Feminism as a whole is no longer a wholly legitimate or helpful movement toward achieving actual gender equality. While the idea of feminism is nice, it is no longer working as intended. The pro-equality branches of feminism are often overshadowed by other branches that happen to be toxic. In first-world countries, Feminism is almost completely unnecessary, and its applications are best suited to areas of the world where women legitimately need/want gender equality, such as the Middle East and India. For first-world countries such as the USA and UK, feminism often infantilizes women and promotes hate/sexism. Some women are feminists to the point of misogyny, and others promote misandry or are uncooperative. For this reason, “feminism” has turned into a “dirty word” in some circles (read the comments on this article too).
Many core “I need Feminism because” arguments have been repeatedly discredited, for example the wage gap. There is a small gap, but it is an earnings gap instead of a wage gap; laws such as the USA's Equal Pay Act prevent employers from paying their workers different amounts based solely on gender. The wage gap is a complete and utter myth which has been debunked multiple times - even by feminists. Even if there was a wage gap, women still control the majority of economic power in the USA and there are plenty of female billionaires. If women are paid less than men for the same work, why hire men at all? Corporate greed certainly puts profit above people.
There are several prominent feminists who disagree with the current incarnation of feminism, such as Christina H Sommers (aka "based mom"), who point out discrepancies in the alleged “gender equality” goal feminists claim to share. Pure equality may actually be impossible to institute as there are biological differences between the sexes and some equality arguments verge on tokenism. There are an increasing amount of women’s groups and feminists who are noticing how feminist ideologies can disadvantage or harm people. Women in general, without feminism, can be worse than men in the workplace (2) (and outside of it - women are 92% of cyberbullies). Feminism is also not inclusive, and neglects (often on purpose) the plights of disadvantaged or non-white women in addition to the effect this may have on children. Feminism has become a very fractured movement and often focuses on unimportant or outright fabricated issues like Ban Bossy (which used inaccurate information).
For reasons why people use the term “Feminazi,” click here or here. It's a bit ridiculous for people to unironically do it (it’s often misused) but those are reasons why it happens. For extra reasons why radical feminism is damaging to society, many of their tactics and propaganda leads up to a potential genocide of non-female genders. Some feminists have openly called for genocide (the SCUM Manifesto, etc).
"Feminism is about equality!"
- This is an etymological fallacy as feminism has changed over time and currently has three (some say four) distinct "waves" with varying goals.
- This doesn't explain the transphobia (2), racism (2), homophobia, sexism, general infighting, spreading of false information, unrealistic actions, misandry, misogyny (2), hateful acts, slacktivism, victimhood, protesting debates on men's issues, fabricating issues, rape apologism, and general crazy behavior (2). Tumblr however is fairly well-known for being a haven for the uneducated, which is why most people don't take Tumblr social justice seriously.
- http://hswjs.tumblr.com/post/95301157789/
- Feminism is an ideology and it is not synonymous with equality. Like all ideologies, it has various subcultures and feminism has an estimated 40+ variants that disagree with each other on multiple points. You can be pro-equality without being a feminist and many women disagree with feminism (mainstream feminism) in its current state.
- Feminism is primarily a women’s rights movement. It has a primary focus (women) and some sub-versions of feminism have a secondary focus (men, transgender people) while some sub-versions focus 100% on women.
- "Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. A feminist advocates or supports the rights and equality of women."
"Not all feminists are like that!" (NAFALT)
- Also see: "no true Scotsman" fallacy
- Too many ARE like that. The good feminists should police their own movement and attempt to remove the bad feminists which tarnish the movement.
- If you call yourself a feminist, you are a feminist. You may or may not be a "real" feminist, but the label still applies regardless.
- Try to be specific about your version of feminism. Don't say "I'm a feminist" — say "I'm a _____ feminist." This way you can tell people about what kind of feminist you actually are, and you likely won't get lumped in with the bad feminists.
"If you believe in equality, you are a feminist!"
- No; feminism is a movement, not a thought process. You can choose to be a part of feminism if you want to, much like choosing to join a political party, and you can't force labels on people. There are also other movements which are more pro-equality such as egalitarianism or humanism.
- Most people believe in equality yet don't take on the "feminist" label. 37% of Americans view feminism as something negative, 26% see it as positive, and 29% have a neutral opinion. Both women and men are more likely to dislike the term than like it. 20% of people identify as feminist, but 80-90% believe in gender equality. Doesn’t that say something about the feminist movement?
- Some female celebrities have specifically said they're not feminists.
