It’s a word surrounded by taboo and imbued with negative connotations. It never fails to provoke a reaction and, in my experience, that reaction is rarely enthusiastic. But what does it really mean to say that you are a feminist? What does a feminist look like? Act like?
Contrary to (what seems to be) popular belief, a feminist isn’t a type. Anyone should be able to comfortable identify themselves as a feminist without feeling the need to look or behave a certain way. Yet far too many women and men refuse to identify themselves as feminists for various reasons. Society tells us that feminism is not attractive, it is not cool, it is not remotely sexy. It’s a movement reserved only for leather-clad, bra-burning, men-hating women who despise makeup and read Julia Kristeva and Simone de Beauvoir in their spare time.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (sorry, I’m an English student, it’s my go to for everything), the definition of feminism is the ‘advocacy of equality of the sexes and the establishment of the political, social, and economic rights of the female sex’. The idea that women should be seen as equal to men in all aspects of life is surely a belief that anybody and everybody should be open to, right?
Sadly, whenever I dare bring up that dreaded F word with my friends, I get variations of the same response. Most people believe feminism as a movement is ‘pointless’ or has ‘gone too far’; after all, we’ve got the vote haven’t we? Why can’t we just pipe down? It’s far too easy to believe that just because, in the West, we have this kind of legislative equality, we have true equality. We don’t.
Sexism manifests itself in many forms. There is undoubtedly an inherent sexism in the way that women are viewed and treated in society. Of course, women have far more freedom than they did a century ago, and far more opportunities at that – I’m aware that I am writing this article from my very privileged position as an undergraduate at Oxford, a place where, a hundred years ago, I could only have dreamed of studying. Yet while victims, not rapists, are shamed and blamed, while sexual violence statistics remain at distressingly high levels, while words such as ‘slut’ and ‘frigid’ are used to categorise women into their own special sexual boxes, it’s impossible to say that there aren’t still significant problems. Why need feminism be a dirty word when it’s the very thing that attempts to combat such issues?
Many of us need to reshape the way we think about feminism. Women are people before they are anything else; women’s rights are essentially human rights. Like equality? Don’t like sexism? Feminism might just be for you.