The F-Word

The F word . 1 in 5 people in the country would be offended if you called them a feminist. In a recent survey of 12000 people from 32 countries, less than a third of women and only 17% of men identified as feminists. Some because they don’t think feminism is relevant anymore, some because they disagree with the ideals or don’t see the point. Oprah Winfrey stated that she wouldn’t say that she was a feminist but “I don’t think you can be a woman in this world and not be”. In the 1980s she was earning $22000 annually while her male co-anchor was taking home $50000. She knew then that feminism was still an important issue. In the 1990s, Pat Robertson (the CEO of Regent University) said “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.”. For those who still believe that feminism isn’t relevant in today’s society, a quick search of the term feminism on line turns up several definitions and reading through we can start to see where it begins to go wrong. The top ‘Urban Dictionary’ definition is “they have set up shop in domestic violence shelters where they promote divorce, marriage breakup, hatred of men, and false accusations.”. This is swiftly followed by a barrage of expletive fuelled rants about feminists including “hormonally disfigured”, “bat shit insane” and my personal favourite “feminists are mainly self-obsessed fascists, who believe the only way to advance humans is to destroy men, families and most importantly good women”. I think now you can all understand the problem.

As I trawled the internet for more research, I came across a video of Emma Watson addressing why she believed that some men (and women) were having difficulty seeing feminism in a positive light. She said “I think the word is really difficult because it seems to inherently suggest a preferential treatment of the feminine over the masculine…rather than gender equality across the board”. Everything Watson had to discuss on the matter, I felt was very reasonable and in no way in favour or biased of either gender. However, when I scrolled to the comments section below, it seemed as though all the trolls had crawled out from under their bridges and from inside their caves, to attack the actress on her views. Among the remarks, words like “cancer” and “nazi” poked out between “go back to Hogwarts” and “wow that’s my celebrity crush out the window”. These people, all of whom were very angry with Watson for being a feminist, but appeared to have taken the time to watch the video anyway, are a perfect example of how society appears to have taught or bred into our children that feminism means ‘man hating’. Unsurprisingly, the truth is almost always on the contrary, but this is one of the main reasons people dislike the modern feminist movement. Yes, some women (a very small minority) do hate men. Just as with misogynists, you don’t have to look very hard on the internet to discover examples of “feminists” who hate men. But I find it to be true that just because someone says they’re something doesn’t make it a fact. Some terrorists hide behind religion. Some abusers hide behind mental illness. There is a difference between feminist and misandrist. A misandrist is someone who hates men, but that’s not what feminist means. A feminist is (to quote the Oxford collins dictionary) “a person who believes that people should have equitable places in society regardless of their gender”. Some feminists are misandrists but that does not mean it’s a criterion to join the club. I think what some people forget is, that a portion doesn’t equal the whole, even if that portion is really loud. In the Ted Talk “We should all be feminists” Chimamanda Adichie said that, in Nigeria, where she was from, people claimed that being a feminist was not a part of African culture. It was as though she had been brainwashed by western ideals, they said. She also said that being a feminist made her an outcast as “that word feminist comes with so much baggage. You hate men, you hate bras, you hate African culture”. This is where is becomes apparent as to why people see being called a feminist as an insult. The toxic connotations of the word that has been instilled in us as a society have clouded the judgement of gender equality.

I appreciate that speaking publicly in support of feminism can be a controversial thing to do; often met with derision and insults from both males and females. But why should it be so controversial? When I told some of my friends that I was doing a speech on why the term ‘feminist' is seen as an insult, some of the responses I got were “you’re gonna get bullied so much for that” and “why isn’t that surprising” and “the reason why it’s an insult is because of all the crazy third wave feminists that hate men”. Why should it be seen as surprise? Yes I’m a feminist, no I don’t hate men, no I don’t think men are evil, no, I don’t think all men are rapists, yes I want equality for all genders. This is an issue that is close to my heart. As a girl, being confident can be mistaken for being “bossy” and in some of my male friends I see that they try to hide their emotions for fear of being “wet” or “girly”.

To conclude, ‘Feminist’ should never been seen as an insult, it should never be followed by “Nazi”.It should not be shadowed by the word “cancer”. It should be followed by the words, love, unity, empowerment, equality and friendship and kindness. As we move forward, take time to think about the men and women in your life and make sure they are treated equally with respect and love. Because a woman is not just someone’s mother, or sister, or friend or wife. She’s someone.