{"id":202,"date":"2011-12-05T22:17:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-05T22:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2011\/12\/feminism-explained\/"},"modified":"2012-04-30T12:18:49","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T16:18:49","slug":"feminism-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2011\/12\/feminism-explained.html","title":{"rendered":"Feminism Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Growing up, I equated feminism with selfishness, child abandonment, and a desire to destroy the family. I believed that feminism was destroying the country by elevating women at the expense of men, leaving men emasculated and the family in shambles. Feminists were, I thought, man haters who mocked motherhood and the family, pursuing instead their own selfish dreams of worldly fulfillment. It wasn\u2019t until college that I learned what feminism actually is. According to Wikipedia,<\/p>\n

Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s it. Feminism is simply the desire for female equality, politically, economically, and socially.<\/p>\n

With the bogeyman stripped away, feminism doesn\u2019t seem so scary. There\u2019s nothing in there about hating men, or about not wanting children, or about being selfish. It\u2019s simply a call for equality, not raising women above men. Put this way, the development of second wave feminism four decades ago makes sense. Just as the civil rights movement demanded equality for blacks, the women\u2019s rights movement demanded equality for women. Who could be against this?<\/p>\n

Today, the vast, vast majority of American women \u2013 and American men \u2013 are feminists, whether they claim the term or not. Ask nearly any college-aged woman (or man) whether she (or he) thinks women should have political, economic, and social equality, and the answer will almost inevitably be \u201cyes, of course!\u201d Today, feminism has made incredible inroads in American society to the extent that the core tenets of feminism are held so universally that they seem obvious and beyond need of stating.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, feminism transcends religious boundaries, finding its place both within Christianity and outside of it. Today there are even Muslim feminists who are also calling for equal rights for women. Feminism is not anti-religion, and it\u2019s not anti-family. Feminism is a universal to which any human being who believes in true equality can lay claim. Feminism is something to which men should, and do, lay claim alongside women.<\/p>\n

Two questions arise from this discussion. First, why do we still need feminism if most people are feminist? Second, why are there anti-feminists?<\/p>\n

Most Americans today believe in racial equality, but that doesn\u2019t mean that actual racial equality has yet been reached. It\u2019s the same with feminism. Just as there is structural racism, even so there is structural sexism. For example, women still suffer from income inequality. Part of the reason is that women enter who enter stereotypically female jobs (teacher, secretary) are paid less because, well, jobs that have been historically held by females pay less. But it\u2019s more than that. There is still inequality of pay between men and women working the same jobs. Why? \u00a0An excellent blog post<\/a> explains by quoting an article:<\/p>\n

The reason they don\u2019t keep up, from where I sit, is simple. Often, a woman will enter the salary negotiation phase and I\u2019ll tell them a number will be sent to them in a couple days. Usually we start around $45k for an entry level position. 50% to 60% of the women I interview simply take this offer. It\u2019s insane, I already know I can get authorization for more if you simply refuse. Inversely, almost 90% of the men I interview immediately ask for more upon getting the offer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some might say that this is the women\u2019s fault; they should just learn to negotiate! First, though, I\u2019d point out that women are socialized NOT to negotiate but rather to compromise in order to ensure tranquility. But there\u2019s more than that, too, as the blogger points out, quoting a study:<\/p>\n

Their study\u2026found that women\u2019s reluctance [to negotiate] was based on an entirely reasonable and accurate view of how they were likely to be treated if they did\u2026.\u201dWhat we found across all the studies is men were always less willing to work with a woman who had attempted to negotiate than with a woman who did not,\u201d Bowles said. \u201cThey always preferred to work with a woman who stayed mum. But it made no difference to the men whether a guy had chosen to negotiate or not.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thus today, sexism is largely off the books, ingrained in culture rather than enshrined in the law or in employment handbooks. Thus while the vast majority of Americans believe in equality for women, it has yet to be achieved.<\/p>\n

There is another reason full equality has yet to be achieved. Women have for the past two hundred years been the primary caretakers of children, and even with the increasing involvement of fathers in the last two generations, women still bare the brunt of the childrearing. Unlike Western European countries, there are very few social structures to support motherhood and parenting. We don\u2019t have paid maternity leave or subsidized daycare, for example. The result is that mothers who work have to play a balancing act that fathers who work simply don\u2019t have to play. What we need is greater parenting equality and more support systems for working parents. This is another area where feminism still has work to do.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s more too, of course. Women still face a sexual double standard and have to worry about rape. Women\u2019s reproductive rights (which while I am pro-choice, I see as starting not with abortion but rather with birth control) are continually under attack, and without being able to control their reproduction, women cannot achieve full equality.<\/p>\n

