Dear Modern Feminism
Holy crap, what is going on?
I’m so frustrated with this cause that I dearly believe in. Instead of reaching for tolerance and high ideals, the intellectual wing of feminism seems mired in ego, short-sightedness and celebrity snark.
Instead of being a philosophical haven for both the poet and the career woman, instead of being a champion for both the housewife and the soldier, we instead seem to be complicit in the demonization of the very vocabulary of self-empowerment. Young women today don’t want to be called, ‘feminists,’ despite reaping every benefit that feminism has fought for for decades. We’ve allowed ridiculous mythology and retroactive history to stand unchallenged.
There are some things that need to happen.
First, we need to quit worrying about mainstream acceptance. The world admires people who stick to their ideals, even if history has not yet caught up to those values. Getting the tacit approval of the mainstream media and punditry should be a secondary goal at best. If feminism isn’t worth standing up for, if it’s not worth the risk of being momentarily unpopular to defend, then we’re doing it wrong. Find a North star and stick to it. And if someone asks you if you’re a feminist, don’t hem and haw and shuffle your feet, instead say, “Of course I am, I believe in human fairness. Don’t you?”
Second, we need to quit apologizing for the minuscule minority of radical bigots who speak under the guise of feminism. Every group has them, and so do we. And they have never spoken for the majority of feminists. I’ll take the heat for those thoughtless people as soon as our detractors do so for every rancid lunatic in their own ideologies; every religious zealot, every hardcore bigot, every sad, confused misogynist. Don’t let the enemy define our struggle in idiotic, untrue terminology.
Third, better wake up and smell the real world, people. If you think feminism should be all about white, cis-gendered and straight females, I have no more use for you than the deluded weirdos who think feminists are out to castrate all males. It has not been an inclusive movement in the past, and the answer to ignorance and bigotry is never more ignorance and bigotry. It’s time to admit that the movement is rife with privileged thinking, face the mistakes of the past (and present), and correct them. Their struggle is THE struggle. They are not separate issues. And we lose any moral high ground when we sideline people for the same reason the bigots sideline people, for their race, beliefs, gender, or sexuality. We become the enemy.
Fourth, it is not such a bad thing to let the world know what feminism has accomplished. It was just a few decades ago that even bringing up the subject meant being branded as mentally deranged. Young women today have options and opportunities that were mostly unimaginable to their great grandmothers and it took a lot of brave people of all genders to make that happen. But the cause was feminism. The social change came about because feminists had the courage to demand it, to hold up a mirror and expose the basic inhumanity of oppressing half the world’s population. It’s time to quit starting every conversation about feminism with a preemptive apology.
Fifth, womens’ rights around the world have to be positioned as a fight for human dignity, not a purely political issue. Systemic abuse of women is occurring around the globe, and our message should be one of hope and freedom. Time and again, we’ve seen that political pressure can make a difference, however gradual and painful that process can be. Feminism is a human rights issue. It is an idea that infects people with the desire to empower themselves and to treat others with respect. That is a message we should fight for.
Being a feminist isn’t always easy. It is an ideology that is constantly and deliberately vilified and diminished and mocked. But the central message is so simple that even its enemies have to face the truth of it. The message is, no one should be limited in what they can accomplish for reasons of gender. It is no different in its core principle than any other human rights issue. Everything else is just a distraction. If you believe in human decency, then you believe in some form of feminism, no matter what televangelists and pandering politicians try to make people believe. But we have a responsibility to get that message out there both by communication and, even more importantly, by example, by the way we choose to live our lives.
We need to have a big tent, that’s open to a great many people. We need to understand that there is no such thing as a ‘typical feminist,’ and that a feminist can look like many different things. And we need to be as good as our promise.
That’s what’s on my mind this morning. We now return to comments about Batman and Superman kissing.
