You hear the “f word” on college campuses a lot these days. Between Tumblr’s social justice warriors and Social Science majors, feminism has been getting a lot of press. It’s not like that’s a new thing: the fight for gender rights has been raging for years.
Still, this new breed of feminist has everyone talking. She (or he) fights with hashtags and likes and spreads viral media faster than the plague.
Opponents of these social-justice warriors say they are shoving ideals down people’s throats and trying to raise women above men. They attach the worst ideals of the worst internet feminist and apply it to feminism in general.
This kind of strawman argument makes it easy to discard any feminist arguments at all. The trouble is, for many, feminism has nothing to do with any of that.
Unless you are a dinosaur who wishes we could go back to the glory days of Mad Men-esque misogyny, you are a feminist. Forget every preconception you ever learned.
If you believe that a person’s value isn’t determined by what’s between their legs, you’re a feminist. If you think that a “woman’s place” is anywhere she wants to be, you are a feminist. If you think that little girls should have a right to read a book, you’re in. There’s not much to it.
Of course, there’s disagreement over what constitutes feminism. Feminism itself is usually broken into three historical categories or waves.
Almost everyone can get behind some of the ideals, but instead the whole idea gets tossed aside when we hear something we don’t like. “Can’t we just call it humanism?” “Whatever happened to equality?” “There are hundreds of more qualified men after that job, why should she get it?” As tired as it has become, a few bad apples don’t spoil the bunch. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and feminism is a clock that won’t stop ticking.
You might not consider yourself a feminist, but throwing away a struggle for gender rights based on what some people say on Tumblr isn’t doing anyone any favours.