Hello, and welcome to my new blog!
Don't worry, I'm still going to be post to the other blog too. I just decided to create this new blog in the new year, because I wanted to keep my opinions on pop culture separate from my advice and other things like that. So here we are. I've been thinking that I'm just going to do videos on all this stuff I write. I will be a lot less work for my hands. When you write all day, everyday, your hands get angry...at least mine do.
So originally, I was going to talk about ALL the important things that happened this month in pop culture, but that's A LOT of stuff. Instead, I'm just going to write about one thing. And this month, that one thing is feminism.
Uh oh.
I've been hearing about feminists for the longest time, and how everyone either dislikes them, are scared of them, or support them. I for one didn't understand the whole hype behind all this feminism stuff, so I did what I normally do with anything and everything else. I researched it.
Wikipedia's definition for feminism is:
Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies that share a common stated aim: to define, establish, and defend equal political, economic, cultural, and social rights for women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. A feminist generally self-defines as advocating for or supporting the rights and equality of women.
Alrighty.
So this is what I think about feminism:
I think it's fantastic. I mean, what's so wrong with supporting women's rights? Sounds perfectly good to me. I mean, it's 2015, people. I think it makes sense for women and girls to make their own decisions, be independent, and do (just about) anything a male can. But as it turns out, it gets more difficult than that.
I've heard story after story about feminist who have tried to force their beliefs on others, blah, blah, blah. Who doesn't do that, though? Every community I can think of does that these days. Gosh people. What is up with forcing things on others. If they don't want to believe the way you, then leave them alone. Let others believe what they want to believe. For example, I'm a Christian, most of you guys know this. But just because I'm a believer, doesn't mean I'm going to yell at a Buddhist and tell them that they're going to go to hell for not believing the way I do. That's kind of harsh. Because at the end of the day, you can't MAKE people change their beliefs. Sometimes you can get them to think, if they're willing to listen, but don't try and force things onto others. It's just annoying, and everyone's going to hate to see you coming their way.
Anyway, I don't know what I am yet; a feminist, or an anti-feminist. It's hard for me to decide.
Allow me to explain myself:
So at first, I thought feminism was great and everything. Yay for women having rights and respect. I researched and I got into the feminist culture. Then, I discovered that there are women who are anti-feminists. Dun dun dun.
I found this Facebook page called Women Against Feminism. At first I was like, what why are you against this, what's your problem? Then I like Facebook stalked them for a while, and began to understand their point of view. Several teenage girls and grown women have send in selfies of them holding up a piece of paper or a whiteboard, explaining why they don't need feminism. After reading some of these, I started to think. Wait, what if feminism is hurting the world, more than we realize?
Some of the women and girls on the page said things like:
"I don't need feminism because it's hurting men, and not helping women."
"I don't need feminism because I don't need to be a victim."
"I don't need feminism because I refuse to demonize an entire gender when this "evil, worthless man" has given me more support encouragement and love than all the women in my life combined." this anti-feminist posts a picture of her and her boyfriend.
Well, I will admit all of this made me think.
I mean, I agree, boys can be kind of annoying. Like really annoying. But I like them a lot...some of them are super cute and nice. I agree we shouldn't "demonize an entire gender."
But it's all so confusing. There are all these feminist who seem to mean well, but some of them (I don't know why I bother saying some when everyone takes these sort of things personally...if this doesn't sound like you, but carry on. Just that simple) are kind of scary. And then, I look at the anti-feminists, and some of them support things I don't support. For example, abortion. Sorry if you expected me to support something like that, but I don't know what kind of person with a heart would actually support murder of an innocent baby who hasn't even gotten to chance to live. Okay, we'll save that for another post. Because that topic itself can take a while to talk about.
So what do you guys think about feminism? What are you, a feminist, or an anti-feminist? This whole thing just makes my head hurt, so as of now, I've just decided to be a Gabrielle-ist.
I like the sound of that.
