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Apprehensive about being a feminist? It is okay!



The views expressed are my own and random thoughts that came to me while sipping my afternoon cup of hot coffee!

After reading the academic discourse on Feminism, I realized that to make someone understand what feminism is, one has to understand and try thinking what disturbs some people to use the word. There is a general apprehension and I feel it is high time we feminist accept it and try seeing where the problem really is.
I have had heated debates with friends, trying to explain the difference between gender and sex, the use of ‘blue’ and ‘pink’, the care economy and with friends who otherwise in their actions are very gender equal but there is still some apprehension to use the word and lets agree, not everyone needs to understand the academic discourse to be a feminist.
Maybe here are few reasons why!

  • The word feminist has ‘fem’ which makes it sound more like a group of females and many males do not feel like attaching themselves to it. Yesterday, I was watching a show where someone very unconsciously defined feminist as a female who stands for gender equality.
  • In a similar way, fight against patriarchy sounds like fight against something paternal (males) and since it is a fight you cannot not support your own gender.
  • To make everyone a feminist we have to first include everyone. To include everyone, men engagement is very important. Like an entire religion will not take the blame for few people destroying the world peace, every men of the gender group will not take the blame for gender inequality. Hence, feminist while making comments need to be very careful that it is not male bashing but comments only on a particular incident.
  • We know where the problem lies, we know we have to change the mentality but to do that we cannot ‘other’ the entire gender group. As an obvious human trait most male will turn defensive. 
  •  I am a feminist, sounds like aligning to a particular grouping and many people just do not want to get into the grouping mode even though they support gender equality. It also sounds like a group formed against another and as a result of defense mechanism people have started talking about meninism. We did not intend to create groupings.
  •    I feel instead of ‘I am a feminist’, there will be many more people saying I believe in gender equality, to us that is what we ultimately want to achieve!
  • ·         Is feminism creating groupings and hence generating more hatred? Are people apprehensive to join because they do not want to get into generating more hatred? Even if some people blame us for doing so, we have to hold our patience! Let us not bash the people blaming us for doing so, for to achieve our long-term vision of turning everyone a feminist- we cannot make enemies.
  •  And this one is from my own general observation, most organizations working on Gender Equality are full of females, most vocal and active feminists are females. And when I wonder what will actually change the situation I imagine expanding the group of feminists and keeping equal number of men and women and to do so we might have to be conscious about the above mentioned points.

As long as we do not address the real issues that stops a lay man from joining hands for a vision of gender equality, arguing and fighting and then forcing someone to call themselves a feminist might not take us a long way!

Comments

  1. Unknown4 December 2015 at 02:55

    Completely agree with you. We need to chaneg the narrative; attack always makes one defensive. Though it might be a strategy, but this strategy take a long time as one need to counter two problem- real issue and the issues one created for their defence. Right observation about men's participation in gender justice work. Well- written article :)

    ReplyDelete

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