Will the Real Feminist Please Stand Up?

Feminism is perhaps the most celebrated and yet reviled movement of our time. Its history and impact have largely been reduced to tropes either celebrating its heroic rebellion against a medieval-modern patriarchy or damning it as a force grown bloated to misandristic excess. Neither of these portrayals is really true, and that’s the primary problem we have when discussing feminism. It’s become a term with so many different meanings that most people don’t bother making heads or tails of it.

On one side, there are those who assert that to believe in equal rights between the sexes is feminism, plain and simple. But I think anyone with a philosophical mind can see that this is mostly hollow. What does the word “equal” mean? Does it simply that they be treated exactly the same in all circumstances? Do we make allowances for natural differences in muscularity, pregnancy, and hormone balance? This isn’t just pedantry. It’s a real issue and one that those of this school leave mysteriously unanswered. I support a woman’s right to work outside the home and find our culture of objectification absolutely disgusting. But I’m not pro-choice. To some that makes me a bigot, but it is entirely intelligible within a framework of equal rights, as far as I’m concerned.

But the opposite camp is just as flawed. Certainly some feminists do tend toward misandry. I’ve even heard a few people call themselves misandrists who are opposed to the patriarchy to the point of wishing for matriarchy. These are self-identified feminists, but they don’t represent the entire movement. They cannot be said to argue for everything that is feminism nor can angry men use these radicals as straw-men to condemn the entire movement. Mary Daly and Mary Wollstonecraft are not the same person.

I think the term needs to go. Why? Because the word itself implies a privileging of the female over the male. This is simple etymology. And while women were certainly more historically oppressed than men, the longer feminism fights for equality, necessarily the less it becomes about females. It’s also become too charged and ambiguous. Feminist is fine as a term of self-identification, but holds little communal weight. It means more different things than any other word I can think of. So, can men be feminists? Until there’s some logical consensus on what the term means, I’ll be sitting down.