Loving the enemy

❤ F e m i n i s m ❤

Feminism. One word. Eight letters. So much controversy. A movement that just wants equality for both men and women but is so often misunderstood. People believe, just by it's name, that feminists think women are better and they diserve more, or whatever. But it's wrong. All we ever wanted is to be the same than they are, to have the same rights that men, to have the same opportunities, to have the same treat. If you have any doubt, just google it. But don't misjudge something by whatever wrong prejudice you heard.

- Then why would you ever name it Feminism, if it's allegedly about equality? - One of the boys argued as we discussed. One of the teachers was absent and we had 80 free minutes, so we had ended up talking about lots of things. Among them, feminism. I don't even recall how it stared, but we talked about this for almost half an hour.

- We didn't name it, and I really don't know the reason. But why should it's name threaten you so much? Why are men so afraid of being displaced as the strong sex, that they can't even support a movement that just wants a fair life for everybody? - Maggie said as she started to get a bit angry. She was an interesting girl. Independent, progressive, feminist (of course) and a bit crazy at times.

- You all keep complaining but you also have benefits, and you don't complain about that ha? - I found this point so simplistic, without any real base and fundaments. But instead of just treating him as an idiot I answered calmly:

-The movement is called feminism since it's a movement who was basically created in order to empower women. Not because we are better or anything, but because we are the one's that are being opressed by the patriarchy system in which we live. It's whole aim is to empower us to not being the weak sex anymore: to fight for our rights. Because we think we diserve the same salary than men. We diserve to walk in the streets without being afraid. Because we diserve to not being treated as sexual objects. We diserve to be free enough to choose over our bodies, to choose if we want to wax or not, to choose how to dress. And, yes, I agree with you that the name just makes it harder. It's not convenient for it to be called feminism since most of men immediately reject it by it's name and society itself has a lot of misunderstoods to the movement just for not knowing mucho of it, for not having enough information. But, no, it shouldn't matter to you it's name since all we've ever done is to suck it up whenever the patriarchy had a sexist name or vocabulary that didn't include us. Think about this: the whole history of life and humanity is called MAN-KIND. As if we hadn't ever been a part of this. And we all know, that without women, the history itself wouldn't have been possible. Man-kind would have extinguished without woman-kind. So, no, we are not exagerating. We just want what it's fair. And if in order to get a truly free life, we have to lose what you call women-benefits, then we have no problem. Go ahead and take them away from us. We don't need to retire 5 years before than you. We don't need more maternity leave. We don't need any of those. We need to free our lives.- For once, I was brave enough to expose my point of view and did honor to my straightforward personality. Some of them looked at me as if I was overeacting. Some other understood me. And for those second ones, it was worth it.

I was fairly surprised that some of the boys had taken my point seriously. The conversation then moved on onto another toppic.