My school is a strong advocate of setting up societies to represent the interests of its students. One of the most recently formed societies is "The Feminist Forum", who meet to discuss and debate prominent issues regarding feminism today. Yesterday, the school held its annual "Freshers Fair", where all of the societies make stalls and advertise their group to the prospective sixth-form students. As a member of the feminist forum, I was asked to write a short article for it's flyer about the relevance of feminism to me as a male in the hope of encouraging more people to join the forum. I thought it might be nice to share it.
Today we live in a world where society wrongly vilifies feminism with images and news of radical ‘feminists’. Men decide that they do not agree with feminism because it is just another word for man hating, and the very nature of the name excludes them. Worst of all is when you find women who feel that they don’t need feminism, because they can live their lives happily without discomfort and fear. All across the world women live in constant fear of genital mutilation, discrimination in the workplace, forced marriages, sexual trafficking, rape and objectification. Why then, is feminism such a divisive issue?
We need to eradicate the social consensus that man haters and “feminists” are synonymous because it could not be more wrong. The sole principle of feminism is equality of the sexes - men included! Stokely Carmichael, and Malcom X were not associated with the civil rights movement because of their black supremacist motives, so why do we not take this same stance with feminism? Instead we carry on incorrectly branding feminists as misandrists and vice versa!
When I see a man disagree with feminism because the name excludes him, I can only respond in one way, and that is by quoting actress Ellen Page: “could it be any more obvious that we live in a patriarchal world when feminism is a bad word?” To me, the constant need to find an argument against feminism is such blatant proof of why feminism is needed, as Page says. What’s more, the arguments that feminism exclude men, are just wrong! The United Nations “He For She” campaign is a perfect example of this! This solidarity movement shows how important it is for men to stand up for women’s rights, for the common goal of equality of the sexes. Feminism is just as representative of male issues as it is female, and the true sentiment of this movement today, is solidarity.
If you eat, does that mean that famine does not exist? No it doesn’t. But people still adopt this parochial view that because the grave issues I have previously mentioned do not affect them, they do not need to stand for the cause against them! What a shocking indictment of the society we live in!
Karl Marx said, “social progression can be measured by the equality of the sexes” and I believe it is this one quote that should encourage you to advocate feminism. How are we to face the greater issues in the world such as climate change, and racial hatred when we cannot live simply together as man and woman? How wrong is it that society spends the majority of its time discussing the semantics of feminism, rather than focusing on the great work it has done, or where it is most needed in society! What we need, is to cut the arguments and actually work together for this great and powerful cause.
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