Feminism Ain't Dead!

The idea of feminism being irrelevant and antiquated is one purveyed throughout society, from the mass media to the naïve students at the high-achieving girls’ school that I attend. That is not to say that these people do not want gender equality; they just refuse to accept the fact that feminism is still necessary in today’s society.

A few months ago, a friend came to me, asking for “feminist help”. Happy to educate someone new on the importance of gender rights, I agreed. His responses to my texts, however, were incredibly alarming. Often he would return with, “But women have their equal pay now. Shouldn’t they just get over it now?” This infuriated me (just to clarify, he was not representing his own view and rather trying to make a balanced argument on the relevancy of feminism for a school project) and at the time I had no real rebuttal to give except that equal pay was not yet a reality and that there is SO much more to feminism than that.  According to the European Institute for Gender Equality’s Gender Equality Index, even the UK is only three quarters of the way to economic gender equality. So how can feminism be out-dated if it has not even achieved what it set out to do? 

Well, you see, the issue with feminism is that it has one fatal flaw: its name. Feminism, as a concept, was first began to give females the same rights as males, a noble cause. At its core is still this desire for men and women to be equal, but with this seeming equality in the Western world, the use of a pro-XX word seems wrong and obsolete. What is required to revive feminism is gender-neutrality. As a self-professed feminist, I don’t care for the “girl power” of the 90s; what I want is equality. I want to see young girls encouraged to be footballers and rugby players, and I want young boys to be comfortable with the idea of being hairdressers and nurses. I hate the chauvinism that exists in male-dominated professions. I want things to get better for females, but that does not mean it has to get any worse for males, and I think the fear of it getting worse is what puts most men off of feminism.

Another thing that puts not only males, but also females (myself included!) off of feminism is their perception of feminists and feminism. When I first started reading up on feminism, the only feminists that I knew were all what I like to call “militant feminists”; I had heard horror stories of some going to anti-abortion protests and shouting in the faces of pro-lifers, telling them that their beliefs, even their beliefs in God, were all wrong. That was not the sort of person that I wished to be perceived as, and I think a huge proportion of potential young feminists do not identify as such because of this. You do not need to believe that men are unnecessary for the continuation of the human race and all that crazy stuff! So many people I know think that! And unfortunately, I think even more young girls believe that calling themselves feminists will make them less desirable to males, a saddening reality both because it should not do and because, in my opinion, you should believe what you think is right, not what you believe will make you more likeable to others.

In my honest opinion, feminism is just as relevant today as it has always been. Feminism is needed because there are still more women than men working against domestic violence and rape culture and numerous other gender-related issues. Males and females must be seen as equal to discourage wage discrepancies, to obliterate rape culture, to stop FGM, to end stigmatisation of LGBT communities, to stamp down on gender-related violence, to normalise “house-husbands” married to working wives, to kill body-shaming culture, to allow people to be themselves and to be happy, regardless of how they are.

Yes, I am a feminist and I will be until the day that I die. You should be too.