Opinion

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].

7 Comments

  • No man should be forced into parenthood against his will. Not even if he has consensual, unprotected sex with a woman he knows is fertile.

    All feminists recognize the right for women to refuse parenthood but they reject this right for men. This fact blows your “equality” argument for feminism right out of the water.

    If you are serious that feminism means equality, you will support a man’s right to abortion and a man’s right to refuse to pay child support or take on any of the obligations of fatherhood.

    You won’t be able to accept this view. You’ll say things like “It’s a woman’s body!” and “He shouldn’t have had unprotected sex!” YOU will turn feminism into an unequal gender war.

    Parenthood takes a man’s body, too. If she can get an abortion, he should have the right to one, too. THAT’S equality.

    Do not even try to deny it.

      • I see you derailing. The article was positive – positively full of lies.

        Challenging feminism’s claim to support equality is a legitimate criticism – and one that feminists cannot refute once the policies of feminism are examined in detail.

  • We’re now living in a post feminist era where feminists constantly fret about the man hating reputation of the movement before launching into the narrative that men are privileged and oppressed women so feminism can be an “equality” movement that only helps women.

    Most hate movements throughout time have found ways to portray themselves as victims before then “getting even” and attacking the other group. Heck, that’s precisely what “getting even” means. Nobody ever says “I’m going to get even and go and do something nice for that person because I owe them a dinner.”

    In the meantime, another of feminism’s flaws is economics 101 and how it impacts normal women: Most women want to marry up in income and would rather die childless and/or alone than marry down. So when women get “equality” and earn as much as men, then, by the law of mathematics, half of them will have to give up committed relationships with men OR adapt to the equality feminists claim to support.

    The problem is that most women either aren’t up to the challenge, or don’t want it.

    My wife’s father wanted her to become an Olympic gymnast. From the age of 6, she was pushed to workout 4 hours a day. My wife just didn’t feel she had the talent, or desire, to achieve this greatness and quit at the age of 14 or so.

    One bright side: She is in amazing physical shape!

    My point is that a lot of women are pushed by feminists for an equality, or life, many of them don’t want even as feminists claim the evil patriarchy is out to oppress or deny them choices. When a majority of women’s desires are incongruent with a movement, is that movement liberating them or manipulating them?

    In the end, even the feminist push for “equal wages” is a wash since men, unlike the noble feminist matriarchy, share their wealth with women. Stealing from Peter to pay Paula is silly since Peter was already going to share with Paula, but now can’t. Good going!

    No wonder women are waking up and rejecting feminism.

    • Please go bitterly into that good night PolishKnightUSA. Enjoy going your own lonely way as you feverishly polish your sword while dreaming of your imaginary Olympic gymnast waifu.

  • WRONG WRONG WRONG: “You can be a feminist while fighting for a man’s rights.”

    We no longer say FIREMAN.
    We no longer say POLICEMAN
    We no longer say MAILMAN

    We have removed sexist language and now say
    FIREFIGHTER
    POLICE OFFICER
    MAIL CARRIER

    In a similar way, we must remove sexism from movements

    The word FEMINISM is sexist. It is time to drop the word and use EGALITARIANISM.

    ONLY THEN; will men be a welcome as female police officers.

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