but women still make less money than men on the hour. It astounds me that women are still fighting for their right to their own bodies when we as a culture have come so far.

I don’t think men have it easy either. For every woman that is being objectified on screen, there is man who is getting exactly the same treatment. Men are one of two very simple stereotypes, the doting husband or the suave playboy bachelor. Men have to be insensitive and brave or else they are perceived as un masculine.

I think women and men both have it bad in our modern society. That’s why I consider myself a feminist. I want equality for both genders. That’s what I think modern feminism entails, a belief that we as humans are all entitled to equal treatment. The word feminism suggest a break away from our overly masculine culture, not just for the benefit of women but for the benefit of society as a whole.