Feminism…
I’m a simple girl. I see Taylor Swift, I click. Today, I clicked on an essay written by Katie Yoder entitled: “Feminist attacks on Taylor swift reveal something ugly about the movement.” I was expecting something about Taylor Swift and her boyfriends and how her music is somehow offensive to feminism. What I got was sooooooooo much better!
In her essay, Yoder goes after “feminism” for being too exclusive. I personally consider myself a feminist, and believe that equal rights for all genders, races, religions, etc. is something that we should be striving for. Yoder seems to share a similar point of view in this regard. She expresses her dissent for those who practice an “exclusive” sort of feminism, namely because that’s the exact opposite of the purpose of the movement. I believe that Feminism at it’s core stands for an equality for all while respecting that there will be some differences in the “view” of what exactly equality is, because the struggle is different for everyone.
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If you’re anything like me, you grew up in a place where sexism ran rampant, so the idea of feminism is probably very appealing to you. (I’m from the midwest, if you were wondering.) I’m also pro-life, if you were wondering. Now, that debate is one for another day, but I bring it up because of the quotes used in the aforementioned essay. One of the quotes essentially says that, if you’re pro-life, you can’t be a feminist. That statement alienates many women, as I’m far from the only pro-life supporter who also considers herself a feminist. It creates a big division in the feminist movement, and that division lends itself to increasing weakness in the movement and fighting amongst ourselves. I get that abortion is a hot topic, and it probably always will be, but I don’t think it should be such a big divider in the feminist movement. We bring it into the feminist conversation by calling it a “women’s issue”, but shouldn’t we be trying to make it more of an everyone issue? Isn’t that the purpose of feminism? To get people to stop seeing things strictly as “women’s issue”, and as an everyone issue? Abortion is always gonna piss people off on both sides of the argument. It just is. I don’t think we’re ever going to going to a resolution, even in my lifetime, and I’m only 19. That being said, I think there are many other women’s rights issues that we agree on, like closing the wage gap and shattering the glass ceiling, and that if we’d stop focusing so much on what makes us different and started focusing on our common values then we could get a lot more done.
Wow, we started with Taylor Swift and ended up at abortion. This may have all come out like a mess, but here it is. I hope we can learn to be less exclusive, as that’s exactly what we’re fighting against, and that we can better learn how to unite without the “my way or the highway” attitude.
Okay.
