Feminism, Equal Rights, and insulting the past when you say you’re not one: A Historical Perspective

Feminism, Feminist, is a word and mindset, that women and men who fought for over 150 years for equal rights among the sexes wanted future generations to be proud of. Though it was a term that came out of “modern feminism” or “second wave feminism” in the 1960s it was labeled rightly and retrospectively.

For those who don’t know Feminism in its most basic form means, “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.”

Okay, so do something for me. Take that definition. Look at it. Stare at it and slowly start stripping away all the negative connotations that you think are true about feminism. Erase what the media has hyped it up to be. Knock out those “extremists” who in no way represent the feminist movement.

In the 18th Century. Equal rights for the sexes was a real struggle. Playwright Olympe de Gouges of France got her head lopped off during the French Revolution for speaking out for equality. Jeremy Bentham, a male English philosopher, who started speaking out for equal treatment of women at age eleven. Marquis de Condorcet, another male french politician, who tried after the revolution to admit women as full citizens of the French government. Mary Wollstonecraft who wrote endlessly for the rights of women and equal education attracting mockery and scorn by misogynistic male writers of the time.

The 19th Century gave way to lots of feminism in fiction creating so many of our now dearly loved classics. Authors such as Anne Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, George Gissing, Charlotte Perkins Gillman, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Louisa May Alcott, George Meredith, Henrik Isben, and Thomas Harding were all writers who sought to put out books that were anti-misogynistic and showing women’s struggles in society. Men and women in a political spectrum started organizing movements to gain equal education and help to rid the thought that women were “intellectually inferior” to men.

In the 20th Century these political movements were pushed even further. With people like Emmeline Pankhurst and her awesome husband who was a politician fighting for equal rights and universal suffrage even before he married Emmeline. Across the Atlantic great women minds like, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott were meeting at the first National Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York working for abolition and universal suffrage.

In the 1960s, second wave feminism came around, women like Betty Friedan spoke out for women feeling forced in homemaking roles, especially after having the work freedom they had during the wars. Thus the term, “Women’s Liberation,” was born.  The term feminism was created then to describe a theory of thought that women could enroll in higher educated, deserved equality economically, politically, and socially, that they could actually question society and their role in it, and that they deserved a level of autonomy not afforded to them in the past. Then there was Gloria Steinem who was a huge sex positive feminist writer and Susan Brownmiller who spoke out against abuse.

In the 70s and 80s were when, in many countries including the U.S,, spousal abuse became illegal. That was only around 30 years ago. Only 30 years ago. In a historian’s perspective that is less time than it takes to blink an eye! In the 1970s the U.S. made major waves in allowing more reproductive rights to women after the ruling in Roe vs Wade. When 50 years ago they were throwing Margaret Sanger in jail for trying to make birth control legal. It took until the 1970s until birth control was completed accepted and mainstream in the U.S. It was also in the 1970s, Patsy Mink, put forth the Title IX constitutional amendment for equal opportunity among women in education and this made it possible for girls to participate in sports in federally funded institutions.

In the U.S, today, centuries after Olympe de Gouges asked for women to be considered citizens of the French government, women are still fighting for their right to decide what they want to do with their bodies in a reproductive sense in the face of hyper conservatism and downright misogynistic politicians. They are trying hard to get equal pay. Even after J. F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in the 1960s women in the U.S. are still earning 53 – 77 cents for every whole dollar a white man earns for the same work. These equalities aren’t just in the U.S, it is a global issue.

Feminism isn’t about stepping on men. Or knocking ice cream out of a man’s hand and taking it for yourself. Feminism isn’t about which sex is right and which sex is wrong. It isn’t about one sex’s voice holding more weight than the other. It is about reaching a compromise. About allowing people of one sex the same rights and equal treatment you would someone of the opposite sex. It is about allowing people control over what happens to them and their bodies. It is about erasing a culture that puts down anyone who stands up for themselves in the face of adversity. It is about equality in every form. Call it humanist if you want. But it is feminism and there is nothing bad about that term.* It is what it is. It is about a sex that was repressed for hundreds of years finally standing up and saying, “Hey, we were created equal too.”

Have some respect for the people that paved the way for you and for us to finally get a little closer to a truly equal society.

Famous Feminists: A Pin Board

*Calling all feminists, “feminazis” is like calling all Christians members of the Westboro Baptist Church. Or all Muslims extreme Jihadists. If you can’t see how utterly flawed that logic is than there is no hope for you I am afraid.