“The movement for gender equality was originally conceived as a struggle led only by women for women. In recent years, men have begun to stand-up in addressing inequalities and discrimination faced by women and girls.”
HeForShe is the United Nation’s newest Solidarity Movement, making its mission statement very clear from the get-go: to bring together both men and women in support of gender equality, for the benefit of everyone around the world. The website claims that gender equality isn’t just a women’s issue — it’s everyone’s issue. We are all born of women (unless you’re a seahorse) and we all know at least one woman in our lives — be it a mother, sister, grandmother, aunt, cousin, friend, colleague, or boss, women are all around us, and it’s about time that the world has decided that this issue of gender equality should just stop being an issue.
Recently, Emma Watson, of Harry Potter fame, stood in front of a group of UN delegates and delivered a speech that resounded all over the Internet — both going down well with some, and coursing like poison for others.
“My recent research has shown me that "feminist’ has become an unpopular word,” she says boldly, almost glaring at the audience as she says this. And she’s right. The word "feminist’ is not a popular word — as she puts it, being a feminist means that your actions are “too strong, too aggressive, isolating and anti-men. Unattractive, even.” She laments that not one country in the world expresses full gender equality to its citizens, and calls men to arms in this movement towards equality and solidarity — just because people have different genitals does not mean they should be treated differently.
And how sick are we of this, ladies? How tiring is it to have to constantly feel that we have to validate ourselves in front of men just to be OK in this world? Shouldn’t this have been sorted out a long time ago, when women got the right to vote and all that history that we learn about? Shouldn’t all this just be a thing of the past? I pray for the day that teenagers worldwide open text books and read about the feminist movement and think "Well, duh! Of course women deserve equal rights!’
But sadly, we’ve got a long way to go. An alarmingly, great deal of women all over the world hear the word "feminism’ and cringe, saying “No, that’s not me. I’m not a feminist. I believe in equality, but not feminism.”
Well, thank you for clarifying that, but feminism kind of means equality.
What people seem to think about feminism is that it’s all about women being better than men, or women taking away men’s rights. They, of course, couldn’t be further from the truth. Feminism is about genders being equal, not about taking away something from someone else. It’s about fighting so that discrimination in the work place doesn’t happen, so that sexual harassment is put down to a minimum, so that anybody in the world who feels victimized for being "a sissy’ or "weak’ doesn’t have to feel that way anymore. Feminism isn’t a women’s movement strictly for women, it includes men too.
How many times have we discounted the men who are raped but never speak up about it? How many times must we tell teenage boys that they need to have a certain aesthetic to be considered "manly’, or that showing feelings is something only a girl can do? Feminism is also fighting for these inequalities, these false perceptions. It also fights for transgendered individuals, who feel like neither gender is welcoming to them, to give them a platform where they are accepted.
So yeah, I may be a mere writer for a website you happened to click on today, but I am also a feminist, and I am proud of that, because it’s not a movement of hate, it’s a movement of acceptance. And you’d be missing out to not associate yourself with something that preaches a better world for everyone.