…and other lies told to children.
To quote Jessica Valenti:
“Do you think it’s fair that a guy will make more money doing the same job as you? Does it piss you off and scare you when you find out about your friends getting raped? Do you ever feel like shit about your body? Do you ever feel like something is wrong with you because you don’t fit into this bizarre ideal of what girls are supposed to be like? Well, my friend, I hate to break it to you, but you’re a hardcore feminist.”
Of course, echoing in an empty skull, one is bound to hear this retort: “No! Feminism is all about women controlling men! It’s right in the name: FEMINISM!”
But when we use things like language, we have to be aware that WORDS MEAN THINGS. They have definitions. You don’t get to decide what a word means just because you don’t feel masculine enough. Dictionary.com defines feminism as:
“1. the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.
2. …an organized movement for the attainment of such rights.
3. feminine character.”Oh, you can just feel the evil agenda jumping off the page, grabbing you by the throat, and castrating you, can’t you? Still, it’s nowhere near as invasive as constantly being bombared, on a day-to-day basis, with words that indoctrinate you to the superiority of men, such as: history, manhole, mailman, policeman, businessman, spaceman, anchorman, mankind, caveman, clergyman, and so on down the entire alphabet.
Feminism is about not allowing men to define what it means to be a woman. Women are simultaneously told they’re too fat, too dumb, too smart, not ladylike enough, too slutty, and not slutty enough. I mean, did anyone watch the coverage of the presidential election? We had white people getting all riled up because they’d encountered an “articulate” black man and men getting all frisky (and frustrated) because Hillary might’ve shown some accidental cleavage. Yeah. Racism isn’t real, sexism has been cured.
Maybe it’s time to let women be women, whatever that means to them. Remember, fellas: it’s not all about you.
“Feminism is all about crazy bitches who hate men!”
