Jun 4, 2021
Why Today is a Good Day to Start Being a Feminist.
Perceptions and comprehensions.
Throughout time most of us have had very long conversations involving women. Either trying to understand how they think, getting to know how to be one or critiquing the various achievement the female population has made, we all have been in a position where expressing our points of view in their existence comes into play. I grew up thinking men were from Mars and women from Venus, acknowledging we were different because of physical attributes and social stigmas. Later on because its a scientific fact that men are stronger than women and finally because most positions of power are held by men. I made peace with the idea that we weren't as capable and that when we tried to prove otherwise we ended up failing.
In my freshman year of college I got the opportunity to make this presentation titled Empires & Gender: The Leading Ladies, where I took the liberty to highlight the incredible achievements 10 iconic women had made and despite pointing out their contributions to making the world a better place, I also pointed out issues each one of them had confronted afterwards, like Margaret Thatcher developing dementia after 11 years as Prime Minister or how Marie Curie developed depression after not being able to use her real name because she was Polish and a female.
In that same presentation I also highlighted how women lost certain unique characteristics of their personality which later ended up being the loss of certain feminine traits. I explained how success affected motherhood and how the feeling of not being good enough as a mother caused a negative impact in the overall performance of the women in question, the prime example being their deteriorating confidence and how they carried themselves in both personal and professional settings.
The thought of needing perfection as a daughter, friend, wife, mother and professional tired women so much a high percentage of them came to the conclusion that it was either having a successful career or being a mother. Neurological connections between mothers and their children have been proven throughout time, creating the need of being with their child at all times. The mom guilt working mothers suffer when leaving their children for work also impacts the basis on which these decisions are made, the connection between fathers and children are purely emotional which facilitates men leaving for work without feeling guilty, making it all the more obvious to me why I would rarely see more than two or three women in a board of directors with — 20 members
A year and a half later after that investigation, I decided to look back and read the research from another perspective. A study from Stanford Medicine shows how men are capable of carrying nine times the weight women can but another study shows how women are able to endure pain nine times more than men, meaning the fact I mentioned before of “men being stronger then women” is not necessarily true, we lose feminine traits because when we demand we are not being boss ladies we’re being bossy and the only reason why we were not in many positions of power is because we were fighting a system that made us believe we were never good enough.
Feminism gathers the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes, the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes, the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities and the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.
At its core feminism is not after “sameness” but equality. Women have never asked for anything else than having the same respect someone would have for a man and the access to the same opportunities without being biased. Feminism has been associated with strong, forceful and angry women, and our society continues to punish forceful women. Many people fear that feminism will mean that men will eventually lose out — of power, influence, impact, authority, and control, and economic opportunities which is understandable but men can be as feminists as women, they are mainly the reason why this conversation is happening and mostly the message has been distorted by egocentric machos who don’t understand the issue goes beyond being women and respected for it, but owning your sexuality without the fear of being raped or sexually harassed.
Lastly, feminism is about a choice, to wear whatever we want, to choose freely how to behave, speak, act and present ourselves to society. Imagine not being able to do that without being scared and then please tell me why today is not a good day to start being a feminist.
