Feminism. A word that many people have embraced as something to support as a human being in the 21st century and some still shy away from it because they don’t understand the importance of it. When we think of feminism, as white people, the struggle for white mainly middle-class women comes automatically to mind. This might happen unconsciously or fully consciously. It doesn’t matter how it happens, but we need to change this. We need intersectional feminism. What is intersectional feminism you might ask. With intersectional feminism we mean the fight for all women’s rights not just white women but also BIWOC, LGBTQ+ women and women from other minority backgrounds. It is the struggle for women’s rights for all women. This is something we need to understand in the context of feminism, we need to include all women to achieve gender equality. Only if all women’s rights are fought for will we achieve equality.
Another thing to consider, especially as white cis men, is that feminism is not about you. Feminism is about the struggle for women’s rights. We need you to support us in our fight for equality but we don’t need you to make it about yourself. Being an outspoken non-feminist man in the 2021 is problematic. What are you then if not a feminist? Don’t you have women in you family that experience sexual harrassment, lower pay because they are women, the fear of walking home alone? Yes we want to achieve equal rights for all. But the problem is by saying we are for only for equality for everyone we bypass women. By saying we want equal rights for everyone, the women and their struggles are eliminated from the equation. We need men to be on our side but to understand that it is about us. Women and their bodies are always in the spotlight. When walking down a street even in broad daylight we are alert to what happens around us. I personally get nervous when I hear someone walking very close behind me, and when (particularly at night) I see a man coming my direction, I change the side of the street. Only recently I was sitting in a beer garden and a man was staring at me. I felt like served on a silver plate. The male gaze. All over us as women.
When I talk about women’s rights and intersectional feminism I say women should be able to do whatever they please to do without any judgement, that’s where intersectional feminism happens for me. But the problem is, women cannot do what they want to do while men have freedoms they didn’t work for. Also within the feminist community women with different backgrounds have different rights. That can be seen in the gender pay gap. Women get less than men but black women statistically get even less. That is why intersectionality is so important and why we have to consider all women in our feminist agenda.
It’s summer so I see a lot of men cycling or running topless in public. They do this as if it is their full right and know that nobody will say anything. Swap the image in your head out with a woman cycling topless. Oh imagine the reactions! Whistling, shouting, staring. Or when we don’t wear bras because they are simply uncomfortable. Oh the stares! I always wonder, have these staring men never seen boobs before if they need to stare at them through my T-Shirt? And please don’t come at me with not all men. Yes not all men are like this but not all men do something about it. Again, it’s not about men.
Women are constantly judged for how they look, what they wear, how big their boobs are, how much or how little make-up they wear, how skinny or how fat they are. I’m using fat here on purpose, because being fat is not a bad thing, it’s society telling us it is a shameful thing. We all have different bodies and this needs to be acknowledged. What I’m getting here is that that no matter how we look and what we wear we are judged. So that is why we need intersectional feminism, the freedom of every woman out there to be able to do what she wants without being judged, raped, killed. Remember when Sarah Everard disappeared and a man murdered her because she was a women? I cried when I read the news and it took me a while to feel safer again when walking around in the streets. She is only one of many who made it into the news. Men are killing black women, and that doesn’t make it to the news. But we need to understand that this is an issue (men killing women) that concerns us all and we need to make everything happen that women don’t get killed by men. And it is not an issue of a woman, it’s a men’s issue. It is not women who have to change their behaviour or the way they dress, it’s men that need to change the way they think about and behave towards women.
When a woman is successful she generally talks down her achievements. I do that too, and then I look back at my life and realise I have achieved already so much. But we don’t celebrate it because we might come across as bold, bossy, selfish etc. Why? Because that’s the words associated with it and we are tired of the judgement. If men celebrate their success they are smart, amazing, successful in their life etc. See the difference? To achieve gender equality we need to start with letting women be women and leave it up to us to define for our individual selves what it is to be a woman.
Periods. Still a topic where women are shamed. The typical sentence when we are in a bad mood “Oh are you on your period?” No I am not and even if I am it is my full right to be in a bad mood because who wouldn’t be with a painful, cramping uterus, hormones flying all over the place and uncontrollable emotions. Also we should have it as our full right to rest when we do have our periods and feel physically and emotionally unwell. I didn’t choose to have periods but I have to live with them. Slowly, slowly (at least in my bubble) this topic is becoming less and less of a taboo but still there is this belief out there that we need to function at all times and have to behave like men to be successful. Leave your emotions out the door if you want to climb the career ladder. But then if we do that, we are labeled as bossy and unfriendly. It’s a vicious circle that needs to be broken.
We need to advocate for every woman out there and her rights. BIWOC, LGBTQ+ women, women from other minority groups. Why? Because we cannot be free if not all women are free and treated equally. Till this happens we need to fight.
The Monikart Studio 