What is Feminism?
Feminism is a term that probably most of us have heard, we literally, on a daily basis see news popping up about it but what is it actually? Basically you can just search that up, and you’ll find a lot of fancy and long definitions, I’m not saying that they’re wrong but they might confuse you. For example Merriam-Webster defines Feminism as “belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests”. Now here’s the thing there is an abundance of confusion on the definition of “feminism,” definition such as this one and many others, for example in many of the definitions of feminism out there it is described as a movement with the goal of equality of men and women, and they don’t talk about other genders.
The true definition of feminism is to have equal standards for all people regardless of gender. Now, here’s the thing many people, on hearing the word feminism think that it is an all female movement and associate it women equality or some even think of it as a “man-hating” women superiority movement. because the definition is misconstrued through popular icons in the field of feminism today. Feminism did start out as a movement with the aim of getting equal rights in all sections of the society but later the movement expanded into the current definition that is to achieve the equality of all genders in all aspects of society.
Popular political, economic and social groups have taken whichever meaning they identify as correct and used it to go against the actual goal of feminism by creating a war in the media on the definition of feminism. If you browse through social media right now, many of the resources about feminism are still focused on women and the struggle they face in society as a whole, very few of them would label problems face by men and those of other genders in various parts of the world.
Feminism is a simple concept with the basic ideology of equality for all, but it’s been transformed into this huge and complex thing, because of which many people aren’t able to grasp it. People use all these complex words to explain the concept as a result, only a few members of the society are able to get it rest have this thought that this is an elite concept and therefore refuse to acknowledge it and basically just ignore it. Feminism is amazing but if we continue explaining like this it will eventually become this fancy concept for the so-called high class members of the society and remain an untouched concept to the majority.
There are countless people that are confused about what feminism really is. I feel this is due to false information that is easily spread through social media. It is important that we don’t make assumptions of words and take the time to truly understand what they mean. If we don’t take the time to learn the true definition of words, such as feminism, we risk delaying the efforts of an important social movement.