I had this column written, and I was planning on sending it to my editor, but first I thought I’d show it to my friends to get their perspective. It was then that they explained that my well-thought-out article on gender equality and feminism was misinformed and that I had misinterpreted what feminism was.
I was told I was confusing the gender equality movement with the second-wave feminist movement, but my article detailed the third-wave feminist movement, as well as the counter-feminist movement.
I was and am still confused as to what all of that means, and I think this is a problem.
We’ve got movements and developments on those movements and counter-movements, and to be honest, keeping track of them is difficult.
Now I’m probably going to Google, talk to friends and try to learn everything I can about this. I’m fairly liberal, and I’m in a fairly liberal environment where I can rest assured that at least a few of my friends are going to know enough to explain the basics to me.
When I think back to home — small, white, conservative Greencastle, Indiana — I realize these opportunities don’t exist everywhere. For some people, like me for a long time, the phrase “gender equality” and the word “feminism” are the same thing, and there’s no one to explain the differences.
Who knows, maybe I’m misinformed right now, and they are the same. It doesn’t really matter. My point is this confusion leaves people out of the loop and makes any movement ineffective.
I don’t know whether I support feminism or not, so I’m not really going align myself with it, because I’m not sure what exactly it is. It makes me realize that a lot of individuals don’t align with any side because they don’t know what certain movements stand for.
Take the Republican Party. Given Trump’s presidency, I don’t know whether the Republicans represent nationalism, social conservatism, antiestablishmentarianism or all three. It’s all kind of a mess.
The Democrats aren’t much better. There’s the party-machine element, the big-government element, the individual-liberties component, and it’s all a jumble of different issues thrown together to oppose the Republicans.
It’s not that I don’t like movements. I want parties and coalitions of people coming together to help shape policy, but I don’t want enigmatic and shifting goals.
That’s the issue with partisanship and with movements like these — they keep going even after they achieve their goals and just change what they stand for.
Look at the infamous Tea Party. On paper they were all about pure fiscal conservatism, but in practice their supporters became increasingly socially conservative and the movement as a whole became a hive of conservatism.
If you showed me what defines the Tea Party, I’d potentially agree that we do need a balanced budget, but in practice they were so much more than that, and that “much more” I don’t agree with.
So when someone says they don’t support *insert movement you really care about,* make sure you try to realize that there’s so many different movements with similar names, similar goals or not-so-similar goals, and it’s extremely difficult to keep up.
What I want are parties and movements built around an idea. I want them to act on that idea, achieve it and move on.
Come up with a new name for a movement, come up with a new cause, but don’t keep stringing people along. If you have a good movement, people will join.
So I’m sorry, I’m an independent because the Republicans of today aren’t the Republicans of 60 years ago, and the feminists of today aren’t the feminists of 60 years ago.
