Feminism

           Before taking this class, I had a very small understanding of the word feminism and what it stood for. In all honesty, I thought that for the most part, it was basically the same thing as saying feminine. Although I watch very little news, I have heard a little bit about the different rallies and movements that feminists are trying to activate. You could say that I thought being a feminist was associated with being excessively girly, and not doing things that would step out of these norms. For example, always wearing dresses, makeup, working feminine stereotyped jobs, and most importantly, advocating for other women to do the same. I basically thought that feminists disagreed with going outside of the norm of the typical housewife woman. Thus, I pretty much thought the opposite of what the term actually meant. Now that I have read the first chapter in our threshold concepts book for class, and discussed what feminism is in class, I realized how far off my ideas were, and I would definitely say I have a better understanding of what it is, and whom is advocating for it.

With that being said however, I feel as though there are many subgroups within the idea of feminism, and it isn’t really agreed upon as to what the overall goal or purpose is. The reason I bring this up is a result of one of the videos we watched in class. The Tomi Lahren video pointed out some flaws in feminist rallies while she herself was also advocating for feminism. For example, she brought up the “A Day without Women” campaign and proceeded to bash the entire idea. She concluded that although she was a strong independent woman, she felt as though women should be out to prove that by showing up to work and proving that they are just as good as men. Not only that, but she continuously referred to the word “victim”. I definitely can see where she was coming from when she brought this point up. I do feel as though women tend to victimize themselves in order to get the attention that they may be seeking to prove their point. All in all, I do believe that feminists are very important people in society but in order to make more of an impact, I feel it would be beneficial to ensure that everyone is on the same page. We cannot have feminist groups going up against other feminist groups.

Not only that, but I feel as though they need to do a better job of getting their message out into the public in a clear way. As one can see, because everything in the media is so confusing and chaotic, there are many misconceptions as to what feminism is (just like how I was extremely confused). I also haven’t heard a whole lot about feminists and feminism in the news and I’m not sure if it is because news reporters do not see the importance of covering the topic, or if the organization just doesn’t have a whole lot going on. It would be interesting to see what kinds of moves are being made and what action is being taken in order to progress the feminist movement.         

With all of that being said, for the rest of the class, I hope to further expand my understanding of feminism. Not only that, but I hope I can learn more about the different ways people are oppressed (not just women). Overall, I’m very excited to continue learning more throughout this class.