So I'm a feminist.
The difference between 'feminist' and 'Well, sure, men and women are equal' is a pretty simple one, actually.
'Men and women are equal' is a statement that implies that nothing more needs to be done. Further thought is not required; unfair inequalities do not exist; we're equal. Break out the champagne. It's a post-feminist statement. And I'm very much afraid that, in our society today, it's premature. I would go so far as to say that, in the way it is usually used, it leads to increased prejudice against women.
I don't think that men and women are, in all ways, equal. I think that, in terms of inherent abilities and intelligence, men and women are equal, and that attempting to make generalizations about one sex or the other obscures the undeniable fact that the variation within the sexes is much, much greater than the variation between the sexes. Inherent ability is equal, or sufficiently so that it is ridiculous to inflate the significance of the differences.
Men and women are not equal in all ways because we live in a society that is unapologetically and strongly patriarchal. How many female presidents has the United States had? How many female CEOs? How many engineering professors who, like one of my friend's, refuse to help female students because girls can't do math and will fail out anyway? (A self-fulfilling prophecy if ever I've heard one.)
Societal inequality is a fact of life. Glossing it over and getting mad when people point it out does not mean that it goes away; it means that it is encouraged. When people say that feminism means thinking women are better than men, hating men, thinking men are scum, et cetera ad nauseam for those of you who are not already sick of that misrepresentation, they. are. wrong.
It means believing that men and women should be, but are not in our current culture, equal. It means that when you see a situation in which misogyny plays a part, you don't pretend that it's due to natural ability levels because men and women are equal! That's the sort of thinking that leads university presidents to think it's okay when they announce that differing representation of women in the sciences is a result of women having a lower inherent interest in/ability for science.
When you decide that opportunity is equal, and the evidence suggests that women experience difficulties entering certain professions, the logical conclusion is either that women aren't interested in that profession or they aren't good at it. When "men and women are equal" is used as a statement about opportunities, a very small amount of thought leads people to think that girls just aren't as good at the professions disproportionately pursued by men.
Feminism means looking at it the other way around. Women and men have equal capacity. Women and men are not treated equally, and the observed discrepancies are due primarily if not entirely to the way that women are treated when they try to enter those disproportionately male professions.
I read a short personal anecdote today (here)in which a woman announced that she was not a feminist because the term was loaded. The loading she refers to is an anecdotal comment she overheard from Eleanor Smeal, head of a feminist group known as The Feminist Majority; Smeal apparently called her debate partner, Christina Hoff Sommers, "not a real feminist" because Sommers advertised their debate to a psychology class by announcing that it would be "a real catfight."
I agree entirely. That's not a feminist thing to say. It doesn't smear the image of feminism to point out that characterizing a civilized debate about feminism, between esteemed intellectuals (this was a debate at Cornell, incidentally), as a 'catfight' because two women are involved is not a feminist thing to say. It trivializes all of the excellent qualifications that the debaters have, and reduces them to the base level of gender and their debate to a hair-pulling nail-raking spectacle. Is this feminist? The message is, come to see two women fight. The message should have been, come because this is an important issue that will be intelligently discussed. Reducing one to the other is essentially saying that (1) nothing a woman does is as important as the fact that she is female, and (2) it is okay to trivialize and belittle femininity. Conflating the two, it becomes okay to trivialize and belittle everything a woman does based on her femininity.
Yes, this happens. A debate is a 'catfight,' 'she got the job because they needed a token woman,' 'there are no women on the internet,' fangirls are dumb and 13 years old as opposed to fanboys who are obsessive and 35 (i.e. women are belittled as immature know-nothings whereas men are older, know a lot, and are belittled for their lack of social skills to go with those traits)...
If it doesn't happen in all situations, well, that's great! Signs of progress and all. I approve highly of situations that are egalitarian and untainted by misogynist messages. I'm not going to go looking for discrimination where it doesn't exist. But I object a lot when people think it's unacceptable to see discrimination where it does exist. Too often, the sorts of people who claim for themselves the label of "believer in the equality of men and women" and reject the label "feminist" do so because they don't believe in the existence of systematic discrimination against women, and become therefore silent partners in the discrimination (and sometimes outright abetters, like Sommers in the above anecdote).
