My five-year-old son and I were counting with coins, when he noticed something about the faces on the money. “Dad,” he asked, “are there any lady presidents?”
“No,” I said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“How come?” Felix asked.
I told him that until recently, many people believed that a woman wouldn’t be smart enough, or tough enough, or capable of being president. Now most people know that those ideas are silly and wrong. “In your lifetime,” I said, “you’re going to see a woman president. I’m sure of it.”
He thought about this a moment, nodded, and then resumed counting his money. I’m positive that the idea of a woman becoming the President of the United States doesn’t strike him as at all unusual. My son has grown up with me at home, doing the laundry, and the grocery shopping, and much of the cooking, while his mother goes off to work each morning. A woman having a powerful, decision-making, leadership role? He sees that in his mom, and in the many accomplished, smart, creative women friends our family is lucky enough to have. Just as he sees men who are active and engaged with their families, who finagle work schedules so as to stay home a day or two a week with their little ones, and who have no qualms about changing diapers or handling late-night feedings. It doesn’t seem like Felix thinks men and women are all that different, really. That’s no surprise. My son is being raised by two people who identify themselves as feminists, and so he has feminist values.
Recently, the word feminism has been all over the place, from UN Goodwill Ambassador and actress Emma Watson’s inspiring speech at the United Nations to launch the He For She campaign to Beyonce standing strong and solitary at the VMAs, backlit by the word FEMINIST shining brightly behind her. On The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Joseph Gordon Levitt said “of course” he was a feminist (and in September he expanded on that response in this great video), and recently on The Late Show with David Letterman, Aziz Ansari identified as one too, and said that anyone who believes men and women should have equal rights is also a feminist.
Yet still that word sparks controversy, and I see in discussions online both men and women balking to call themselves feminists. Why? Mostly, it seems to me, because there is still a strong belief that feminists hate men and espouse militant views on gender. (You know: feminists don’t shave their legs or wear skirts because those pander to the male gaze.) Or, as Ansari put it, that feminism means “some woman’s gonna start yelling” at you about something you’re doing wrong, because feminists are angry and bitter, and inflexible in their views. This wonderful piece from Everyday Feminism demonstrates that there are indeed extreme view points out there, some of which definitely cross into misandry (man-hating; misogyny’s gender-opposite term) but those voices have largely been magnified and bandied about by men in order to devalue the feminist movement. As Roxane Gay, author of the essay collection Bad Feminist, told NPR: “That people want to define feminism based on the actions of a select group of [radical] feminists is absolutely absurd. And I also think we forget our history: The reason feminists were humorless is because it was that bad to be a woman.”
Which is another point many people who are uncomfortable with the word feminism make: that it’s an outdated term because women and men are now, for all intents and purposes, equal. That’s not at all the case. In 2013, a woman working full-time earned 78 cents to every dollar made by a man, despite the fact that on-the-whole, women have become the most educated employees in the United States workforce. Or look at #GamerGate’s online harassment of critic Anita Sarkeesian, who called out the obvious: that there needs to be stronger female role models, and an overall better treatment of women in video games. On DAME Magazine, Andrea J. Buchanan writes that for a man like Ansari to be applauded for talking about feminism while a woman like Sarkeesian receives death threats because of her feminist critiques is itself a sign that things are not equal for men and women.
Here’s the thing, folks. What Ansari said on Letterman is spot on. If you believe that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities, and that women are just as valuable contributors to society as men, then no matter if you’re a woman or a man you are indeed a feminist, because that’s the basic definition of the word “feminist.” It doesn’t matter what fashion sense you have, or what lifestyle choices you make, as long as you believe that men and women should have the freedom to choose whatever fashion and lifestyle they would like to have. That means a feminist can be a stay-at-home mom or a stay-at-home dad, or a feminist can be out at work. Feminism is a belief in human dignity no matter of gender, and it has a place at home, in the office, in politics; everywhere, really, even in schools.
In Buchanan’s DAME Magazine piece, she describes how her teenage daughter planned out and started a feminism club at her high school. Though the girls worried about the term being too threatening and alienating potential club members, the club turned out to be one of the more popular ones, and its membership included boys, who the organizers made a point of inviting. This is the point of the UN’s He For She campaign, which asks for men to stand with women in support of equality. Not simply because that’s the right thing to do, but because gender inequality hurts men as well. While men have in no way faced the kind of discrimination women have, historically our culture has held strong ideas of what “masculinity” means, and these ideas are as restrictive as any female stereotypes. I certainly was picked on as a kid and young adult because I didn’t conform to the masculine norm. I had no interest in sports, and spent a lot of time reading, making art, and playing pretend. I was sensitive, to my feelings and those of others around me. I was teased by boys who thought I didn’t measure up as a man, and as I entered adulthood men and women alike made assumptions about my sexuality based on my atypical interests and communication style.
It is my hope that my son will not face similar stress, that people will not make assumptions or judgements about him based on his gender. Nor do I want him to do that to others. I’m trying to raise him to respect women and men based on who they are as human beings, and not measuring them against a narrow standard of how a “man” or “woman” should act or look. I want him to feel confident and strong enough to fight misogyny and misandry, especially should he ever see these poisonous behaviors in himself. I look forward to the day when I can take him with me to vote for the first female president, so that ideally by the time he’s of age to vote, it won’t be unlikely to see a ballot full of candidates of both genders, and many ethnicities.
I’m a feminist, and my wife is a feminist, and I hope that our son is a feminist too.
Image courtesy of Brian Gresko