- Saying "if you're not a feminist, then you're against equality" is like saying "if you're not in the Girl Scouts, you're not a girl" or "if you don't murder or steal, you're a Christian." You can choose what you do with your life without someone trying to guilt-trip you into joining Feminism.
"Men deserve to be discriminated against!"
- As if men have never been discriminated against for any reason...? Men have plenty of issues.
- Two wrongs don't make a right.
- Just because a minority of men are jerks, you shouldn't treat all men the same way (also see: fallacy of composition, association fallacy). Things should be approached on more of a case-by-case basis.
- Men as a whole do not actually seek to oppress women (male feminists for example). "The Patriarchy" does not exist in first-world countries (see below — I have an entire section on the alleged Patriarchy).
"The number one cause of death for women is men!"
- Not even close to being true. The top 3 causes of death (a combined 53% of female deaths) according to the CDC are heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Violence doesn't even break into the top 10 unless you count unintentional injuries for some reason. http://www.cdc.gov/Women/lcod/2009/index.htm
- If you check here, suicide is #27 (8,086 deaths a year) for women and homicide is #35 (3,477 deaths a year). Specific violence against women doesn't even make the top FIFTY causes of death. For men, suicide is #7 (30,271 deaths a year) and homicide is #27 (12,765 deaths a year). 11,500 women and 43,000 men die each year from suicide and homicide combined. Heart disease and cancer kill over 1,100,000 men and women every year.
- Primary causes of death of course vary by race, but men are almost always more likely to die than women.
- Even if you go by world statistics, violence against women doesn't even make the top 15. Disease and age kill more people than anything else. Injury and violence kill more men than women.
- There's a post going around Tumblr saying "gender-based violence kills 1 in 3 women worldwide" but it's wrong. So incredibly wrong it's amazing (like the laughable "women own 1% of land" graphic [1] [2]) . Less than 10% of all deaths around the world are due to any kind of injury or violence.
- A UK article repeated a similar lie ("Domestic abuse is the largest cause of morbidity in women aged 19-44, more than war, cancer or motor vehicle accidents.") Unsurprisingly, it was found to be false. "Criado-Perez went further, trying to hoodwink gullible readers by hyperlinking her pseudostatistic to a 246-page report published by the World Health Organization, even though that report contains no data to support Criado-Perez’s hyperbole. The WHO report dates back to 2002, and the most pertinent data it contains is that interpersonal violence then ranked as the 43rd-highest cause of morbidity for women."
"Not enough women are CEOs or politicians!"
- The first problem we encounter here is that feminists are looking to the top ("glass ceiling") and not the bottom ("glass cellar"). This is not true equality because, on average, men hold worse jobs than women (power plant worker, coal miner, ditch digger, etc) and feminists rarely — if ever — look to the bottom of society (apex fallacy). Men are already 93% of workplace deaths and accidents since they hold more dangerous and strenuous positions.
- More men want to be CEOs than women. A Comparison of the Career Attainments of Men and Women Healthcare Executives, 2006: Among those who aspired to becoming CEO, the ratio of women to men was 0.57 (40% vs 70%); within a given sampling interval, the ratio of women to men who became CEO was 0.63 (12% vs 19%). That is, fewer than half of the women wanted the top position, but for those who did, it was likely easier to get there. 27% of the men became CEO and 30% of the women became CEO so there clearly isn't much of a gender gap there.
- "Given executive rank and background, women are paid more than men, experience less income uncertainty, and are promoted as quickly. Amongst survivors, being female increases the chance of becoming CEO. Hence the gender pay gap and job rank differences are primarily attributable to female executives attriting at higher rates than males in an occupation where survival is rewarded with promotion and higher compensation." — from Are There Glass Ceilings for Female Executives? (Gayle et al 2009)
- Male representation in Congress has been falling slowly yet steadily since 1917. Other countries have progressed further and have female heads.
- Australian journalist Natalie Barr dismisses the “us” against “them” mentality of modern gender relations and explains that men probably aren’t to blame for any workplace struggles women might face, real or imagined.
- Employees prefer male bosses. Women are extremely critical of a female boss, more so than either gender's views of a male boss.
- For more information, see this about the "wage gap" argument.
"Women aren’t encouraged to enter STEM fields" are you sure about that?
