UC Berkeley has, as I've mentioned several times in the past, a reputation for social progressivism and activism, which isn't entirely undeserved. There certainly are a lot of groups here advocating for all sorts of things, from public awareness of thalessemia to the "cultural crisis" in the Iberian Peninsula. I'm all for people making some noise about what they believe in, because that's how things start to change and improve. I'm particularly sensitive to the issue of gender rights (as in, women and the LGBTQIA community, and so on), partially because my momma dun raised me up right in that regard.
It might surprise you to learn, then, that two of the three types of campus advocacy groups who most reliably piss me off are our "Christian" advocates and our "feminists." The "Christians" on Sproul Plaza tend to be fiery doomsayers and condemners of the damned and everything, which is about 0% what actual Christianity is about, but that's another story.
The issue with our "feminists" here is a simple one; they use a word to describe themselves, and in most cases it just doesn't mean what they think it means. Feminism is "a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women," according to the almighty Wikipedia. This is a lengthy and detailed definition, so I'mma just draw your attention to a specific point. One word, in fact.
EQUAL.
The idea of feminism, genuine feminism, is to get society to a point where the genders (and not just the two, either; everybody on the gender spectrum, in a broader application) are treated as equal before the law, in the economy, and just in general, everyday interaction. Feminism has a curious quality it shares with medicine; the day its goals are truly achieved, it will render itself obsolete, but that's tangential. The point is that feminism is about eliminating unfair discrimination based on gender in all its forms. Telling girls they should be nurses or housewives when they grow up? Working on getting that gone. Being discussed like a piece of meat? Yeah, that's on the chopping block. Misogyny and "boy's clubs" in the professional work space? Oh, honey, marked for death.
What feminism is not is the assertion that women are superior to men in any or all capacities. Most of the "feminist" groups I see here are fiery in the extreme, and talk a lot about tearing down the patriarchy and things like that, which is fine. The problem is the (very) thinly-veiled implication that tearing down the patriarchy has the objective of immediately replacing it with the matriarchy. Feminists want to eliminate misogyny in the workplace; "feminists" just want to discriminate against men instead.
There is a word for the beliefs most of our "feminists" seem to be espousing. It's called "misandry," which interestingly has a red squiggle beneath it because, apparently, it's so little used that word processors don't think it's a word. That's worrisome. Make no mistake; misogyny is a much more prevalent issue in the USA than misandry. I just thought that little detail was interesting.
The problem with our "feminists" here at Berkeley is one of underlying principle; I as a feminist want to eliminate the problems inherent in our social and political systems, and our "feminists" are motivated by a desire to simply turn them on their head and subject men to the same sort of treatment women have suffered under for so long. When I tell them this, of course, their response is that I "don't understand because [I'm] a (stupid) man." Surprise of surprises.
One example that comes immediately to mind is the issue of objectification. While people do inhabit earthly objects, it's wrong to reduce anyone from a complex, damaged, and potential-filled being into an object, of admiration or otherwise. This is a principle that just about everyone will agree with, when presented with it. Berkeley's "feminists," however, are operating under the impression that the word "objectification" carries an extended definition as "objectification of women specifically." These same people spend a good deal of their spare time talking with their friends about the purely physical attractiveness of various men they encountered, in real life or in the media. Confronted about such behavior, they band tightly together to defend one another and, if their accuser is male, will simply counter-accuse him of the same objectification. If, for instance, a male feminist tells them they're wrong, the argument will simply degenerate to an assertion that the man in question is stupid, because he's a man.
This sort of attitude and action will never lead to any meaningful progress of any description, for a variety of reasons. Not least is the old adage that "an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind," courtesy of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, among others. Aside from vengeance being generally ethically indefensible as a motive, the presence of people so focused on revenge only gives ammunition to those opposing feminist movements, and so on. Look at the situation in the Balkan peninsula during the 90's for examples of the various ways in which that shit does not fly.
Roberto Assagioli said that "Without forgiveness, life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation." Roberto Assagioli is right.
TL;DR Feminism =/= misandry, vengeance =/= progress.
I thoroughly enjoyed this.
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