Feminism is undoubtedly one of the most controversial topics of our time. You see it everywhere you turn; social media, in class, and in everyday life. If you don’t know what feminism stands for, let me clear it up for you. Feminism advocates for equal treatment to women AND men in political, social and economic grounds. It’s an inescapable topic but I was curious to see why most men don’t like to be labeled as a feminist. I asked some of my friends (both male and female) what they thought and here’s the top responses:
- “Because guys prize their masculinity and think that other guys will make fun of them if they are seen as too feminine and other guys may think they’re gay.”– female
Personally, I’m not one to find an over-masculine guy attractive. Men shouldn’t have to be afraid to show a more sensitive side to themselves but society has told them differently.
- “We’re all for equal rights but I personally think girls deserve equal rights but shouldn’t deserve better treatment than men, which is why I don’t think I’m considered a feminist.” –male
This comment honestly got me a bit annoyed. I probably would have been more satisfied if this person had just told me he didn’t know enough about the topic to give a good response. I found that a lot of college guys and maybe guys older than college age just don’t know what feminism is really about.
- “Because we are socialized in a patriarchal, hyper masculine society that sees women as weak and inferior to men. It’s the same as why men call other men “girls” as an insult. It’s to degrade them because they see women as less powerful as themselves. Everything is seen as gay or feminine, and men try to overcompensate their masculinity in fear of being degraded by society. A lot of men don’t realize that we need feminism.” –male
I loved this comment for multiple reasons. I love that this person said that a lot of men don’t realize that we need feminism. Without feminism we would be living in a world where men rule everything and women are in the background be stereotyped into only being good for making sandwiches and cleaning the house. At a time that did exist but now we’re finally coming into change.
- “Men think that if a guy is called a feminist that means he’s not a ‘man.'” –male
Men shouldn’t be stereotyped as feminine just because he supports feminism just as a woman shouldn’t be stereotyped as a crazy man hater for supporting the movement.
- “Because it takes away their masculinity and gives more power to women. It embarrasses them and they tend to think of feminists as women who hate men and that’s not the case.” –female
Feminism has never been about women getting better treatment than men. I hear about these young female celebrities claiming they aren’t feminists and then I ask myself why not? Who wouldn’t want to support the equal treatment of men and women?
- “Men have never felt dehumanized because of their gender.” –Female
Something that bothers me is that when guys sleep with a lot of people they’re labeled as gods. When women do the same thing, they’re automatically labeled sluts. Women aren’t just objects you get to label as sluts when men get glorified for the same thing.
- “We live in a world where people comment on topics they barely know anything about and I think feminism is one of them. Guys are generally more sensitive when it comes to people labeling them and I don’t think most guys really understand what feminism is. We can blame social media. Men see it as a blemish on their character.” –Male
I like that this person brought up social media. All over the internet we see things about how feminists are crazy and feminism is a bad thing. Social media started this stereotype and it’s most likely going to be the thing to turn people’s minds in the other direction.
As you can see, a majority of the responses involve stating that men don’t really know what feminism is. I honestly really liked a lot of these comments and only one of them got me a bit miffed. What it comes down to is that not just college students but everyone should be more educated on what feminism is and why we need it. Of course, everyone is free to have their own opinion but why wouldn’t you want equality for women? It by no means points to women getting treated better than men. All we want is equality and that’s what we’ll get.
Featured image via Maryia Plashchynskaya on Pexels
Hello, normally I don’t comment on sites/topics like these when I come across them. But I felt maybe this was a place my view could shed a bit of light? 21 Straight White Canadian Male and the following is why I don’t see myself as a feminist. I could list maybe 50 reasons off the top of my head as to why I think that but I’ll keep it to 3 somewhat large points.
Maybe a bit of preamble to state my stance on things first. I consider myself an egalitarian, men and women both have issues I think should be fought for even if my keyboard typing crusade doesn’t ever do much. I’m a pro choice who believes everyone should have a certain level of respect and everyone should have equality under law. Most people would agree that the ideals and things feminism promotes should be ideals and standards we all hold ourselves to, however most days this isn’t what we see with mainstream feminism.
