I throw around terms like “gender equality”, “the male gaze” and “the patriarchy” like nobody’s business. So do my friends, the podcasts I listen to and the left-wing articles I read.
But feminism? Not as easily or frequently. The word “feminist” is a rarer, harsher, descriptor still associated with man-hating and ferocity that gets you disapproving looks from old geezers. It’s the lecture topic that all arts and humanities professors feel obligated to include in their courses, but which students hesitate to openly engage with.
Second-wave feminism began in the 1960s, defining the concept as full equality between genders, relevant in both private and public institutional settings. Then came radical feminism, the extreme “bra-burning” branch of feminism that sought to eradicate the patriarchy instead of working through it.
Radical feminism generally isn’t an effective or reasonable form of achieving gender equality, and yet, it’s defined the term for many. The assumption that feminism is equated to man-hating isn’t as common as it once was, but it’s still an underlying belief that makes people uncomfortable when we talk about it.
I’m a feminist, but I rarely verbally state that I identify as one. It’s a word many of us don’t bring up, although most people I know would say that they are indeed feminists. I honestly realized while starting to write this article that I had no idea who among my friends would genuinely call themselves a feminist. I had to post a poll on Instagram just to find this out, as I barely hear it discussed in my regular life.
My cynical self was honestly very pleasantly surprised with the results. Take all of this with a grain of salt, but from my Gen Z, left-leaning, female demographic, out of 91 votes, 82 people (90%) said they identify as feminists.
Let’s bring in some larger statistics to back up my amateur data. According to a 2021 poll by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, based in Toronto, 57% of Canadian women and 40% of Canadian men would call themselves feminists. The overall proportion of feminist-identifying people has grown from 31% in 2001 to 49% in 2021.
Increasingly, the problem is no longer that feminists are blatantly discredited in society. This issue obviously still exists within groups of people who are older and more conservative, and who still don’t fully understand what the term means. For the most part, however, we’ve gotten to the point where more and more people are aligning themselves with feminist thought.
The current issue we face is how to talk about it in spaces that hold influence. There’s so much value in doing your own research about feminism, but we don’t hear a larger discourse about it because it’s not brought up in political discussions as a normal topic, one we’re all allowed to openly engage with while seeming relatively uncontroversial.
There’s always a tension that comes with talking about feminism, which comes from its long, complicated history. As a result, we may identify with it privately but we’re still uncomfortable with addressing it in very public spaces.
Of course, our continued discomfort with feminism despite the progress we’ve made gives us even more reason to confront it in all aspects of our lives.
Feminism doesn’t just include the ability to choose which parts of your body to shave or a feeling of empowerment to counter a misogynistic remark. It’s often overlooked that feminism deals with deeper societal issues like food insecurity, poverty and healthcare, and it involves everybody. Of course, it has the most impact on women whose identities are multifaceted and need more than just feminism to back them up.
Modern, intersectional feminism needs everyone to openly participate in conversations about equality related to gender, sexuality, race, ability, age, nationality and every aspect of identity you can possibly think of.
As a result, feminism isn’t just a cultural discussion, it’s a political one. It always has been. So don’t be afraid to talk about it. Make some noise. Be controversial. Make it relevant when other people assume it’s not. Because as a woman, it’ll always be relevant.