Not that kind of feminist

Feminism is something that our society and media is no stranger to. With the recent BBC Gender Pay Gap in the news along with other subjects such as the #MeToo campaign, first starting after accusations against Harvey Weinstein came out. It is there. There is no denying it. However (and I think a lot of women who consider themselves feminists have experienced this too) I am still familiar with that grunt and eye roll combination when telling someone I am a feminist. Not by everyone, I must say, but not by no one either. It made me wonder, why do people react like this? Why do some people show such exhaustion and seem so apathetic when the subject is mentioned?

But let's take it back to where this issue is thought to stem from. A big step for feminism was in the 1960s and 1970s when people no longer had to prove fault in a marriage to get a divorce. This was a very progressive time in America so more feminist reforms were brought to light, such as outlawing gender discrimination pay, which meant that women could get out of bad marriages much easier and could financially support themselves for the first time. Now, there is still much speculation about the role feminism plays in marriages and divorce and some people even believe that feminism is the reason divorce is so popular now. Here is a piece by Martin Daubney, a Telegraph writer, in which he states the in 2015, 69% of divorces were initiated by women.

After many new feminist reforms coming about, there was a wider platform for women to speak out about their issues in society and what they wanted to change, which is great! However, somewhere along the line some people took advantage of this platform and now we have a growing rate of radical or extreme feminists. The stigma surrounding this sort of group creates an image around feminism of us being angry man-haters. Can you blame people for thinking this way about feminists though when radical feminism is covering all platforms of media? A poll constructed by the Washington Post shows 43% of Americans would describe feminists in the United States as angry and 46% believe that feminists unfairly blame men for women's challenges.

All I had to do was look at social media to see why people feel this way.

There is plenty on social media about feminism, but a lot of the pieces and videos I found were views from extremist feminists. For example, below is a video that a friend of mine shared on Facebook a couple of nights ago.

The first thing that bothers me is that this woman (sorry, person) has been a contributing editor for the Washington Post magazine for 18 years yet she thinks Goldman Sachs is a shop... I've watched this clip so many times now and just do not understand it. It's people like this that give liberals and feminists a bad image. I believe that feminism should be striving for equality between all genders, but I'm a democratic, dignified way. This just seems like petty excuses to make woman look inferior in ways that are, I think, ridiculous and only seem to create more of a barrier between men and women by doing this.

Robin Morgan, editor of feminist magazine, Ms. Magazine, said she feels "that ‘man-hating’ is an honourable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them." This, to me, is not the image feminists should be striving for. If feminists wanted to be treated as equal to men, don't act like children.

One of the most infamous third-wave radical feminists of her time, Andrea Dworkin, was quoted once saying "I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig." How can anyone with this mind set blame anyone for not taking them seriously? If a man had said this about a woman, could you imagine the outcry. That doesn't sound like equality to me.

I am honestly tired of logging on to social media to see another 'feminist activist' nitpicking and bitching about men (and before I get called sexist for using a female associated word like "bitching", men can bitch too). It's about time all the petty excuses for radical feminism were dropped. There is no need for it and all it does is cause more problems and more discrimination between genders.

Yes, I am a woman and yes, I am a feminist, but I am not that kind of feminist. Because, to me, that is not feminism at all.