Pseudo feminism: It is not a battle between the sexes
Every human deserves equal treatment, irrespective of race, caste, creed, nationality or gender. Of course, this rule has been violated many times.
Racist attacks, war crimes, riots and killings in the name of religion and genocides serve as example. When the belief for common good is dishonored in any way, it breeds a dysfunctional society.
In feminism’s case, male-bashing has replaced candid conversations about the warped roles that women have taken in society — roles that men can’t relate to. Originated from the French language, feminism is the support of equal rights of the sexes. You can be a feminist while fighting for a man’s rights.
But our society has long been dominated by male influence. Denying it does no good. So the philosophy of feminism is often one that takes a defensive role for women, since women have historically gone undefended.
Equal rights for women does not correspond with male bashing. Equality for all sounds too good to be true, especially when so-called activists don’t work towards such an ideal.
No movement can do any good by slandering another group of society. If that is the motive behind a revolution, then that movement is headed for downfall.
An eye-for-an-eye approach to win equal rights is misleading. IHateMen.org has more than 300,000 members, but it hasn’t brought down the rate of sexual harassment cases or saved women from violence.
A misogynist is a person who hates or doesn’t trust women, and a misandrist is a person who hates or doesn’t trust men. While misogyny gets more recognition, both are toxic elements for a healthy society.
Being a feminist is not restricted to one gender — in fact, in order for it to be successful, it can’t be. There are many men who are strong believers of gender equality, such as Benedict Cumberbatch and John Legend.
The term feminazi has been brought into popular culture, especially by Rush Limbaugh, as a way to demean and insult feminists who came on too strong for misogynists to handle. The term gives more ground to dismiss feminist demands as trivial and to make pseudo-feminists the butt of jokes. It ruins the purpose that all the hard working feminists are striving for.
According to www.theguardian.com, a recent incident in China occurred where five feminists were “detained on suspicion of ‘picking quarrels and creating a disturbance’ after planning to highlight sexual harassment on International Women’s Day.”
One of the detainees, 25-year-old Zheng Churan, complained that feminists were dismissed as man-haters.
There are worse issues that a staunch feminist has to work upon than projecting every possible man as a sexual predator or evil. There are under-privileged and unfortunate women all across the world, such as the school girls in Nigeria kidnapped by Boko Haram.
As well, Yazidi woman are being tormented in Iraq by ISIS, according to BBC News, and woman are forced into prostitution due to severe human trafficking in Thailand, according to borgenproject.org. These are real feminist problems that need attention and a prolonged fight.
It is imperative to watch and weigh every word that is spoken. It never was or be the battle between the sexes. It is a battle against injustice and abuse given out to a half the world’s population.
Aishwarya Gogoi is a petroleum engineering graduate student and may be reached at [email protected].
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