All of my blogs about civic issues have been surrounding issues that many individuals that call themselves “feminists” fight for. I support all the causes that I wrote and researched for these blogs, however, I wouldn’t call myself a feminist. This is because the definition of the term “feminist” has become incredibly warped over the years to mean something that has an increasingly negative connotation behind it. This is the issue that I want to discuss in this week’s civic issues blog because this is not a problem that suddenly sprung up out of nowhere, it is an issue that has sprung up as a result of the overuse and abuse of the power of the internet.
A question I want to ask the person reading this is, what is the first thing that you think of when you hear that someone is a feminist? You probably think of a man-hating far-left woman who thinks that women are naturally superior to men and that all men deserve to die. This, however, is not what feminists used to be. According to the Oxford dictionary, the definition of a feminist is someone who supports feminism, and in turn, feminism is defined as “a person who supports the belief that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men”. Note that it says equal rights, not more rights. However, as I previously said, this definition has been twisted and many younger women, such as me, for example, no longer want to be associated with the term “feminist”.
The issue that I personally see in a variety of contexts nowadays, whether it be in rallies, on Twitter or Instagram, or just talking to another woman, is that there is the idea that women are in a way “superior” to men and for that, they deserve more rights than men. This completely defeats the idea of feminism in the first place, which is the idea of equality and equal rights. If women have more rights than men, then the idea of equality has been flushed down the toilet. A rebuttal to this argument is that in certain instances, women should be granted more rights than men, such as in the case of abortion or in cases where the woman’s body is the main topic of conversation, and in response to this, I want to say that I totally agree. What I don’t agree with is the idea that women deserve more rights than men in every aspect of the word simply because they are women.
All of this has given the term “feminist” a very stereotypical image, as I’ve described before. This seems to be a trend that feminists fall into a lot since it happened once before during second-wave feminism between the 1960s and the 1980s. The focal point of that stereotype (hating men) then wasn’t much different than the one now. In addition, the women of the movement wanted to distance themselves from the stereotype of a feminist that was “pushy, brash, [and didn’t] shave her legs” (Global News)
The other issue that many people have with the modern-day definition of feminism is that individuals tend to use it as a way of justifying their actions. Does this phrase sound familiar “I’m being a role model for young girls, they should grow up to be feminists and learn that showing off their body is nothing to be afraid of”. Many female models tend to spout this phrase out at any given opportunity when they are seen doing a photoshoot that the public considers to be inappropriate for the occasion that they are doing it for. This cannot be a defense to you wanting to be half-naked in a magazine. If you want to be half-naked just say so, but don’t say it’s so that young girls will feel empowered sexually because that’s a very disturbing statement to make.
These are just two of the arguments that have come up over the years regarding why the definition of feminism has changed and why more and more people are starting to shy away from identifying as feminists. I’m not sure what can be done to change it since it had been shown that it has been a problem with each new wave of feminism, but even just being aware that it is a problem that exists is already a good start.
Sources Cited
“Feminist Noun – Definition, Pictures, Pronunciation and Usage Notes: Oxford Advanced American Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com.” Feminist Noun – Definition, Pictures, Pronunciation and Usage Notes | Oxford Advanced American Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com, www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/feminist.
Marilisaraccoglobal. “Redefining the f-Word: What Does Feminism Look like Today?” Global News, Global News, 8 Mar. 2017, globalnews.ca/news/3292948/redefining-the-f-word-what-does-feminism-look-like-today/.