Reflective Essay On Feminism

According to google the definition of feminism is “the advocacy of women 's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men”. When I was younger I, like a lot of other people, thought feminism was merely angry women who hated men. They were aggressive and hateful and insisted that women are superior to men. All the portrayals of feminism and feminists that I has seen in media were almost always negative. This of course gave me the impression that “oh i 'm not a feminist! Feminists are bad and they just want to get rid of men!!” and of course since i didn’t didn’t hate guys I wasn’t going to label myself a feminist. I held onto this train of thought for years, which shows how extreme the misconceptions can be about feminism …show more content…
Learning more about feminism and becoming more aware changed a lot of things. It changed my friend group and people that I chose to associate with and call friends. It changed my train of thought and the way I make judgements on people. It even changed the way I think about myself and how I value myself. Although just because I’ve changed my worldview based on my expanded knowledge and literacy of feminism doesn’t mean that everyone has of course. Everyday I talk to people with different views, emotions, and knowledge about feminism than I do. With the people i’m friends with or that might have similar views as I, we might discuss current events in the news that involve feminism. Such as the case where a Muslim flight attendant was fired for not serving alcohol to passengers due to her religious beliefs, and how racism, islamophobia, and feminism all tie into this case of prejudice against her. Or how Caitlin Jenner’s coming out as transgender brings out people’s preconceptions on exactly what it means to be a woman. How transmisogyny is very ugly and apparent in her case with thousands of articles insisting that she’s doing it for attention, or that she’s not a real woman because she doesn’t have the “correct” biological parts to be one. Caitlyn Jenner helps illustrate how as a society we equate femininity to negativity and that the worst thing a guy can be is feminine and the …show more content…
I would perhaps talk about the pay gap, and how full-time, year-round workers, women were paid 78 percent of what men were paid, or how for women of color the percentage is even lower at 54 percent, all for the exact same work that their male co-workers have done. The double standard is also something every woman is familiar with. How guys and their sexual promiscuity is viewed as good and manly and the behavior is almost always encouraged, but female promiscuity is viewed in a completely opposite light. It’s viewed as sinful and dirty, we view the woman not as a person anymore but as a “slut” or a “whore”, were guys would get the terms “Stud” and “Player”. Although perhaps the most infuriating for many young underage girls is the overwhelming sexism present in almost every school’s dress code. A dress code that limits girls from wearing things that expose their shoulder or legs for being “distracting to male students” while not having the same rules for guys. In fact it goes so far that sometimes there are little to no rules for what guys can wear. Showing how our society starts sexualizing the female body at young age. Although while all these things are very common in our culture and are not a hidden mystery by any means, someone who is not familiar with feminist literacy or that has grown up and learned a