Before I get started, I just want to tell you that this post may offend you, especially if you consider yourself a hardcore feminist. So now that you’ve been warned and you’re still reading, let’s dive in.
What is feminism?
Feminism is a belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. This means that you believe that men, women, and everything in between, should have equal rights. That anything a man can do, a woman should have the same opportunity to do as well.
Now, feminism by definition is an amazing thing. It promotes equal rights which is what we all deserve. The problem comes in when you actually put humans into the equation, because we ruin everything.
In this day and age, we have people who call themselves feminists but don’t support people who aren’t like them. For some reason, it has become ingrained into our brains that all feminists have to agree on everything, and that if you don’t, you’re not a real feminist. This mindset goes against the very equality that feminism promotes. How can we expect others to get behind feminism when we can’t do that amongst ourselves? When a woman has an opinion that is her own, she gets called out and ridiculed, but doesn’t that defy feminism? For example, I’m sure you heard that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recently entered some hot water over some comments she made about trans woman in relation to the feminist movement. To summarize, she basically said that since trans-woman were born men, they have not endured all the struggles that natural born woman have, which is a statement that I personally agree with. Granted, trans-women deal with their own set of issues, some that natural born woman can’t relate to. Yet a lot of feminists didn’t agree with this statement and quickly began to bash and tear down Adichie, which got me thinking. If we as woman tear each other down every time we disagree, doesn’t that completely tear apart feminine from the inside-out? I mean, I understand that conflict is a part of life, but if you claim that you support equality and then tear someone down based on their views, that’s just pathetic, and in a movement based on equality, how can we tear other woman down when their opinions differ from ours? That defeats the whole purpose of feminism, and quite frankly, it makes us look really, really stupid. As woman, we have always had to fight for our voices to be properly heard. We’ve been pushed aside for centuries and now that we the platform for our voices to be heard, we are tearing other woman down. That’s a big step for womankind, isn’t it.
It is nearly impossible for all feminist to agree, because at the end of the day, we are all still human. But we must come to terms with the fact that to be one body, we have to accept the different visions that are shared within our secret society. Now I’m not saying that you have to agree with everything, that’s absurd. But we can’t tear down other woman who want the same thing as us. That means you can’t go on a twitter rant about how so and so said something you disagree with so now you’re gonna bash them for breathing and call them a trick ass bitch. We already have enough external forces trying to bring us down. We have to respect each other and learn to agree to disagree, because we all have one common goal, and that’s equality.
