Alright. With such an extensive answer I can hardly hope to express my opinion in such a well expressed way. Feminism is a thorny topic, and honesty while I do have strong knee reactions reading this topic, given the way you expressed your views I thought I might as well take the lazy approach and answer with a vague video that can be taken either way, providing absolutely no clue on what I meant by it. It is just easy to have sass being the one that does things for you instead to actually trying to dig into "why" is that I think this way. Beyond the comforting strawman of "all the opposite team says is BS", why am I embracing this? How can I put it into words? Is it just raw emotions or is there some rationality in it.
So, let's commence with what I originally backed up to say that night. The biggest issue I have with your way to express about feminism is that you are confusing extremist, which are derogatively called feminazis, with the feminism in general. If you were talking about Feminazis I would find easier to agree with reasons as they falling into sexism and having BS reasoning. But you're placing all feminist into one bag. Making them into a giant All-are-the-same straw man.' Maybe it comes from simplifications other people have developed to better digest the movement.
It is a natural trait trying to label and simplify things. We also tend to learn patterns. If a machista believes men are superior, a feminist must believe women are superior, even though it is well known that feminism is searching for equality, there is always this suspicion that they actually are trying to place themselves above and have the best of both worlds. Egalitarianism and feminism are not that separated, as feminism is taking from egalitarian ideas and focussing in gender differences.
Now, let me pause for a moment to clarify something VERY important: In general the feminism movement is not against being a housewife or having feminine traits. The movement is about allowing the women to make those decisions on their own. It is about women having the choice.
Another thing, it is not a single linear movement. Feminism has branched as not every person identify wholeheartedly in every detail. I only could find the 4 movements related to the waves, but I am pretty sure there are more.
I also hate the whole "them" versus "us" it generates. Talking about feminism is usually thought on just women. Thinking about people opposing the movement makes us think on just men.
It is easy to both sides to demonise the other side and at the same time accuse them to stereotyping your side instead of trying to understand it.
Before I get too off-tangent, let's go with your points.
1. They already have their equality.
A). Since the 1920s, women have been given a ton of equalness to men.
B). You'd think that would satisfy them, but nope! They think everything is still unfair between men and women.
C). I agree that men and women should be equal, but to tell you the truth, we kind of already are. They're just dragging this useless movement on for no reason.
Okay. Let me be as clear as possible with this: You're talking about equality as it is definite object that has already been tossed to them. There are more than one type of equality and the movement has been more successful closing the gaps in some aspects than others. There is the way that laws differentiate men from women, the social constructs, the cultural traditions, the biological differences and tendencies, etc.
Just saying "You got it already. Shut up" becomes meaningless when you're not even explaining what kind of equality you're talking about and how is that "they" already got it.
Now, my knowledge on the past decades and the feminist movement is muddy for two reasons: I did not live through it and I wasn't raised in America, where most of the waves achievements and talks come from. However, I still feel your asseveration, specially in the first half of your explanation merits some rebuttal. Through A) and the first part of B) You're saying that what was achieved by the first wave was enough. I take from this you're talking about the legal aspect since it is my understanding the biggest achievement was the culmination with women being accepted to finally get to vote. The movement was mostly changing the legal separation where only men had a voice in the country. Only men could get certain positions, only men could vote. Women were to stay at home. It did not however changed the cultural or social views in a whim. While the path was open to vote and even in some regions even postulate to important charges there was still a stigma.
When the War ended, the American tried to focus in the perfect, functional family, where the husband and wife had a very well defined roles and characteristics. Men is the provider, the women is the fortress of the home. He is strong. She is understanding. Not adhering with this idealisation was seeing badly. A loud woman was a rude woman. A woman could enroll in job positions but they were paid less because of her sex. Enrolling your daughter in school was seen as an utter waste of time. What's the point? She'll just grow to be married and stay home. She should instead be learning useful things like sewing and cooking. That was the mentality then, and that is what you're heavily implying they should have been happy about.
Between 1920 and 2015 many things in between changed, heck even just in the last 50 years you could argue a lot of changes came regarding views in education, gender and race. That is the other thing, this was not something isolated. You have the abolition for slaves, the fight for the black people to be recognized as an equal, the misinformation on nations away from our owns, the fear that big changes would bring chaos and the fall of our system.