'Men and women are equal' is a statement that implies that nothing more needs to be done. Further thought is not required; unfair inequalities do not exist; we're equal. Break out the champagne. It's a post-feminist statement. And I'm very much afraid that, in our society today, it's premature. I would go so far as to say that, in the way it is usually used, it leads to increased prejudice against women.
I don't think that men and women are, in all ways, equal. I think that, in terms of inherent abilities and intelligence, men and women are equal, and that attempting to make generalizations about one sex or the other obscures the undeniable fact that the variation within the sexes is much, much greater than the variation between the sexes. Inherent ability is equal, or sufficiently so that it is ridiculous to inflate the significance of the differences.
Men and women are not equal in all ways because we live in a society that is unapologetically and strongly patriarchal. How many female presidents has the United States had? How many female CEOs? How many engineering professors who, like one of my friend's, refuse to help female students because girls can't do math and will fail out anyway? (A self-fulfilling prophecy if ever I've heard one.)
Societal inequality is a fact of life. Glossing it over and getting mad when people point it out does not mean that it goes away; it means that it is encouraged. When people say that feminism means thinking women are better than men, hating men, thinking men are scum, et cetera ad nauseam for those of you who are not already sick of that misrepresentation, they. are. wrong.
It means believing that men and women should be, but are not in our current culture, equal. It means that when you see a situation in which misogyny plays a part, you don't pretend that it's due to natural ability levels because men and women are equal! That's the sort of thinking that leads university presidents to think it's okay when they announce that differing representation of women in the sciences is a result of women having a lower inherent interest in/ability for science.
When you decide that opportunity is equal, and the evidence suggests that women experience difficulties entering certain professions, the logical conclusion is either that women aren't interested in that profession or they aren't good at it. When "men and women are equal" is used as a statement about opportunities, a very small amount of thought leads people to think that girls just aren't as good at the professions disproportionately pursued by men.
Feminism means looking at it the other way around. Women and men have equal capacity. Women and men are not treated equally, and the observed discrepancies are due primarily if not entirely to the way that women are treated when they try to enter those disproportionately male professions.
I read a short personal anecdote today (here)in which a woman announced that she was not a feminist because the term was loaded. The loading she refers to is an anecdotal comment she overheard from Eleanor Smeal, head of a feminist group known as The Feminist Majority; Smeal apparently called her debate partner, Christina Hoff Sommers, "not a real feminist" because Sommers advertised their debate to a psychology class by announcing that it would be "a real catfight."
I agree entirely. That's not a feminist thing to say. It doesn't smear the image of feminism to point out that characterizing a civilized debate about feminism, between esteemed intellectuals (this was a debate at Cornell, incidentally), as a 'catfight' because two women are involved is not a feminist thing to say. It trivializes all of the excellent qualifications that the debaters have, and reduces them to the base level of gender and their debate to a hair-pulling nail-raking spectacle. Is this feminist? The message is, come to see two women fight. The message should have been, come because this is an important issue that will be intelligently discussed. Reducing one to the other is essentially saying that (1) nothing a woman does is as important as the fact that she is female, and (2) it is okay to trivialize and belittle femininity. Conflating the two, it becomes okay to trivialize and belittle everything a woman does based on her femininity.
Yes, this happens. A debate is a 'catfight,' 'she got the job because they needed a token woman,' 'there are no women on the internet,' fangirls are dumb and 13 years old as opposed to fanboys who are obsessive and 35 (i.e. women are belittled as immature know-nothings whereas men are older, know a lot, and are belittled for their lack of social skills to go with those traits)...
If it doesn't happen in all situations, well, that's great! Signs of progress and all. I approve highly of situations that are egalitarian and untainted by misogynist messages. I'm not going to go looking for discrimination where it doesn't exist. But I object a lot when people think it's unacceptable to see discrimination where it does exist. Too often, the sorts of people who claim for themselves the label of "believer in the equality of men and women" and reject the label "feminist" do so because they don't believe in the existence of systematic discrimination against women, and become therefore silent partners in the discrimination (and sometimes outright abetters, like Sommers in the above anecdote).