Aaah, that strong word, political? biased? revengeful? Crap.
Surprising but nowadays some people who get easily offended by this term are those who think that feminism promotes misandry.
Folks, feminism is nothing but equality. It strives to fill the gap that society has created between a man and a woman. And you ask why the word has "feminine" in it if it advocates gender equality? It's because it is still a movement to make efforts for the women to get equally treated by the rest. There are other marginalized sections of the society that need upliftment and empowerment and today's feminism is also about that. Inequality exists among different societal structures. Race, class, and gender oppression are all related. "Woman's struggle is a class struggle" as it was referred to in the second wave of feminism.
A man could be a feminist too and that doesn't change their identity of being a man. No one has the right to call him "He is not manly enough." there you go, BOOM, another bias.
Feminists come from all different backgrounds and cultures to support equality and equity in general.
SO WHERE DID FEMINISM START FROM?
The feminist movement started in 1848.The wave formally began at the Seneca Falls Convention when three hundred men and women rallied to the cause of equality for women.
Olympes de Gouge (d. 1791), Mary Wollstonecraft (d. 1797) and Jane Austen (d. 1817) are foremothers of the modern women's movement. They advocated for the dignity, intelligence, and basic human potential of the female sex.
THERE ARE 4 WAVES OF FEMINISM:
1. The 1st wave of feminism took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Cause- Urban industrialism and liberal, socialist politics.
Goal- To open up opportunities for women, with a focus on suffrage, equal contract and property rights for women, opposing ownership of married women by their husbands.
Who were a part?- Middle class, Western, cisgender, white women.
2. The 2nd wave began in the 1960's and continued into the 90's.
Cause- Anti-war and civil rights movements
- he growing self-consciousness of a variety of minority groups around the world.
Goal- To pass the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing social equality regardless of sex.
Events- Protests against the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City in 1968 and 1969 broke out. Feminists parodied what they held to be a degrading "cattle parade" that reduced women to objects of beauty dominated by a patriarchy that sought to keep them in the home or in dull, low-paying jobs.
Who were a part?- Women of color and developing nations in addition to the women who lent their voices in the 1st wave.
The second wave was increasingly theoretical, based on a fusion of Neo-Marxism and psycho-analytical theory, and began to associate the subjugation of women with broader critiques of patriarchy, capitalism, normative heterosexuality, and the woman's role as wife and mother.
3. The 3rd wave of feminism began in the mid-90's.
This started as a result of the failure of the 2nd wave of feminism. This one pushed the boundaries further and the ideas associated with it were more liberating.The "grrls" of the third wave stepped onto the stage as strong and empowered, abstaining from victimization and defining feminine beauty for themselves as subjects, not as objects of a sexist patriarchy. the web is an important tool of "girlie-feminism."
Grrl-feminism tends to be global, multi-cultural, shuns the artificial categories of identity, gender, and sexuality, celebrates differences such as those of ethnicity, class, sexual orientation and recognizes them as dynamic, situational, and provisional.
For third wavers, struggles are more individual: “We don’t need feminism anymore.”
4. The 4th wave of feminism- It is ongoing and passed on from the 3rd to suit the evolving generation. The fourth wave of feminism is emerging because (mostly) young women and men realize that the third wave is either overly optimistic or hampered by blinders. Feminism is now moving back into the realm of public discourse.
Goal- To address problems like sexual abuse, rape, violence against women, unequal pay, slut-shaming, the pressure on women to conform to a single and unrealistic body-type and the realization that gains in female representation in politics and business are very slight.
It stresses on the importance of inclusion, an acceptance of the sexualized human body as non-threatening, and the role the internet can play in gender-bending and leveling hierarchies.
This is modern feminism. Today the youth knows what they want and it's not a hand-me-down feminism. We have learnt to carve out an environment that aims to fit in everyone's basic needs. Social media has just helped reach out to more people who can openly express their opinions. Feminism mutates and we can't state where it would take us in the future. We can only do our best!
And that my friend, is what HuWoman stands for- Equality and Empowerment.