But enough about why feminism is still needed even though most Americans are feminists. It\u2019s time to move on to the second question: If the man-hating feminist is a stereotype and feminism is merely a belief in female equality, why are there anti-feminists?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, there are still misogynist pricks who makes rape jokes and think it\u2019s funny to talk about women\u2019s place being the kitchen. I seriously don\u2019t understand what\u2019s wrong with these people.<\/p>\n

Second, there are women who should identify as feminists but don\u2019t because of misinformation. They don\u2019t understand that feminism is about equality and think it is about man hating or about sexual promiscuity or about abortion (again, I think the starting point and rallying cry of feminists at a fundamental level is, or at least should be, about birth control \u2013 the ability to control reproduction \u2013 not abortion). If these women understood what feminism actually was \u2013 a belief in women\u2019s economic, political, and social equality \u2013 \u00a0they would surely identify as feminism; after all, we\u2019re talking about women who already completely agree with these core tenets of feminism, they just don\u2019t recognize it by that name! What we have here is misinformation, but also, I think, a failure on the part of those who identify as feminists to properly articulate the feminist message. And it\u2019s unfortunate, because it robs the movement of those who should be allies.<\/p>\n

Third, and this is where I have most of my experience, are those anti0feminists who actually disagree with the core feminist goals, and for religious reasons. Put quite simply, religious anti-feminists don\u2019t believe that women should have equal rights with men. They believe that men should be in charge, and women should follow, and that this is the natural order of society as ordained by God. I said earlier that feminists are not anti-family. They\u2019re not, but they are against the patriarchal family. Feminists envision a family built on mutual cooperation and equality; religious anti-feminists envision a family built on a divine\u00a0hierarchical\u00a0order that prizes authority and obedience. I said earlier that feminists are not anti-religion. They\u2019re not, but they are opposed to any religion that teaches that women are to be subordinent to men. Feminists in the conservative religious traditions that teach this sort of\u00a0hierarchical\u00a0gender order usually either jump ship (generally for a more liberal religious tradition) or work to reform that religious tradition by advocating for equality within it.<\/p>\n

For religious anti-feminists, feminism does quite literally does mean the\u00a0dissolution\u00a0of the (patriarchal) family and the undermining of the divine (hierarchical) social order. Religious anti-feminists believe that women\u2019s role is in the home, as wives and mothers, not outside of it, and that men\u2019s role is in the workplace, as protector and provider for his family. Any change to this family order is a threat to their view of the family and the divine order of society. In this sense, feminism is a threat to the very core of their beliefs about the world and how it is meant to work. It\u2019s important to remember that these religious anti-feminists would never say that women are less than men, but rather simply that men and women have different roles to play. These roles, they say, are different but equal. But since one of the roles is to be beneath the other role, I call bullshit on the supposed equality. My point is simply that they don\u2019t advocate \u201coppressing women\u201d or \u201ckeeping women down,\u201d but rather \u201cadhering to the God-given family order with everyone fulfilling their proper roles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furthermore, religious anti-feminists believe that they can point to feminists destroying the family before their very eyes. Feminists are often charged with causing high divorce rates, and to some extent this is true. What happened was that in the past, before women had the measure of equality gained through the second wave feminist movement, women in abusive or unhappy marriages had no choice but to stay trapped in them. They had no other options because they were financially dependent on their spouses and divorce would have meant social suicide. Once these abused and unhappy women had other options, many of them chose divorce, and understandably so. Recent statistics show, though, that divorce rates are on the decline, perhaps in part because marriages founded on equality from the beginning are more likely to be happy and fulfilling.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really no wonder religious anti-feminists are so concerned about feminism. Feminism quite literally does undermine everything they believe in. The stereotypes of feminism I grew up with were wrong, but even if I had understood what feminism actually was, I would likely still have opposed it. When you believe that women are always to be under male authority, endorsing female equality isn\u2019t exactly a priority.<\/p>\n

I wonder, though, if the women of Christian Patriarchy would be quite so happy to lead lives as submissive \u201chelpmeets\u201d if they were forced to do so rather than doing so by choice. After all, two hundred years ago the law stated that women had to obey their husbands, and that if they didn\u2019t, their husbands were legally free to beat them into submission. My guess is that choosing to be submissive is much more pleasing than being forced to be submissive. In this way, perhaps Christian Patriarchy has a symbiotic relationship with feminism, because without feminism it would not exist as it does today, with its leagues of women happy to voluntarily embrace their own submission because, they believe, through their choice they are serving God.<\/p>\n

So there you have it: feminism, the reason it\u2019s still needed, and the source of its religious opposition, all in one post.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: This is just a collection of my thoughts as a feminist, I don\u2019t claim to speak for feminism as a whole or that every feminist would agree with me on every point of my analysis.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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