**IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This piece is NOT intended IN ANY WAY to sway the reader into rejecting Feminism. Rather, this piece is an in depth look into why I personally do not support Feminism. This will also highlight others who have their reasons for not supporting Feminism as well.**
“I’m a woman…and surprise! – I’m NOT a Feminist! Nor do I ever want to be!” is the reply I placed on a BuzzFeed Video entitled ‘I’m A Woman, But I’m Not…’ which came out September 2015. I understand the overall message of the video, but the undertone of Feminist ideology in statements like "I'm a Woman, but I'm not defined by how many times you tell me I'm beautiful" and “I'm a Woman, and I'm not here to fill your quota” and "But I have opinions, and I WILL share them" and “I'm a Woman, and I'm pregnant, but I still like to lift heavy” and "And I don't hate men!" and "And I really like sex!" and "I'm not a delicate little flower that's all polite and shit!" and "I hate the color pink!" These statements just made me sick to my stomach. Like I really need to listen to how strong and powerful women are for the millionth time. This constant cramming of the “FEMALE POWER!” rhetoric is really getting old.
I believe Feminism should be a choice. If you want to be a Feminist, more power to you. However, insulting and degrading non-Feminists such as myself will NOT make us join your side. These tactics come off as something a whiner, a bully or a cult would resort to gain sympathy.
The first and second waves of Feminism came about because women wanted to vote and they wanted control over their own bodies. I’m all for that. We’re citizens of this country by birth just like men are so we had the right to vote. We deserve justice if we are assaulted, raped or murdered just as much as a man deserves. Along the way, however, these ideas changed into women seemingly desiring to dominate. If a man can be a construction worker, why can’t women? If a man can sleep around with 100 women, why can’t women sleep around with 100 men? If an Assistant District Attorney position opens and a man and a woman apply, why should the man get it?
When switching circumstances from what they were to what they are, side effects occur. The biggest side effect is the backlash from non-Feminists to the Conservatives. Non-Feminists are becoming more comfortable proclaiming their statuses such as Taylor Swift, Susan Sarandon, Madonna, Sarah Jessica Parker, and even Demi Moore and Carrie Underwood. Planned Parenthood has now come under fire from lawmakers to people who take their stance on Female Reproductive Rights to violence. Breastfeeding in public has now become a contest to elicit either disgust or exhibitionism.
One of the biggest modern backlashes against Feminism was created by the Women Against Feminism campaign. The name of this movement is meant to shock the average person into paying attention to it. The very thought that a woman could be against what makes her able to vote and work and hold property is alarming.
In July 2013, posts appeared on a Tumblr page with women holding hand-made signs explaining why they were anti-Feminists. Since that time, a Twitter campaign and a Facebook page have begun doing the same thing. According to WomenAgainstFeminism's Wikipedia page, this phenomenon started as a response to the 2012 Who Needs Feminism? photo campaign conducted by Duke University. The movement then took on a life of its own; Twitter and Facebook accounts emerged drawing national attention to the trend. The Twitter page now has over 2,000 followers while the Facebook page has 28,000 followers.
With every movement, as quickly as it draws support, it also attracts heavy criticism. Jessica Valenti; author of The Guardian's article 'Feminism makes women 'victims'? I think you've mistaken us for the sexists' writes, "Admittedly, to those unfamiliar with stereotypes of the women's movement, the #WomenAgainstFeminism meme may look more like a parody than anything of serious concern. Many of its participants show a baffling level of ignorance about what Feminism actually is..." Articles such as USA Today's "'Women Against Feminism' generates backlash among students," Dailymail's "Have they completely misunderstood the concept? Women Against Feminism blog sparks fierce backlash over statements such as 'I like it when men compliment my body''" and countless other miscellaneous blogs all relay the consensus: WomenAgainstFeminism doesn't know what Feminism is.
Another critique of the WomenAgainstFeminism movement is that it primarily caters to conservative women. The photo within Robin Abcarian's LA Times article "The willfully ignorant women who post on 'Women Against Feminism'" holds the caption: "'Women Against Feminism,' who take their legal rights for granted, would do well to remember there was a time in this country when women were not allowed to vote. Here, a suffrage headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1912. The picture featured several women gathered outside and some inside a building with a large sign on top which read 'Come in and learn why women ought to vote.'
