Do you have a problem supporting the political, economic, and social equality of women? Well, I don’t, and if I were to believe what countless surveys all over the world suggest, most of us, too, don’t have any problem.
But what if I say that the above statement is the textbook definition of feminism? Now, assuming you represent various poll results on this topic, you may have changed your view – from the position of approval to that of disapproval. The term has a poor approval rate all over the world. Feminism is a case where the definition, the way we all perceive it, is defined by its opponents!
Why is it not cool?
Let’s understand what went wrong with such a dignified concept. Feminism is a story of so many biases and fallacies. It has straw man (woman) fallacy, cherry-picking, fear of the unknown, stereotyping; you name it.
Straw woman fallacy
Popular culture – movies and TV – do their part to misrepresent the position to make it easier to critique. They can easily morph feminists into a myriad of effigies such as socialists (in the US), lesbians, child-killers, and man-haters that are thus easier to attack and burn down.
Take the case of the bra-burners. It was down to a journalist who erroneously reported the incident of burning of bras in a protest in 1968, when a few women threw some brassieres into the thrash can in protest of the Miss America pageant.
Fear of unknown
Yes, feminism does threaten the existing power centres. Be it the patriarchy, sexuality, or individual rights. More importantly, this fear of losing the value system or privilege that society thinks they enjoy currently, is what most of us are worried about. Like nationalism, like the belief in God, this concept of, often male-created, value system too, remains in the head, as a myth, without undergoing any rational scrutiny.
The fallacy of selective attention
There are feminists, past and present, who walked the elitist and exclusionist paths. But whenever such extreme expressions happened, the press made sure that they got more publicity than they deserved.
