A few days ago, I wrote the first part of this series, Defining Men, Part One: Looking Through the Barbie Lens. I used the the currently popular film as a “jumping off point” to examine how modern feminism tends to view men. While the movie is touted to be pro-men as well as pro-women (only being “anti-patriarchy”), not everyone is convinced. Not everyone (mostly men) is convinced that the current incarnation of feminism is pro-men either.
Let’s have a look.
The ABC News story The feminist movement has changed drastically. Here’s what the movement looks like today states that “ABC News spoke to feminists across the generations to define modern feminism.” The story was published March 8, 2023, so it’s pretty recent.
As you may know or have guessed, feminism, especially across time, isn’t a static concept. Even the ABC story admits, “Feminism, the first wave of which began with the suffrage movement in the mid-1800s, looks vastly different today than it did generations ago.”
Okay, fine. But how different? The article goes on:
Feminists told ABC News that their fight is for the benefit of everyone – of all genders, races and more – led by a diverse set of voices to pave the way for gender equality worldwide in this fourth wave of feminism.
In general, fourth wave feminism is defined by:
Feminism is the belief in the equality of people of all genders, a set of values aimed at dismantling gender inequality and the structures that uphold it.
These inequalities could be pay inequality, gender-based health care inaccessibility, rigid social expectations, or gender-based violence which still impact people everywhere to this day, feminists say.
“All” genders. That’s bound to be “triggering” to those people who believe there are only two. This is confirmed by:
This includes women of color, as well as gender diverse people.
So, strictly speaking, feminism isn’t totally female anymore.
Taking one step back, if the belief is that prior incarnations of feminism were exclusively white…
“Even though there are women of color who were very instrumental in these movements and shifting it, and making sure that these rights were won, they just were not talked about,” Nunes told ABC News. “They were not mentioned, they were unsung heroes.”
She continued, “The fourth wave release focuses on: How do we be inclusive? How do we have allies? How do we really focus on true equality for all women? Because we know other waves of feminism have left women out.”
That part makes sense as far as it goes, but…
In recent years, though, the U.S. has faced a wave of laws restricting reproductive health care, transgender health care, certain curriculum in education, laws restricting voting rights, and more.
These have been seen as setbacks among feminist activists who argue that these laws create a “patriarchal world.”
Hatcher believes these laws support “a world where white men are in control, where the history that’s told is upholding the history and the legacies of white men, and also where white men are able to control who was elected and who is not.” (emph. mine)
“Reproductive health care” translates into “abortion” plain and simple, and more accurately “abortion on demand, without apology, and up until full term.” If the line in the sand is a full forty weeks gestation and the child, ready to be born, still isn’t considered human, then a lot of people, including a lot of Moms, are going to have a big problem with this.
“Transgender health care” really means the ability and “right” to provide non-reversible medical treatments to minors (no one is restricting a legal adult’s access to whatever medical treatment they want, relative to who pays), some as young as ten, who believe (or their caretakers believe) they are in a body that does not conform to their perceived sense of gender.
“Certain curriculum in education” refers to presenting what many believe to be age-inappropriate sexual content to children. Does a five-year-old child really need to know about the perceived (by some) multiple sets of gender perceptions which seems to be expanding on a daily basis? Is that so much more important than learning letters, counting, and reading primers?
Of course, there are alternate arguments for these topics, but many people, including parents and grandparents, think the government (public education and national medical groups are just extensions of the Federal Government) has very much overreached its authority, especially in controlling the treatment of other people’s children.
But there’s another “extension” to be considered.
Zikora Akanegbu, the creator of youth-led female empowerment group GenZHer, got her start in feminism on social media. She used it as a tool to be in conversations with and learn from other feminists.
“In middle school, in 2017, when [the MeToo Movement] was coming out on social media, I just joined Instagram,” Akanegbu told ABC News.
A middle-school aged child on social media, one of the most lawless domains on the internet (or “lawful” in the sense that it is controlled primarily by one and only one social and political perspective which may be even worse). There’s a reason there are or should be parental controls between children and the world wide web.
