Just like any Gustavus student, I love watching and sharing YouTube videos with friends and family. You can watch Tina Fey testing out her pageant walk as Sarah Palin, Charlie biting his British older brother’s “fin-gah,” and the evolution of dance, Macarena and all.
One day I decided to type the F-word into the search bar. Pull your head out of the gutter. I did not type the profane word which also doubles for “uh oh!” I typed in FEMINIST. I encountered a video which asked men in New York City, “What is a feminist?” Answers ranged from “lesbians” to “militant, angry women who are trying to get their way in the world” to one man even saying, “They got their amendment passed in 1920. Why are they still complaining about women’s rights?” As a gender, women and sexuality studies minor, I nearly fell off my chair. I find it incredibly difficult to agree with that man’s statement. Do women, on average, earn less than men? Are women, on average, expected to complete the “second shift” when they get home from work and have a more domestic role than men in the house? Do ignorant, sexist jokes continue to linger in our world and on our campus? If you said yes to any of these questions, you would agree that the fight for equality is not over.
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, author of The F-Word: Feminism in Jeopardy, argues that women continually fight for equality. Although women have come far since corsets and arranged marriages, it has been only 86 years since women earned the right to vote, the age of our grandparents. It has been only 44 years since Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed sex discrimination, the year the first Beatles album was released. It was 35 years ago that women got the right to choose a legal abortion, the same year the World Trade Center opened. In 1994, the Violence Against Women Act passed, the same year Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president. We have made significant strides towards equality, yet gender inequality still remains.
Finkbeiner asserts that, “few young women want to be called ‘feminist’ these days.” Feminism today lacks a broad-based, cohesive women’s movement. Radical women’s movements and negative depictions of feminists have caused feminism to turn into a “dirty” word. Contrary to what you might see on TV, not all feminists burn their bras, refuse to date men, reject the task of shaving their legs or get their tubes tied, and not all feminists are women!
What does Gustavus think of feminists? On a recent GAC TV Question of the Week segment which I conducted, I surveyed random students on campus and asked them, “What is a feminist?” Some men had the typical negative responses to the “big bad” F-word. One guy agreed to step in front of the camera before I asked the question. I pressed record, asked the question and watched him walk away saying, “You don’t want me to answer that. I would offend you.” A few other men refused to even step in front of the camera after hearing what the question was. They proceeded to walk away snickering.
To give some men on this campus credit, I was surprised and enlightened by a few of the male interviewees. One proudly identified himself as a feminist on camera. Another defined feminism as “striving for equal rights for women.” Every woman who agreed to step in front of the camera before hearing the question did complete the interview. Women seemed to be more confident and willing to answer the question and were also more informed than men on the definition of feminism.
I asked my 300-level Feminist Pop Culture Class, “What does feminism mean to you?” Every definition varied slightly. “To me, feminism is the continual awareness and action of gender equality.” “Being a feminist means fighting for the eradication of sexism in all its forms and in all aspects of society.” “As a feminist, I am continually working at ‘evening the playing field’ for all races, genders, sexual preferences and ethnicities. It is also important to work towards social justice for all of these groups.”
Peg O’Connor, chair of the Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies Department, hopes that men as well as women will identify themselves as feminists. “Men are essential to any kind of battle for equality and fairness that women hope to wage.”
I was thankful to not hear near as many negative stereotypes of feminism on our campus as the YouTube video that I originally viewed. I was impressed by many male responses to my question and elated to hear women speaking passionately about equality. In order to create sex equality, we need to form a stronger base of feminists in our world and on our campus. I am a feminist. I am a feminist because I believe in equality of the sexes and strive to uphold that belief on a daily basis. Are you a feminist?