It is automatically assumed that conservative women wish America would go back to the way it was 100 years ago because they are anti-Feminists. But, as Jinna Ziller (a member of the WomenAgainstFeminism's Facebook page) explains, it's the breakdown of the core family unit that conservative anti-Feminists are concerned with. "I think that the sexes are not identical and so true equality can never exist between us and that is a good thing. I do not want to be equal to any other human being. Everyone and everything deserves a basic amount of respect etc., but beyond that people should be free to earn their place in the world."
There are women out there who do not identify as conservative - yet support anti-Feminism. Kaitlyn Mosebar, another WomenAgainstFeminism Facebook page member explains that the inequality towards men when it comes to relationships, marriage, and family is one reason she supports anti-Feminism. Men are seen at fault during a domestic disturbance; men lose their finances, property, and custody of their children in divorce settlements; and no say if they want or don't want to even have a child. She goes on to explain how stay-at-home moms are ostracized for not working and Feminism blames men for making these women want to stay home.
She goes on to reveal an additional reason she supports anti-Feminism. "I'm the mother of a four-year-old boy. Feminism today is all about taking masculinity away, and teaching boys that they are more than likely to become rapists. That if a boy so much as kisses a girl or catcalls, he can be charged..." The recent Catcall video released early November 2014 by ihollaback.org is a perfect example of such demonizing of men coming onto women.
These reasons for supporting anti-Feminism leads to the next subculture uncovered in the WomenAgainstFeminism realm. Human Rights activists - or more commonly known as Egalitarianism in the anti-Feminism community. "Egalitarianism seeks to promote the equality of all people regardless of gender or status." Says an anonymous self-identified Egalitarian. One of the reasons she's against Feminism is because "...They [Feminists] claim to empower women and want them to use their voice but only if it agrees with them. Whether or not they agree with the people in the movement against them, they by their own definition (well most of their definitions) should support a woman's choice to reject the movement and choose her own."
Gabriel Hill, another member of the Women Against Feminism Facebook page, believes that men and women need to be true partners, not competitors or enemies. "I believe that men and women should be treated the same, with the same rights, opportunities and play by the same ground rules, rather than female supremacy disingenuously marketed as 'gender equality' by Feminists."
As I mentioned earlier, there is also a rise in backlash from men. These particular backlashes come in the forms of Men’s Rights Movements (MRA’s) to men developing a thought pattern that completely disregards the sincerity of all women - whether Feminist or not – which further breaks the family unit. It has been said in some of the articles bashing the Women Against Feminism campaign that the movement was not started by women but by MRA's. However, according to the Men's Rights Movements' Wikipedia page, the MRA's movement branched off from the Men's Liberation Movement in the early 1970's. It also goes on to say that MRA's focus is on issues of male disadvantages such as discrimination and oppression. They would hardly be in a position to create Women Against Feminism when their movement is to eliminate the barriers that keep men down.
Dean Esmay, the Managing Editor of A Voice for Men - the largest Men's Rights site - says he's involved in men's advocacy because he's a Human Right's Activist. "Men and boys, in particular, need help in our current culture in areas such as school dropouts, homelessness, suicide, imprisonment, civil rights violations, and family court areas..."
Dean is also against Feminism because it demonizes male sexuality. Female sexuality is portrayed as empowering and liberating while male sexuality is exploiting and dangerous. "...Sex-negative feminists see men as beasts who want nothing but sex from women and treat them as objects; sex-positive feminists are a little kinder, but they still see male sexuality as something to be controlled, to be exploited to women's ends but not men's..."
These uproars have caused society’s view of Feminism to change in a negative way. Typically those who still view Feminism in a positive light are Feminists themselves - no longer does the general public do so.
A lot of us anti-Feminists feel that men and women are not one in the same. Though men and women are different, equality can be achieved - and not through the influences of the current Feminist movement. The differences between the sexes are what complement and hold the basic family structure together. Feminism is seen as a system that tears the sexes apart; either through rape culture, employment, health concerns, courtship and marriage, and child-rearing. This is why myself and thousands of other women and men support the WomenAgainstFeminism movement or its subcultures.
*A good chunk of this piece is from a rejected submission of a Women Against Feminism paper I wrote for a Media Writing class at Cleveland State University in Fall 2014.