- http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/women
- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/women-stem
- http://www.aauw.org/what-we-do/stem-education
- http://www.awg.org
- http://www.awis.org/
- http://www.blackgirlscode.com
- http://forgirlsinscience.org/women-in-stem
- https://www.madewithcode.com/
- http://web.mit.edu/gep/about.html
- http://sites.nationalacademies.org/pga/cwsem/
- http://steminist.com
- http://www.womeninscience.org/
- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/20/project-based-learning-could-help-attract-and-retain-women-stem-study-suggests
- http://blogs.greatschools.org/greatschoolsblog/2011/07/geek-chic-girls-rule-at-google-online-science-fair.html
- http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/19/5826214/google-investing-50-million-to-get-girls-to-code
- Verizon's "Inspire Her Mind" ad and the facts they didn't tell you
- Women in science, by the Factual Feminist: "Do we need feminist biology" and "the real reason there aren't more female scientists"
- A study of 127 science faculty did find that men and women tend to find that men are viewed as more competent. "Despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists within academic science." This is contradicted at times by some other studies, including a book on the subject.
- A study in 2014 showed that gender bias is at an all-time low in STEM fields. It's implied that the people who claim women have a hard time are driving the problem - making up stories about sexism, and that hurts women more than what's actually happening. No, really. Telling women STEM fields are full of sexism doesn't solve the percieved problem.
- Some women just aren't interested. For some statistics on college degrees, you can check here: (1) (2). Women earn the majority of college degrees and enter the most popular professions, where they're up to 85% of degree-earners in that field. Men have increased in computer science, foreign languages, and... that's it. Art is about the same. Women have only seen a decrease in math and computer science. Why this decrease when there's such a massive push to get more women into STEM fields? It's almost like the documentary Hjernevask says - that when there's more gender equality, women choose what they want to do - and statistically speaking, they don't choose math as much as men. Another theory is that science is a bad field in general, and reasonable people won't want to get into it. A third theory is the one mentioned in the previous bullet point - crying wolf.
"Women face constant explicit harassment everywhere"
Men are less likely to report abuse, due in part to societal standards of masculinity, which makes their numbers (for reported abuse) much lower than they should be. Women underreport as well, but not to the extent men do. There's a study going around as "proof" women are harassed more than men online, but it was done almost 10 years ago in relay chatrooms. It’s not indicative of current trends and is contradicted by almost every modern study. See below for information on online harassment:
- A survey of Internet users conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2013 found that 13 percent of female respondents and 11 percent of male respondents said they had been harassed or stalked online.
- Pew did another survey in 2014 which said 44% of of men and 37% of women had experienced at least one form of harassment online. Men are the majority for the most common, while women are the majority for the least common (aside from physical threats).
- Most users of social media are women, so statistically the majority will be a majority when it comes to most things. (For example 70% of US college graduates are white, but 72% of the US population is white.) If there are more women on the internet, they’ll be more likely to receive harassment as a gender due to their large numbers.
- Most bullying occurs on Facebook and Twitter. An incredibly large number of victims are men.
- A 2010 study conducted for the Cyberbullying Research Center,(Hinduja, S. & Patchin, J. W. (2010). Bullying, Cyberbullying, and Suicide), showed that “Without question, the nature of adolescent peer aggression has evolved due to the proliferation of information and communications technology. There have been several high profile cases involving teenagers taking their own lives in part because of being harassed and mistreated over the Internet. Cyberbullying victims were almost twice as likely to have attempted suicide compared to youth who had not experienced cyberbullying. Girls are 57% more likely to be victims of aggressive cyberbullying and 92% more likely to be the perpetrators.”
- Workplace bullying is four times more common than sexual harassment and racial discrimination, one study found. “Girls are taught to be critical about each other from adolescence, and it’s particularly vicious among working women; from playing favourites to badmouthing colleagues.”
- Harassment impacts both genders but there’s a bit of a double standard when it comes to who’s viewed as a victim.
- https://archive.today/nSAxw
- more information
tl;dr More current studies show that men and women are almost equally likely to receive harassment online, and it’s most likely women doing the harassing.
As for street harassment, there's a video that went around in autumn 2014 which went viral. A woman walked around NYC for 10 hours to see what happened. Some people took issue with this video in general, and SJWs called the video racist since most of the 'harassers' were non-white. Not much actually happened to the woman, and a man who mirrored the experiment was harassed just as much (if not more). Catcalling is more of a race and class issue than a gender issue. Of course things are different in other countries; a woman tried this in New Zealand and wasn't catcalled at all.
Further reading on Feminism and related issues:
- http://oratorasaurus.tumblr.com/
- http://dontneedfeminism.tumblr.com/
- http://permutationofninjas.org/
- http://imminentdeathsyndrome.tumblr.com/post/88127480752/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk3beajVbzg
- http://just-smith.tumblr.com/post/11407261698/
- http://jasminetamarathinks.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/hot-topic-is-western-feminism-worth.html
- https://www.youtube.com/user/girlwriteswhat/about
- "The Factual Feminist" video series