Feminism Defined

Today, in university classes it is hard to not take an English class and not hear the word "feminism." The word "feminism" is sometimes associated with "man-hating" or "misanthropist women." This is not so, this is a misconception. If you look up the word "man-hating" in the thesaurus feminism is nowhere near the word. Feminism by definition is "the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes" this is what Oxford dictionary defines it. Lately, feminism has been seen as a negative issue because of undereducated people and for men who look down on women and spread their ego. However, the negativity of the word can stem from a term I like to call "misandrist feminism." These are the women that look at feminism as man-hating, others may call this extreme feminism, but extreme feminism for me refers to the woman standing on the street holding up signs saying "I want to get paid the same amount that men do," signing petitions about equality is what I call extreme feminism. Misandrist feminism, for me, refers to the women who hold up signs saying "Men are the cause to our misfortune," or "Men suck because I am a woman," those women are only looking to blame someone.

We need to stop blaming each other. We need to stop pointing fingers at each other and come to the core of the problem. The core of the problem in some cases is insecurity. We have become more and more insecure about ourselves over the years. Think about the size of celebrities back in the day to now. Marilyn Monroe was a size six to eight and to think that Bebe Rexha was rejected because she is a size six ... This is completely unthinkable. It is situations like waist size that cause insecurity in younger girls, which then is the cause of misandrist feminism. Lately, a lot of stores and brands have been creating clothes for women with curves and that is a positive statement; love the body you are in. Young girls need to realize that looking like Barbie or supermodels is not ideal. Here comes my second issue. Men can dress how they want and no designer has rejected them because they were too fat. How is that fair? That is in no way equal. I would stand up to this issue and say if men can find designers when they are whatever size, so can women. That is what feminism is. It is trying to find equality between men and women while advocating for women. If feminism did not exist, we would have no rights like in the 1800s. I do not want to live in the 1800s for that reason. Except maybe for the clothes they wore.

Since the Gillette commercial titled, "The Best Men Can Be" was released there was an uproar of angry men saying, "I am not like that!" and "The commercial is man-hating." This again is not true. The purpose of the commercial was to encourage men to be the best version of themselves. There are rapists and child molesters out there that are men, but there are also women who have committed the same crimes. I have seen so many ads and memes about women speaking out to the crimes that they have been victimized by, but we need to keep in mind that some men have also been sexually assaulted and harassed. This issue is not just in men (as some believe). I think we all need to try and be better people and the commercial was trying to encourage men to be real men and not the ones we hear in the news or media. Men can be feminists too. It is not just for women, it is for everyone who believes in equality for women. This brings me to another issue, which is men are also treated unequally.

If a man and woman are happily married for five years, let's say, and they have a child together. After a rough two years, the couple then decides to get a divorce. The court always favors the woman over the man, so the woman ends up with custody. The man only gets custody if it is a special case, such as the woman is a raging alcoholic and is proven unfit to raise a child. I personally, do not think that is fair for the man. The best is for the man and woman to have equal custody of the child.

In conclusion, men have the right to be feminists just as much as women do. We need to stop trying to place blame on who did what and try to be better humans as a collective. We need to realize that we should all be equal. Men and women should have access to all the same jobs and have all the same pay. No one should be treated less based on their gender or sexuality. Equality is mean to be equally spread.