I like to complain, a lot. So much, in fact, that if I got a euro for every time I ranted about something, I'd have enough money to go on a cruise, at least twice a year. Salty is my middle name, so if your food is ever lacking that sodium chloride...
"We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important.
Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don't teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are."
Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
~Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists~
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Feminism is a doctrine that advocates for gender equality. The concept is so simple, you'd think that everyone (or at least, most people) would be a feminist right? Wrong. Unfortunately, feminism evokes a ton of negative connotations, the main one being: feminists are all ugly, man-hating bitches that—as they suck on dick-shaped lollipops and gather their army of stray cats—want to destroy the patriarchy and take over the world. Just try doing a google search:
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Feminism carries a lot of baggage. So much, in fact, that a lot people are afraid to be publicly associated with the movement. Instead, they prefer to call themselves "egalitarians"(defined as: a person who advocates or supports the principle of equality for all people) or "equalists". Quite simply, a lot of the hatred for feminism stems from ignorance. Many don't really have an understanding of what the movement is about, and instead of properly documenting themselves, they prefer to just remain close-minded and follow the crowd of bigots.
Human beings tend to fear what they don't comprehend and with fear, comes hostility.
Women, since the beginning of time, have always been subject to oppression. It's not the stuff of legends; historical evidence, statistics, the facts don't lie, yet, gender inequality is still treated like a children's fairytale, whilst those who preach about it, nutjobs. Not only that—whenever women even attempt to start a conversation about discrimination, sexism, and male prejudices against them, they face immediate backlash, encounter someone who disagrees with everything that is said, and are labelled as man-bashing sluts.
Those who are brave enough to openly talk about their experiences are often demeaned and mistreated, because no matter how bad things can get for a woman, men have experienced some form of it TOO or WORSE. Newsflash, amigos, nobody is saying that men cannot experience discrimination, sexism, and prejudice, nor that men cannot be allies. In fact, men can and SHOULD be feminists as well, because gender equality has something to do with them as well (duh). It's the fact that "not all men!" and "men get this too!" just has to get thrown in there (from both men AND women), as a way of minisming and pushes the experiences of women into the background. Who gives a shit if you've experienced something horrible? Someone out there has it worse than you!
