Feminism is a bit of a contentious subject for a lot of people. It’s a pretty simple idea, but half-truths, differing opinions, and the inherent bias in some aspects of culture have muddied the waters a bit.
At its core, feminism is the idea that woman are entitled to the same rights as men. Feminist movements have been at the forefront of issues like women’s suffrage, a woman’s right to hold public office or work, and the right to earn fair wages.
Lately, it seems that even with the unprecedented successes that feminism has had it’s slowly started to lose relevance. Feminism is going the way of the union, where after fighting all the hard fights, the movement deflates and the world starts a slow descent back to the status quo. Not to say that it doesn’t exist at all, it just isn’t a particularly earth shattering force anymore.
It makes sense, but it’s a shame, because there is still actually work to be done here at home. I’m not going to get into feminism and third world or developing countries today, because that’s a topic that deserves an article of its own. It’s easy to look at the successes feminism has had and then discount the issues that still need to be grappled with in the first world because, to be perfectly blunt, they’re not as bad.
The thing is, “not as bad” isn’t good enough. Would you be happy if someone put a cup of salt in your coffee as opposed to a lethal dose of cyanide? No, you obviously wouldn’t be. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really believe in “good enough” in situations like these. There’s justice and injustice, success and failure.
At its core, feminism is an ideology that stands in opposition to a culture that views women as the inferior gender. The war against cultural things like cat calling or a systematic marginalization of rape and its victims is the same as the fight against a system that doesn’t allow women to vote or hold property. It’s about equality, and that’s all it’s ever been about.
Why does the modern world still need feminism? The answer is that the modern world has yet to completely realize equality. We’ve made lots of progress, but we still have further to go.
So, don’t let people treat feminism like a relic, and don’t let people marginalize your beliefs because they’re unwilling to look at the things that challenge their worldview or make them uncomfortable.
Featured image provided by “wickeddollz” via Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
