***Note: For the sake
of brevity, unless otherwise indicated, the term “men” in this blog post refers
to heterosexual cis males.***
A
couple weeks ago, Joss Whedon made waves across the Internet when he
spoke at an Equality Now dinner about his issues with the word “feminism”.
While I don’t doubt that he had good intentions, and he did bring up an issue
worth discussing (albeit not as revolutionary and novel as he seems to think it
is), the overall speech is something of a disaster. Besides the fact that
Whedon is a wealthy, heterosexual, cis-gendered white man and therefore not
in a position to lecture feminists on how to run their movement, he
demonstrates a
complete
ignorance
when it comes to the history and theory of feminism and how oppression works.
No one’s perfect, but considering that Whedon is viewed by many (unjustly, in
my humble opinion) as a feminist icon, his lack of self-awareness is
disconcerting, to say the least.
You heard Tina Fey: this is not
helpful.
There are plenty of valid reasons
for a person to not identify as a feminist. It’s no secret that the movement
has a rather troubled history of focusing on the needs of a specific
demographic (namely, upper/middle-class heterosexual white women) while
marginalizing or downright ignoring other, less visible groups – hence, the
emergence of intersectionality
and Alice Walker’s womanism.
As a collection of many different individuals with their own personalities, backgrounds,
beliefs and values, feminism encompasses a wide range of complicated, even
contradictory ideas, which inevitably results in disagreements and internal
conflict. In fact, the principles of feminism are so broad and loosely defined
that they render the term pretty much meaningless; labels matter little
compared to actions, so as long as you consciously strive to create change, it
doesn’t matter what you call yourself.
But the recent backlash has nothing to do with history or integrity. Rather, it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the term itself. You don’t have to take college courses in women and gender studies or memorize decades of texts and theories in order to contribute to feminism, but I don’t feel like it’s asking too much for people who want to voice their opinions to at least have a vague clue of what they’re talking about. It’s not like Whedon, Perry or any of the other aforementioned celebrities are impoverished or unable to access the resources necessary for education; they have absolutely no justifiable excuse for being so uninformed. Even if, for whatever reason, you aren’t familiar with an issue, don’t blab nonsense and then get all defensive when people call you out on your BS. Either own up to your mistake and figure out what you can do better in the future or make it easy on yourself and just admit you don’t know in the first place.
Watch
and learn, assholes.
Since it’s apparently such a source of confusion, let’s
clarify a few things, shall we? According to Merriam-Webster,
feminism is simply a) the belief that men and women should have equal rights
and opportunities and b) organized activity in support of women’s rights and
interests. Aside from perhaps a few fringe radicals, feminists do not believe
that men are inherently evil, that the two sexes are engaged in some kind of everlasting
war with each other, that society should be transformed into a totalitarian matriarchy
à la Neil LaBute’s Wicker Man in
which men are reduced to helpless servants, or any of those other ridiculous fallacies.
Feminists are not all angry, unattractive, bra-burning, man-hating lesbians who
object to shaving their legs and greet men by punching them in the face.
Feminists aren’t prohibited from getting married or enjoying the support and
company of men or liking fashion, cooking, dolls, rom-coms, the color pink and
other “girly” things. In short, feminism isn’t about dictating what women
should and shouldn’t do in order to be taken seriously; it’s about letting
women know that they should be taken seriously no matter what they choose to
do.
However,
while I won’t deny that the movement has some major inclusion problems and needs
to find better ways to advance its cause (i.e. ways that don’t involve
viciously lambasting anyone who ventures to express a dissenting or innocently
misguided opinion or who doesn’t already happen to have a thorough knowledge of
the intricacies of systematic prejudice, the gender binary, rape culture,
etc.), feminism has no obligation to soften or compromise its politics in order
to accommodate the general public. What’s so frustrating about these comments
(Whedon’s in particular) is that not only do they blithely reinforce certain
stale, glaringly inaccurate stereotypes, but they also situate the blame squarely
on the shoulders of the feminist movement, as though feminists themselves are
the ones responsible for those stereotypes. People keep insisting that feminism
is in desperate need of a “rebranding” – a new name, a new image, a new
reputation – which is really just another way of telling women to be less loud
and hard-hitting, less bitchy, about
their desire for basic personal freedom and respect.
Privilege, ladies and gentlemen.
Naturally, this bothers men – the notion
of something that doesn’t revolve around them and that could potentially
undermine their authority, which they think is natural, a God-given right bestowed upon them simply for
existing, blissfully unaware that most people have to fight on a constant basis
to earn their humanity, much less even a semblance of power. So, they dismiss
women who openly express their opinions as crazy
shrews, bombarding them with insults and threats. They tell women to
“lighten up” and stop being killjoys, deploring the tyranny of political
correctness, because apparently, rape
jokes are an indispensable comedic treasure. They toss around accusations
of misandry,
hypocrisy
and “reverse
sexism,” as if having a dick makes you immune to criticism. They write
off the patriarchy as a myth concocted by feminists to perpetuate some sort
of victim complex and damsel-in-distress fantasy, claiming that women nowadays
are technically equal and can do anything they want. Well, it may be easy for
them to maintain the delusion that we live in a post-feminist world where
everything’s fine and dandy, and misogyny is some preposterous indignity that
we’ve long since outgrown, but to me, it’s not true equality when women are
still judged by what they wear and men dictate what women are allowed to do
with their bodies and one or two female-led blockbusters a year is supposed to
be adequate (“Sure, guys get Iron Man 3,
Star Trek into Darkness, Man of Steel, The Hobbit and a billion other movies, but you gals have Catching Fire!”). And that’s not even
taking into account transnational feminism. Ironically, men’s continued refusal
to acknowledge male privilege as a legitimate concept only serves to
further prove its legitimacy.
In the
end, feminism isn’t struggling because of semantics or because it’s gotten too
radical. It’s because men are doing everything humanly possible to avoid
culpability, conjuring up excuse after convenient excuse for why it’s not their problem and they shouldn’t have to change. It certainly doesn’t help that the
mainstream media has an obnoxious tendency to lavish praise on men like Whedon,
even though there are plenty
of
high-profile women who openly advocate for feminist issues, thereby lending
credence to the assumption that men are entitled to a platform for their views and
that feminism is only valuable when endorsed by dudes. But you know what, men?
Feminism isn’t for you. It isn’t
supposed to be appealing or sexy. It isn’t supposed to make you comfortable –
in fact, it’s supposed to do the exact opposite. It’s supposed to be messy and
provocative and unsettling. The “ist” is wholly appropriate because equality is a social construct and feminism is a fucking agenda.
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