According to the handy-dandy Merriam Webster dictionary, feminism is “the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.” In no way does it mean that men should be lower in status than women; the overall goal of feminism is to simply have both sexes be equal.
Unfortunately, today’s Canadian society as a whole is still not accepting feminism. Canada is known to be welcoming of any religion, race, culture, and supposedly gender equality as well. Below is the 2014 Global Gender Gap Index by the World Economic Forum.
North America is not in the top ten countries that are close to attaining gender equality. There are many factors (and it won’t be a surprise when given) as to why this is.
As a guy, there are certain expectations of me that come from my guy friends regarding the whole issue of gender equality, and one of them is about the Twitter Page, @TheMeninist. This Twitter page does say that their tweets uses sarcasm, but the tweets still convey messages that is not very good for females around the world. As a “man”, I’m expected to support and follow this page, but I don’t. I’m not going to lie and say I haven’t seen or even laughed at some of the tweets (I know some of you have done the same), but I know how to separate these jokes from my beliefs.
Another trending concept regarding women these days is the term “hoe” being used to generalize women. I’m sure you’ve heard of the line “These hoes ain’t loyal” at some point or another. This term is literally demeaning towards women, and I don’t get why people use it so much. Is the word woman or female or girl so hard to use? What’s worse is social media and pop culture are filled with these types of terms and ideas, that younger generations are exposed to these and it is making them think it’s okay to think that way. Dehumanizing women is just being passed down generation after generation if social media and pop culture do not change.
I’ve been exposed to strong women all my life. My mom raised me as a single parent with help from female nannies (who were very influential in my life); I grew up in a country where we had a woman president (Philippines). It’s safe to say that these factors helped build my feminist attitude. I sincerely hope that in the near future we wholly accept feminism because there is literally no justifiable reason as to why we cannot. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m a guy and I’m a feminist
Guest Blogger: Paulo Castro
Reprinted from http://www.hercampus.com/author/paulo-castro
Paulo is a first-year English Major from the University of Windsor. He graduated from Vincent Massey Secondary School, and will always be a proud Mustang.