And thanks to social media and other platforms, feminism as described here is growing:
A Pew Research Center survey found that about 6 in 10 American women say “feminist” describes them very or somewhat well.
A majority of Americans – 64% – say feminism is empowering and 42% say it’s inclusive. However, 45% say it is polarizing and 30% say it’s outdated.
While women are more likely to associate feminism with positive attributes like empowering and inclusive, Pew found that men are more likely to see feminism as polarizing and outdated.
However, activists argue that negative perceptions of feminism are perpetuated by those who benefit from the patriarchy.
“[We should] not let our opponents define the identity of feminism for us,” Duarte said.
I’d love to see the survey designs that resulted in the above-cited statistics.
Who are these “opponents.” The article mentions “the patriarchy” but only defines it as “white men in control.” These are the people who are making “a wave of laws restricting reproductive health care, transgender health care, certain curriculum in education, laws restricting voting rights, and more.”
But who are these men and can men fit into any aspect of the above-referenced feminism? Should men even want to?
A Forbes article from 2017 says there is a lot of opposition to feminism for a variety of reasons.
Some believe that equality has already been achieved, thus feminism as a (radical) activist movement is unnecessary and perhaps even harmful.
While some people agree that “equal rights” has not been achieved, they don’t believe feminism is the right vehicle to “get us there.”
People oppose feminism not based on objective data and research, but on their own direct personal experiences. If they don’t experience a rights inequity, then they may believe feminism isn’t necessary.
That dovetails into the idea that people have “gender bias” which colors their view of feminism. You can extend this to women who have been enculturated by the “patriarchy” such that their belief systems are working against their self-interests.
One point the Forbes article makes is “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.”
But that’s not how feminism was defined in the ABC News story. It had many more details that did not directly impact the rights of men and women. Rather, other “gender identities” were included. That’s enough to put off some folks, plus why is feminism as a movement responsible for advocating a plethora of other “gender identities?”
But Forbes goes on as to why some people might hate the term “feminist.”
- 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.
- Many people believe that feminists want to control the world and put men down.
- Many people fear that feminism will overturn time-honored traditions, religious beliefs and established gender roles, and that feels scary and wrong.
- Many people fear that feminism will bring about negative shifts in relationships, marriage, society, culture, power and authority dynamics, and in business, job and economic opportunities if and when women are on an equal footing with men.
But the Forbes author tips her hand when she asks:
Could there be hidden biases that color how you experience people of different genders, race, color, religion, etc? Could your personal experiences be tainting how you’re looking at the whole world?
There’s the “gender identity” question again.
But we still don’t clearly see how feminism regards men (except in the negative), let alone how it can be seen as “pro-men.” Part Three of this series will start there.
Morning Meditations 
“Feminism”, by its very name, assigns priority to women. In the past, this was justified by a claim that men had unjustly denigrated and denied some degree of citizens’ rights or even human consideration to women. That claim or complaint is unexceptionally broad, denying to all men any credit for efforts to care for women, defend them, consider compensation for the ways in which they differ from men, etc. Feminism did not distinguish between cultures which approach the relationship between men and women differently, whether for good or for ill. What could be justified much more reasonably were specific goals such as equality of political suffrage and the education that supports it, or the equality of financial compensation between men and women for the same category and level of work, as well as equal opportunity to pursue the same kinds of work commonly performed by men, given an equal willingness to meet its demands on personal time and resources. Rather than call this “Feminism”, it would be more accurately termed “human egalitarianism”.
However, this new incarnation of so-called “Feminism” seems rather to be a kind of alternative gender advocacy. Indeed, it could be deemed antithetical to the gains made by women during the past century for recognition of their distinctive needs within an egalitarian matrix. It seems that there is a decided bias against calling things by their proper names and assigning emotively-appealing labels instead.
Still lacking is any acknowledgement that the values supported by white heterosexual males may have been far from patriarchal and instead pursued for the benefit of all regardless of their differences. They may not have been implemented perfectly, and might still need improvement, but such shortcomings were merely human and not the product of a deliberate program of repression. Tearing them down out of bigoted denigration of men is needlessly destructive of a society that was built for the benefit of all who are willing to uphold its positive values.