The Irony Of Feminism

Feminism. The word rings so many different thoughts and feelings in every bodies minds.
Positive, negative, whatever it may be we as a society associate feminism with a lot of
different things. Nowadays I think feminism has a lot of negative connotations to it.  
When I was younger I always felt that boys that thought girls were less than were just
plain stupid. I have lots of memories of me challenging boys to various physical and
knowledge based tests. Or straight up just calling them out on the things that they were
doing and calling them names. In elementary school calling names was the most
impactful way of getting your point across. So I’ve always felt like a tiny little injustice
fighter. As I got older I learned the term feminist, and I thought to myself, “Oh perfect!
A term that encapsulates exactly what i’m about” And for awhile that worked for me.

Around highschool I remember hearing my brother and his friends making fun of
feminists. The social justice agent in me perked up and I knew I had to set them
straight.
This did not go according to plan as they ended up just confusing me more than
anything. They expressed some of their concerns about feminists and told me that
associating with them isn’t the best idea. This was not something I was expecting.
Confused as ever I went to my mom. Who is a very knowledgeable women and I
found out that modern day feminisim is where the confusion came from. I was
defining myself using the feminist definition from a while ago. Women deserve
everything that men do. Kind of thing. Modern day feminists have a more modern
definition. This is where the problems arise.

Modern day feminists have some beliefs that don’t exactly coincide with mine.
They believe abortion is fine and are mostly pro-choice. They believe that you
shouldn’t shave or wear makeup and all these other interesting ideas. I’m not saying
all feminist believe this way but as a general rule this is usually their beliefs. They
have a certain misandry about them. That I don’t really like.

The irony that comes from feminism is that they are so desperate for “equality” that
they have missed the whole point of it. For women to be equal to men we have to do
exactly as they do. We have to be aggressive like them. We have to be competitive
like them. We have to be them to be equal to them. They dislike men yet they copy
them and want to be treated like them. This doesn’t make sense. It's almost as if they
are saying that being a women isn’t enough. It's not enough to be female you have to
be male too.

This is just missing the mark completely. To be equal to men we don’t have to be men.
We have to be women. Which sounds self explanatory but apparently to some it's
more complicated than that. Women aren’t just lesser versions of men. Just because
men are stronger than us doesn’t mean we have to hate them. We are different.
We are made differently and we behave differently. Women and men are equals
not because we’re the same but because we are different. Women are inherently
more nurturing than men. We are caring. We are connection seeking. This doesn’t
make us less than and it shouldn’t be something to be rid of.

I think feminists had good intentions. They want everyone to be treated fairly.
I agree. I just don’t think fairly means that treatment is the same for everyone.
We have different roles but just because of that it doesn’t mean we are unequal.