The campaign “hashtag” “Why I Don’t Need Feminism” became popular at the end of summer when the Tumblr blog “We Don’t Need Feminism!,” and others like it, went viral.
Young and slightly middle-aged women held up signs outlining the reasons they didn’t believe in the cause.
The campaign is meant to protest the sometimes abrasive and demanding nature of feminism, which, given that it’s a human rights campaign, it’s a little understandable how it might make a demand here or there.
In short, the campaign is dangerously selfish.
The women who participate fail to understand there are serious women’s rights issues that are pervasive and insidious, that harm and kill women and girls.
According to them, women don’t need feminism because they want to “respect all humans, not just one gender,” or because they “do not need a leg-up to succeed.”
Each sign demonstrated an enormously fundamental misunderstanding of what feminism is, especially given that the vast majority of their points are, in fact, feminist doctrine.
They painted feminism as a series of extremist groups that make extremist demands, who believe that women must defy gender norms and forsake make-up and dresses.
They tried to address the idea that feminism, when enacted by a group who does not understand its principles, can do to women what it seeks to avoid: pigeon-hole them into groups and stereotypes.
They addressed an idea of feminism that does not exist, or at least, is not taken seriously even among feminist circles and in feminist debate.
It’s hard to take a protest seriously when the participants do not understand what they’re protesting.
But even more pressing is the fact that the campaign and the blogs that have sprung from it have fostered a dangerous environment that discounts the urgent needs of women internationally, not just in the United States.
It is important to note that the majority of the women participating in the “Why I Don’t Need Feminism” campaign seem to be Western and white, women who by default have been given privileges allowing them to see the world through rose-colored glasses.
Each of their objections discussed only the needs of the original poster, and they protested only the most basic stereotypes of feminism itself — the idea it hates men, that it wants women to be dominant and that it allows women to become victims of society.
And as college students, with many fantastic campaigns raising awareness about sexual assault on campuses and the issues of rape and abuse finally coming under serious scrutiny, it felt like taking one massive step backward.
It also dangerously discounts and belittles the lack of women’s rights. Not ludicrous demands for dominance over men, but serious issues that damage and profoundly affect the lives of millions. Not once was the plight of the single mother considered or the need to have easy access to childcare.
Or the need to have fair and unbiased court trials, job opportunities, the need to end the wage gap or the need to reconsider erroneous double standards for gender.
Nor did these women discuss the need for peaceful race relations between women and the need to prevent environments that foster unhealthy competition for recognition or rights. Or the fact that women barely have any representation either in Congress or the media, women of color even less so.
And that’s just in America.
On top of that, the women who participate in this campaign fail to understand they are refusing a cause whose very existence has allowed them to post their pictures online, to read and write the signs they made.
If we are going to get anywhere, if we are going to address women’s issues, and by default address men’s issues as well via the idea that essential human rights must be given to all, regardless of gender, race or age.
Feminism wants to foster the idea that women deserve the same easy acces to basic human rights that men do, not that men all die a fiery death so that women can become the sole gender. We’re going to need to recognize that there are serious problems that have nothing to do with gender battles.
Once we do that, we can start coming up with serious solutions.
