So I’ve been trying out loads of new stuff this year and one of the things I’ve done is join the Feminist Society at my university and I went to the first meeting on Thursday. My knowledge of feminism has always come from gender politics in relation to literature and I always thought I had a fairly strong stance on feminism but it turns out that there is so much more that I hadn’t even considered and possibly I don’t know my stance on feminism as well as I thought I did.
Before anyone thinks I’m an irate bra-burning feminist and leaves, then you don’t actually know what a feminist is.
So now that’s sorted. Feminists aren’t a raging group of women screaming about hating men. Feminists are talking about the physical, mental and emotional abuse and violence propagated against all of womankind which is often unheard or ignored or sickeningly in the case of rape, dismissed as “what was she wearing? she must have brought it on herself.” No woman ever asks to be raped and that idea right there is the sort of mindset that feminists fight against. Changing the stereotypes of females and what is acceptable for a male to do to them. we don’t live in the 18th century anymore, women are not property to be passed from the hands of their father to their husband at the point of marriage, to become a house wife and a reproductive machine. Women have choices now but that doesn’t mean everyone is accepting or allowing of those choices.
I recently read an article on the feminist society’s blog about marriage in contemporary society and its a view point I’d never even considered:
True gender equality is actually perceived as inequality. A group that is made up of 50% women is perceived as being mostly women. A situation that is perfectly equal between men and women is perceived as being biased in favor of women.
And if you don’t believe me, you’ve never been a married woman who kept her family name. I have had students hold that up as proof of my “sexism.”
My own brother told me that he could never marry a woman who kept her name because “everyone would know who ruled that relationship.” Perfect equality – my husband keeps his name and I keep mine – is held as a statement of superiority on my part.
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Its strange the way you look at something which you think is completely normal, that’s how normalized inequality is. Also something else interesting for you to consider in terms of how a woman is perceived and what photoshop can do to meet those expectations:
Makes me feel sick easily deceived people can be and how unrealistic images become the normal expectation of society and put pressure on women to be something unobtainable, consequently making them inferior to something impossible that the opposite sex idealizes.
Born and Raised Traveller 