Equality or Feminism?

Feminism- the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality.

Every time I open up twitter, facebook, or instagram, I cringe at the sight of all the comments made by obnoxious feminists who clearly don’t seem to understand the definition of feminism. They want equality…for certain things.

They make all men look like the big bad wolf trying to eat them as they crouch down in a corner crying for help. Then, later as they tell the story, they fail to to tell the world the part about them egging on the wolf. They claim to want to have their voices heard as everyone should but are quick to put down anyone who tries to speak up for their own beliefs just because they don’t match up to their own. They want to stop the sexualization of women’s bodies by stripping down in public. They love to moan and groan about how men have so many advantages over them and choose to ignore the many advantages they have over men.

In all honesty, there is no correct way to be a feminist. Considering the fact that there are many different possible backgrounds, cultures, religions, beliefs there couldn’t possibly be a certain way to want equality because we each have our own idea of what that means.

But there definitely is a wrong way.

In short, the definition of feminism is the movement to get women’s rights equal to those of men. Naturally, as human beings, we are always striving for the betterment of ourselves. As we get to that goal we like to push boundaries and see how far we can get. We have the natural instinct to be competitive and always want more. That is what I am seeing in modern-day feminism.

Here is a story. There was once a time in history when women had absolutely no rights. Their purpose of existence was to get married, have babies, clean, cook, and keep their husbands happy. They also had to raise their daughters to clean and cook at a very young age. To be submissive to their husbands and do as they say whether they like it or not or there would be pretty bad consequences. They technically weren’t considered useful or intelligent enough to be people so instead were considered property.

I am completely for the type of feminism that breaks the tradition-chain of women having the one and only choice to be stay at home wives, being beaten by men simply because they can without consequences, and being portrayed as something less than what they are.

We’ve come a long way from those days. Women now have the right to vote. They are defended greatly from abuse. They can have almost any kind of job a man can have.

But there still seem to be a couple of problems.

Rape. Women and girls are being raped. We hear about it everywhere. The conversation always leads to the next discussion of how women should be able to dress any way they want and men should be able to control themselves. We see those videos made about rape culture where the victim, every single time, is a woman. The rapist is always a man. What about the men who are victims of rape? One in every 71 men in the US are raped or suffered an attempt. Although the percentage is smaller than that of women, that one person suffered just as much as any other victim and gets no sympathy because we seem to forget that women aren’t the only ones capable of being victims.

Domestic violence. There have been many, many cases of men going to jail for being a “woman-beater”. Some popular examples being Chris Brown, Mike Tyson, Charlie Sheen, and Ray Rice. Each story starts with an argument that gets nasty and goes straight to the men all of a sudden getting physical. The question I always asked myself was “why?”. Are men just naturally physical? Do they have some kind of problem? Or, were they pushed to their limit? Recently I watched a movie on Netflix called “Six Years”. It is about seniors in college who have been in a relationship for 6 years and start having second guesses about each other and their future. At one point, they get into a really bad argument and the girl starts to punch him and push him around. He gets fed up with her, pins her to the wall, and brings his fist up to punch her. She says, ”Oh, What? Are you going to punch me?”. He throws a punch but she moves out of the way and starts acting scared and disgusted. I understand that men might be stronger than women and maybe there are some men who beat women just to take their anger out on them. But it shouldn’t be okay for women to be able to hit men and expect not to get hit back because “men shouldn’t hit women”. Instead of teaching our sons that it isn’t okay to hit girls, we should be teaching all of our children to not hit anyone.

How I see it, women not only have more rights and have overcome old-fashion stereotypes, but even have some advantages that everyone seems to ignore.

Equality is the dream.

But let’s not be hypocrites and claim to want equality when it is only to a certain extent.