{"id":24042,"date":"2015-02-17T15:24:47","date_gmt":"2015-02-17T20:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=24042"},"modified":"2015-02-17T15:25:37","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T20:25:37","slug":"the-other-f-word-feminist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2015\/02\/the-other-f-word-feminist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Other \u201cF\u201d Word: Feminist"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you ask young people today whether they are feminists, for most, even the young women, the answer is a forceful, assertive, \u201cNo!\u201d In the last several decades, that word has taken on a negative\u2014vehemently negative \u2014connotation. Apparently, in this negative view, to be a feminist is be a bra-burning, man-hating lesbian.<\/p>\n

But being a feminist does not mean those things. Being a feminist simply means that you believe women have equal rights<\/a>\u2014socially, politically, legally, economically. While it\u2019s true that there are different strains of feminism, each with their different ideologies and some more radical than others, feminism at its base is simply about equality. And people of both genders <\/a>tend to agree with equality.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sad, though, that when men claim they are feminists, they are often immediately denigrated as not \u201creal men.\u201d And that there are those out there who claim that feminism is ruining masculinity by turning \u201cmanly men\u201d into \u201cfeminized men.\u201d It\u2019s almost like those people perceive rights to be finite; to extend some rights to women means fewer for men, which is, of course, silly. To be fair, men (particularly white men<\/a>) do have reason to feel some anger. The world they have long been promised\u2014the power, the jobs, the money, the women, the privilege of being \u201cmanly\u201d\u2014seems to have changed if not vanished altogether, and that seems profoundly unfair to them. It would to me, too. But like the fish who can\u2019t see the water because it\u2019s always there, these men have been unable to see that what they feel they\u2019ve been promised has always come at the expense of others. (For an interesting read about what is \u201cruining\u201d masculinity, see here<\/a>. Hint: it\u2019s not<\/em> feminism.) And those others are no longer content to be sidelined.<\/p>\n

That said, it is not that feminism wants to sideline men. Many feminists, like me, are married to men; we have sons. I don\u2019t want the men in my life to be sidelined. Rather, I think most feminists want to be on the same side as men; that is, that men and women work together toward a common goal of a fair and equal society\u2014for all of the people in it. Maybe we don\u2019t always agree on the ways to get there, but I\u2019m hoping that we all can agree that it\u2019s a worthwhile goal that we should meet.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to cast aside the baggage tied to the word \u201cfeminist.\u201d If feminism means equal rights for women, then one who supports such an idea is a feminist. As comedian Aziz Ansari says, \u201cThat is how words work.\u201d (See here<\/a>; relevant section 1:01 to 2:37.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you ask young people today whether they are feminists, for most, even the young women, the answer is a forceful, assertive, \u201cNo!\u201d In the last several decades, that word has taken on a negative\u2014vehemently negative \u2014connotation. Apparently, in this negative view, to be a feminist is be a bra-burning, man-hating lesbian. But being a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism","category-public","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}