For Feminist Girls And Anti-Feminist Boys – Please Take A Break, Because This Is What Feminism Is

Lately, the term Feminism has been affiliated with several meanings. The Oxford online dictionary defines it as “The advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes”, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities” (which is significantly more gender neutral than the former), and anti-feminists define it as “A cult of ugly women who disapprove of male privilege, like to burn bras and lash out on account of sexual frustration”. In case it wasn’t obvious, I concur with the second definition.

First, to the “feminists” who claim to hate men:

You ask for equality, you want to be considered equal (and sometimes even superior) to men, since men and women are both humans who didn’t have a choice in selecting their genders. I agree, women should NOT be punished, restricted, repressed or assaulted on account of their gender. But shouldn’t we grant men the same respect we are asking them to grant us? I have seen many Facebook posts of women exclaiming “I hate India and I hate all Men” after reading disturbing stories of other assaulted women online. But is generalization of men the key to the success of feminism? We should remember, just the way not all women falsely accuse men of rape, not all men mentally or physically rape every woman they see.

The United States of America didn’t get rid of slavery of African Americans by demanding to be the next master race, but by light skinned and dark skinned people realizing that despite their skin colors, they weren’t all that different and uniting for a cause. Similarly, feminism cannot be achieved by women blaming and hating men for every problem in their lives and demanding a matriarchal world, but by feminists, including men in their cause and respecting them equally as human beings. This generation of men was born into a patriarchal world, just the way we were. They aren’t the root cause of the worldwide disease that is misogyny, simply a symptom.

The social construct where women are only seen as pretty baby making objects who should know how to cook and clean is the cause. The next time you talk about how ‘men want women to stay in the kitchen, and spend more time planning diets than learning their school syllabuses’, remember that it is actually our mothers who tell us these things – it is our mothers who think that cooking is the most important skill a woman can have and it is our mothers who think that every inch of skin that doesn’t stick to our bones is too much skin. Not our brothers and not our boyfriends. Blame your unhappiness on patriarchy, not 3.5 billion men born into patriarchy. So stop spreading Misandry. Spread gender neutral love and promote equality.

Secondly, to the men who claim to hate feminism:

You are clutching your male privilege so tightly to your chest, I can almost see the bruising on your knuckles. Let me ask you, do you feel lucky to be a guy? You are one of the people who get to go where they want, when they want, to do whatever they want. You aren’t told by your parents to silently nod and cater to your sister’s wishes. You aren’t told that you should find your happiness inside closed doors, since the world outside your house belongs to another gender. You aren’t told that being beaten when you disagree with what a woman says is a part of your life, so you should either get used to living unhappily, or give up the option to have opinions. You know, women are told these things with respect to men, and you might think “well, I feel bad for them, but that’s how the world works”, but because that’s how the world currently works, should it continue to be the same? Should being born into one gender grant you freedom and power, while being born into another grant women unhappiness and chains?

Now, some of you must be thinking, “Women have more advantages than we do! They get alimony, child care and child custody. We don’t! You don’t see us complaining!”. This is where feminism comes in to help out men – women get all these things because they have traditionally been seen as only nurturers and not independent people, capable of earning their own bread. When women are finally seen as individual human beings equal to men, men will have equal rights in fields where women are currently benefitting.

Furthermore, did you know that according to the Indian Penal Code, men can only be the perpetrators but never victims of rape? This is because society expects men to be polygamous alphas who can never ‘not want sex’. Men have huge amounts of pressure on them to always be strong, rich, unemotional and sex driven – not feminine, i.e. expressive about their emotions, relying on another person for all of life’s basic necessities that money can buy, and conscious about their sexuality. By increasing the standard of women, by reducing the differences between the expectations society has from men and women, feminism helps men too. It is important for all anti-feminist’s to realize this, and to stop hating feminism.