Look. here is the thing: We're all tangled here. We all grow and fall in paradigms and misconceptions, women included. Every time a woman expects the man to do things they wouldn't do or find fair to be asked to do. We keep separating matters than are terrible and separate them in genders. Rape is awful, but instead of focusing how going through it is terrible we make it a sex problem. The online harassment. Many terrible things we just rather to divert into who is more justified in feeling a a victim.
All the changes we have seen in the last decade re-defining gender roles and challenging the binary order. It is part of it. We're socially and culturally linked in different ways. You have people advocating the desaparition of gender altogether. People talking about an spectrum. As our ideas of man and woman being a defined set of attributes comes down and a push to instead consider those attributes regardless the sex we were born. Not all women are fragile, quiet and considerate. not every man is loud, strong and impulsive. We're in an era where we are becoming more accepting of people having different traits without that making them any less than other people. Each generation has a point of start from the environment they grew with, and a limit of what they can take. Older generations cannot understand or agree with many recent changes and points of views. This is the era where we have been born, all we know is what we assume has been the case. It's been a process.
[INDENT][INDENT]"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."
~Napoleon Bonaparte[/INDENT][/INDENT]
A lot of the people labeling themselves either pro- or anti- feminist don't know the movement or understand the process. They just parrot what other people said before them, and they risk ending up asking for things that reverse what has been gained. being informed and trying to understand what kind of good can other people see in something can help you make your mind better.
The point in C is kind of self defeating. If they are still dragging this it is obvious that there is still people that don't think that way. To be honest the problem right now is that we are focussing in this well developed areas. You have young girls saying they don't need feminism because men don't tell them how to wear or act when the movement does. We're at the point where the times I talked about 3 paragraphs ago, are not even in our minds any more. However there are other parts of the world with women activists fighting for equality, fighting for their right to choose and be be respected. So there is still work to be done.
2. Their reasons are bullshit.
Their reasons for doing this are complete bullshit. I don't think I need to say anything more about this.
You do. You really do. Please enlist some of her reasons and how they are bullshit.
3. Sexist.
Yeah, I said it. Some people are going to argue with me on this one, but I'm going to stick with this decision. A LOT of feminists have a hatred towards men. Just because, "OMG WUR NUT EQUAL".
A lot of terrible acts have been committed in the name of God. Does that means that every person believing in God agrees with said acts?
They may call themselves feminists but that doesn't mean the majority accept them as their voice. People that are blinded by hate are a hinder to the cause.
People being sexist also damage the movement, whether they realise or not they are being sexist. The problem is, sexism is most of the time situational. It is something we have to scan ourselves in our interactions to avoid it.
You have those adverts where the man is portrayed as a clueless idiot. As a woman I can feel easy to minimise it, but I should instead challenge the paradigm.
I think there is a lot from the man side that can be addressed in social stigmas. There is misinformation even in how a penis work. There is this idea that a man cannot be raped because if he got an erection it is basically consent.
A beautiful chick throwing herself at you is not something bad but something to brag about, regardless if you didn't want anything with her. The jokes on manhood card. The idea that you should never ever hit a woman...
Finally, we're back to my video. The reason I like this video is because for some reason I feel more emotion when he slaps her than when she slapped him. It makes me realise I have my own paradigms to fight.
Answering your question, it is not rare for a girl to have a man using the bus movement as an excuse to get creepily close to you. Rubbing their crotch, smelling the hair. I believe that is why she thought was happening. Without any benefit of the doubt she just chose to judge and slap him. He knew, because he just had gone through, that she got close to him not in harassment but because of the bus movement. He slapped her the way she did before. It drives the point home. This video is not real ,as far as I can assume. Given the change in angles and that the original one records from when he gets in the bus. For all I know is not about feminism or equality but about to take in account the other side before jumping to conclusions.
This is what we need. Forget about the name. Sure, focus in being egalitarian instead. No worries. Just let's stop making witch hunts out of it and focus on the stuff that can actually be good. I don't care what you label it.