First point, the feminists in the media; I’ll name the big ones you see online and the media off the top of my head, Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, Randy Harper, Laci Green, Emma Watson And many other famous celebrities http://www.mtv.com/news/1822259/celebritiy-feminists-pharrell/ Barack Obama and the new Prime Minister of Canada has stated he was a feminist Justin Trudeau. I could name more but these are people who all show up on the headlines pushing these issues in western cultures.
My issue with feminists in the media; Many forward feminists misuse data/push personal objectives. The first 3 I mentioned were at the U.N. last month telling ambassadors from every country that the internet is harassing them and push their agenda to increase censorship online and are working with google on this in what I and many others fear will restrict freedom of speech. I’ll leave out my further thoughts on those women though. Emma watson was at the U.N. a bit further back when she was trying to push the campaign to “Ban Bossy” near the same time the campaign to stop “man-spreading” New York spent 76 Grand to push a gender biased campaign on the grounds of feminism. Then a bit further back a major speech Obama gave about the wage gap to push a new bill that did absolutely nothing to the law as the law he was amending had already covered what he believed to be the issue.(I don’t argue wage gap doesn’t exist just that the wage gap came from information out of context and that it isn’t something people should worry about). There’s many more examples of feminists in the media doing things like these but this point has already gotten fairly long.
Second point, patriarchy and modern intersectional feminism. Most moderate feminists would agree on the belief of patriarchy it’s been a word thrown in my face dozens of times along with misogyny and they’re tenants I believe most feminists would agree exist. Most men don’t see this if it even does exist, no one’s actually been able to prove these are pervasive in our society. And I still find it hard to believe that people say the system is patriarchy when governments and offices of the highest power all over the world are held by feminists. It’s not something the skeptical guy can get behind. Now aside from the cores of feminism we have the rapidly growing intersectional feminism, the ones that want to be all inclusive the ones who believe transgender women should be treated exactly like a real women if they want regardless of how others feel, the ones who are pushing gender neutral pronouns, the ones who recently got behind a campaign to support a pedophile. I’m not attacking these points they all come from someplace that I think should be addressed, but they’re far too extreme for the general masses like young guys just entering college or a middle aged man going back to school to change careers. It’s very extreme and off putting for most “dudes”.
Point three, Gender bias/gendering of issues and Fear. Men and women both have issues that need to be addressed but there’s a point where half the equation gets removed to push an agenda. People talk about women being oppressed and marginalised for being their gender, but aside from MRA’s who aren’t taken seriously most people wouldn’t hear about figures like 40% of domestic abuse happens to men (A Lot of emotional abuse is done by women in relationships even if violence against women is a serious issue we ignore the other half of it). I brought up the manspreading in an earlier post but it fits well here too. Onto the fear part, this mixes in with the first point a bit but gender divide on issues in college campuses. I bring up things like the Duke lacrosse case, the Columbia University Matress scandal and the internalized cases being dealt with by schools rather than law now. I don’t bring these up as anything more than to say these things along with the false statistics of college campus sexual assaults being passed around by many feminists right now over inflate the issues of rape and sexual assault as well as false rape claims spreading fear on campuses and dividing genders. It’s harder for guy to go out and buy a girl a drink at a bar or for a girl to go out and try to meet a cute guy with a lot of the fear mongering many feminists are spreading atm.
Man I wanted to keep it short but I still wrote a lot. I could still go into the victimhood complex it promotes I could also go further into the way it marginalizes straight white men on the basis of “privilege” and the way it melds with a lot of the SJW campaigns between new laws/rules being passed on college campuses, safe spaces, trigger warnings, etc, etc,.
TL;DR people don’t always uphold their ideals in a way that’s proper and why I struggle to identify with the ideology.
I’m not an MRA or some huge anti feminist these are just some reasons why I (and I assume many other men) find it hard even after growing up in a feminist society to say I support what issues feminists are fighting right now.