Fear of the F-Word !

It’s been brought to my attention there is a fear to a term used in association with bra-burners, man-haters and fire-breathers (my personal favorite). It can be especially heinous to the old fashioned lot who’ve forgotten the roots and concepts behind this hot little word: feminism.

While sitting in a bar, chatting amongst friends, feminism was brought up during a conversation. People had their own ideas of the concept and the practitioners of the concept.

“I’m not a feminist, but I like my rights” a friend said.

“Really,” I asked. “Why do you say that? What do you think a feminist is?”

She gave me the stereotypical answer. She described the radical behavior of women in command, burning bras and rallying down the street with signs and picketing city hall, screaming for freedoms we already have.

“Is this really what the idea has come to?” I thought.

It’s interesting how people forget the basic tenants of feminism. Like so many other concepts, practices, or ideals, it’s an evolving process – though the basics are very much the same: equality between the sexes.

Scholars and feminists divided the “feminist movement” into waves starting with women’s suffrage as the first. It was during the 19th and early 20th century that people fought for equal contract rights, property rights and opposed marriage as ownership of women (and children) by their husbands.

Then it “evolved!” It was with controversial figures such as Margaret Sanger that the campaign for sexual, reproductive and economic rights began. The right to vote was not far off.

Though we are twenty years from the era, it’s the second wave that people still use to describe feminism. It was from the 1960s through to the 1980s when women fought social and cultural inequalities as political inequalities. Women burned bras (sort of), but it was the ideas of race and feminism that were established. As theories become beliefs, they split into their own segments.

Feminism is not just one, it is many: Black Feminism, Multiracial Feminism, Lesbian Feminism, Liberal Feminism, Socialist and Marxist Feminism, Individualist Feminism, and so on and so forth. We even have the Anti-feminism Feminism, women against feminism.

Feminism can not be summed up in a vacuum as society tries to do so frequently. It is with this basic idea of equality and the acknowledgement of women’s issues in all parts of society that we continue to press on in hope that one day we will no longer be sought as feminists.

For those with the idea that labeling is justifying or contradictory, I say when our views become common sense and not misconception, we will no longer use the labels. It will be embedded in our personalities, in our mutual contracts in societal law and breathing into our political agendas. One day we will be women, not women with feminist ideals.

I’d always imagined a feminist to be a woman of choice. A woman capable of making up her ideas and contributing to the concept in her own way, because that is what feminism is today: the ability to have a choice and keep the right alive. We are now in this third wave of feminism responding to the backlash of second wave actions and the misconceptions.

We’re challenging the stereotypes of unfeminine characteristics that are sought out in feminists. Just because I’m a feminist, doesn’t mean I can’t wear a skirt.

Feminism is an ideology that belongs with men and women. So, take care not to misconstrue the concept of an individual’s actions defining their perception of it. Investigate it and find your own adaptation.

JESSICA HENDERSON
Guest Opinion

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