Last semester, a female classmate of mine once prefaced a statement made in class with, “I’m definitely not a feminist but … ” When asked why she didn’t consider herself a feminist, she replied, “I’ll keep my bra, thank you.”
This statement – probably the most ignorant and offensive I’d heard in awhile – reinforced something I’d always known and resented – that for many people, “feminism” is a scary word.
Sadly, the connotations of this word are far from the actual meaning of it. In fact, most feminists do not fit the scary, cartoonish stereotype of the “butch man-hater” going braless and taking to the streets with a bullhorn, screaming angry diatribes to a few like-minded listeners.
Too many times I have been asked with disbelief, “you’re a feminist?” as if it were some sort of terrible affliction only bestowed upon the bitter and unlucky. I for one am tired of the ghastly shadow cast upon feminism and its advocates.
Well, then what is feminism? Why do I care and why should you? Simply put, to be a feminist means to be an advocate of women’s social, economic and political equality to men. Scary, huh?
My point is that too many people out there are quick to denounce feminism, but do not realize the pressing need for it. You may be asking yourself about now: “last I checked women and men were equal … didn’t we take care of this in the ’60s?” Sadly, we live in a world where women are still grossly unequal to men – a world where it can be a very scary place to be a woman. Thankfully, in this country we escape the worst of the worst – human trafficking, genital mutilation, sexual slavery, forced sterilization, systematic rape, etc. – but we are still not equal and free.
We live in a country where every 90 seconds, a woman is sexually assaulted. That is too frequent. Think of four of your female friends – by the end of their time at college, one will have experienced attempted or completed rape. Women under the age of 24 are at the greatest risk for experiencing rape or sexual assault. As a young, collegiate woman, this scares me.
In this country, women still do not receive equal pay for equal work, and it is sometimes difficult to watch TV, open a magazine or walk down the street without feeling reduced to a sexual object. Something must be done, and if none of us consider ourselves feminists, nothing will be done.
I’m tired of people attaching political views to feminism, as a means for negating or ignoring it – “Of course you’re a feminist, you’re a liberal.” It is not a matter of liberal versus conservative. How can you put a political title on equality, the most pan-American value there is?
It is not a matter of man versus woman. How can you attach a gender to a value geared at building bridges between men and women? Just because embracing feminism and recognizing the woman’s experience may make us uncomfortable, does not make it peripheral. As part of a higher education community, we are educated enough to know that discomfort is often the catalyst for social change. It is important for those in our community, educators, scholars and administrators alike to make the adult realization that feminism is not irrelevant, not anti-man and not counter to what we value in our Jesuit higher education.
