Most people have a somewhat old
or inaccurate notion of what feminism is about. The meaning of feminismhas
dramatically evolved over the decades and each generation has developed the term
in new directions. By general definition feminism is a philosophy in which women
and their contributions are acknowledged and valued. It is based on social,
political and economic equality for women. On the other hand, Webster's
dictionary defines feminism as 'a theory of political, economic and social
equality of the sexes.' According to this anyone in the population can be a
feminist; for example men, women, boys or girls. Feminism can also be described
as a movement or a revolution that includes men and women who wish the world to
be equal without boundaries. These boundaries are better known as discrimination
and biases against gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status and economic
status. Therefor feminism is based around the idea of men and women being equal.
While feminism began focusing more solely on issues related to being a woman,
women do not experience their lives merely as women but also as women of
different races, classes, sexual orientations and other groupings. This led to
feminism expanding its focus to understanding how essentially everyone, men and
women, are mistreated and exploited in socially acceptable ways due to their
right status. Just like women in the beginning of feminist movement fought to
have their voices and perspective included and valued, feminists today fight to
include the voice and perspective of all groups who experience dominance in our
society, which is pretty much every single person.
While many feminist proponents focus their campaigns on issues such as
reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, sexual
harassment, discrimination and sexual violence other group of feminists identify
discrimination, exploitation and oppression, and NOT men as the problem. Today
feminism also acknowledges how patriarchy and other forms of social hierarchy
can hurt men while giving them benefits at the same time. It calls for them to
dominate, abuse, exploit and silence women and others in order to maintain
superiority and the traditional roles for women and men. However most men in
their heart do not want to treat women like this. They do not believe their
self-worth and masculinity is tied to how many women they have sexual
relationships with, how physically strong they are and how many people they can
beat up. In fact they are socially encouraged to do so and fear punishments from
other men if they stand up to these beliefs.
Feminism should be as much for men as it is for women in order to free them from
the sexist and oppressive beliefs that they do not want to have. Men are also
pushed into their conforming to their traditional gender roles, and socially
punished when they do not conform. For example, men are expected not to express
their feelings because 'real boys don't cry.' They're socially encouraged to
only express their fear, pain and stress in the form of anger and violence. As
another example, due to traditional gender roles, society thinks women are
automatically better parents than men, despite the numerous examples of bad
mothers and great fathers.
Both men and women can try to dominate each other and to be dominated, rewarding
and punishing according to how much they fit into traditional definitions of
gender, sexual orientation, race and class. In order to create a world where
there is no domination, where people are valued for being who they are fully and
freely, we need to strive to end the discrimination, exploitation and oppression
of people due to their gender, class, race, sexual orientation and other
differences. We should not let anyone dictate our lives, our likes and dislikes.
We need to free our thoughts and actions to make meaningful choices in how we
live our lives and pursue what makes us happy and fulfilling as human beings
rather than living up to people's standards.