Having grown up with parents who raised me to be strong and independent, teaching me to throw a football at age seven and change my tires at sixteen, feminism has never struck me as a big issue. Mainly because when I was younger, I never thought of inequalities or being suppressed, I was just Katie. Although there is still inequalities in today's society, I feel that overall feminists have come a long way within the past one hundred years. Now, by no means does that mean I believe that women should not have access to birth control or should have to worry about walking alone and everything else, I still myself am feminist. However, I think that some feminists have taken it farther than necessary, and have made it just illogical. So, when I read "Why I Left Feminism (Or, How Feminism Left Me)" by Heather Wilhelm, I related strongly to the seven issues with modern feminism she laid out. Although some of the points are a little dramatically stated, beyond the fluff her points are solid. For one, some of todays "feminists" shut down any independent thinking, Jessica Valenti wrote at The Guardian:
"Without some boundaries for claiming the word feminist, it becomes meaningless. So once and for all: Can you be an anti-choice feminist? No. A Republican feminist? Unlikely. A feminist who thinks that the issues of importance to women of color or gay women or trans women or disabled women aren’t ‘feminist issues’? To quote Flavia Dzodan, ‘My feminism will be intersectional, or it will be bullshit’ – and I’m not interested in bullshit.
Many of the other exerts Wilhem shares from Valenti's work is just incredibly narrow-minded, and often simply illogical. Wilhem makes six other valid points about many of the problems with feminism today. I do believe everyone is entitled to equal rights, but in the end, women need to be strong, smart and independent, not precisely equal to men.
Read the Article Here
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