gender-equality

Was there a defining moment that led you to become a feminist?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Was there a defining moment that led you to become a feminist, and if so, what was it?”

Before I begin with my answer to this question, I’d like to include a quote from Dr. Ernest Adams’ (https://www.quora.com/profile/Ernest-1329/)  — answer to a question defining feminism  —  (https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-feminist-exactly-I-have-never-been-able-to-understand-exactly-what-that-entails-The-terms-definition-seems-to-float-somewhere-between-reality-and-personal-definition-of-reality-or-just-plain-ridiculousness/answer/Ernest-1329):

Feminism seeks to obtain equal rights, privileges and opportunities for women; to improve their lives and living conditions, particularly with respect to problems that are unique to them; to produce equal outcomes of these policies such that they have similar levels of power, wealth, influence and respect to those enjoyed by men; and to change social attitudes that are hostile, derogatory, oppressive, or tend to interfere with any of the foregoing.

The funny thing about my upbringing is that I should have turned out to be a misogynist.

All the elements were there.

Under-Educated Community? — Check

The average education in the town of about seventy thousand I grew up in was grade nine. The primary employers in the area were forest industry operations. One could afford a comfortable lifestyle with a mortgage and two-point-five kids on a mind-numbing daily routine.

Toxic Masculinity Within My Family and Throughout My Community? — Check

“Be a man” was a daily slogan one would hear everywhere in almost every context, but it wasn’t in the refuge of my art class where one of my instructors was flaming, but I didn’t realize it then. Hell, I didn’t realize that about him until I visited the ol’ stomping grounds years after graduation, and I wondered why it seemed he was lusting after me.

Practically everywhere else, though, including my own family, there was no shortage of advice on how to put women in their place and no shortage of shame hurled in one’s direction if they showed “weak emotions” like compassion.

A Panoply of Bigotries Everywhere? — Check

There was always a reason to crap on different genders, different skin colours, different hairstyles, different clothing styles. One acquaintance who listened to the Beach Boys morning, day, and night would give you a sideways glance if you listened to anything else. From his perspective, something was wrong with you if you liked Reggae.

Manly Men Doing Manly Things Everywhere? — Check

If you couldn’t name every part in your car while stripping it down to nuts and bolts while doing your oil change and then reassembling it for fun, there was something wrong with you. You weren’t a man if you couldn’t work on your vehicle at minus twenty below weather.

Hanging Out Car Windows While Wolf-Whistling at Every Woman Walking Down the Street? — Check.

Boys believed the girls went for that sort of behaviour and were butch if they didn’t. Even the girls in that environment were more masculine than any male in the school band, and they could drink one dozen of them under the table without a bathroom break.

Somehow, though, I never thought of women as either inferior or superior or anything beyond being just people. They smelled nicer, and some could appreciate sensitivity, but you had to be careful who you displayed it to because most would think something was wrong with you.

I didn’t realize I was a feminist until well past my thirties. I still don’t think about it unless it comes up in conversation, and I have to remember that I somehow reacted against the toxic masculinity in ways that made me one.

I think that’s one of the things that bullies don’t quite get. Every person they bully in life learns to hate everything they embody, and so growing up in an environment rife with toxic masculinity has taught me to hate machismo on such a level that I am now in a position of putting my life at risk with the police because they have bullied me to such a degree that I’m barely hanging onto my life by a thread. I’ve been adamant in conveying to them that I will not shut up and die quietly so as not to disturb their reverie because I am only beginning to rage against their destruction of my light publicly.

Feminism is equality, and even though men take the lion’s share of the blame for abuses, it doesn’t mean all are guilty of being abusive bullies. Women can also be assholes on levels equal to men as well.

Feminism simply asserts that we are all people, while the idiots on social media who never shut up about the evils of feminism are screaming their toxicity to the world. They are like MAGAts wearing warning labels in the form of red caps to identify themselves as toxic. Every male who whines about feminism is admitting to the world that they’re a toxic misogynist.

As prevalent as misogyny may still seem to be, it gives me hope to see popular media represent changes in society that remind me how glacial our social evolution is. It may seem imperceptible from the perspective of an individual life. Still, we are maturing as a species — no matter how much temporary regressions of our values may challenge our ability to maintain hope for a better future.

Are “mansplaining” and “femsplaining” valid examples of misogyny and misandry?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via my profile there: https://www.quora.com/profile/Antonio-Amaral-1/

I’ve never encountered “femsplaining” before this question. It sounds like it was made up for this question to make it appear more egalitarian.

“Mansplaining” became a prominent description of misogynistic behaviours and attitudes in situations where men behaved in condescending ways toward women.

Misogyny is widespread in our patriarchy because men often have no clue how to handle equality. Men have been conditioned from a young age to view themselves as superior to women. Men are also subjected to conditioning, which causes them to interpret life as a power game.

Combining those two characteristics of a typical male upbringing with toxic competitiveness breeding fragile egos results in a prevalence of poisonous masculinity throughout society that we’ve grown to know and love.

The consequence of their conditioning has resulted in a high frequency of example scenarios where men condescend toward women on a wide variety of levels in a diversity of conditions.

One of the most stereotypical examples is an auto repair shop where the statistics show that women are often overcharged for repairs while being condescended to when discussing those repairs.

The standing bias of a significant proportion of men is that they understand automotives better than women and often resort to condescension as a means of gaslighting a victim to get away with taking advantage of their perceived naivety.

This dynamic of condescension isn’t limited to gender interactions and occurs everywhere a power game exists.

Everyone experiences it repeatedly throughout their lives, usually when someone attempts to convince them of nonsense.

At any rate, since men have been conditioned to think of themselves as superior within a gender power dynamic, they more often resort to condescension when manipulating women. It happens so frequently while men victimize women that the term mansplaining was invented to introduce humour into a problematic situation of discrimination as a means of raising awareness of the problem in society.

We employ similar awareness-raising tactics in situations where power dynamics are statistically significant.

I just answered another question before this about the slogan “Black Lives Matter.”

It’s not quite as humorous as “mansplaining,” The goal of the expression is the same: to raise awareness of a severe issue of discrimination in a society that renders an entire demographic as victims so often that it can’t be ignored and must be addressed.

This strategy for raising awareness is why gay pride parades exist.

It’s a way of restoring balance to an unequal power dynamic.

The term “femsplaining” is a reaction to the effectiveness of “mansplaining” and is a defensive reaction to that success. This is how “All Lives Matter” was conceived as well.

Those who are used to being in a dominant position of power begin to feel insecure enough about equality that they interpret it as oppression. Since they struggle with admitting to the abuse they condone, they react defensively by appropriating an effective strategy to convert it into a counter-weapon against the strategy responsible for their disempowerment.

There is no such thing as “femsplaining” for that reason, and misandry may exist but only as a reaction to extensive abuse by men.

Men become misogynistic by conditioning that teaches them to adopt socially acceptable aggression toward women, while women become misandrist by being victimized.

Even though the terms are intended to reflect equal and opposite conditions, they are not the same.

When a woman condescends toward someone, and they happen to be male, that’s a coincidence, not a stereotype.

Mansplaining is a stereotype.