Despite years of denial, the blanket term most commonly used to describe radical female protesters became a title that I could no longer ignore, as it seemed to affect every facet of my life. The image of tyrant women burning their bras in the sixties was so deeply entrenched in the collective mind that the word feminism had become a personal insult, thrown around with derision and carelessness. Media, art, and society as a whole, led me to believe that gender inequalities were only a reality of third world countries and that a Canadian feminist was a scar on our population. In what could be described as a unified effort to squander any hope for equality, women’s rights have been tossed aside as a cause that someone fought for eons ago when suffrage for women was still an issue, outrageously suggesting that equality was obtained with one law. I grew up in a small, white, middle class town in Alberta believing this, completely unaware of the enormity of the problem that was surrounding me and I was contributing to. It wasn’t until I was eighteen that I realized I myself was a feminist, and that feminism was indeed a cause I wanted to be a part of. It is so simple, clear, and inoffensive; a movement to create equal rights for men and women.
The term was coined in the early 19th century, and finally entered North American culture in the early twentieth century and has now had three waves. The first was led by protesters against slavery, who realized that the idea of a woman being a man’s property was a form of slavery in itself. Then, feminism had an emphasis on women’s suffrage and the rights of women to enter a contract and own property. It was an issue of fundamental rights for a woman’s autonomy and self-sustainability. For the most part, it was not restricting or intrusive for men, applying only to changes for women. Although other issues appeared, most didn’t fully surface until the second wave in the 1960’s. Reproductive rights, including contraceptives and abortion, and an outcry against the social construction of sex emerged. When protection against sexual assault and domestic violence became key elements of the feminist movement, the grey area between stripping the rights of an accused offender and the protection of a self-proclaimed victim was reached. Feminism was criticized for focusing almost exclusively on middle class, white, women, and neglected the equality struggle for different ages, races, classes, and less formally educated perspectives. As a society, in Canada, the intentions were lost and feminism became a reactionary movement, opposing rather than defending. Demands for equal wage and equal opportunity in the workplace have been perceived as a complete loss in the 60’s and 70’s. These demands threatened the jobs and pay of existing employees, and the peaceful motion that was once thought of as equality became an attack on a way of life that had existed for centuries. It seemed that all good intentions were lost, and that anyone who called themselves a feminist would be shunned.
A time of slow progress and passive battle began. Most feminist causes renamed themselves as post-feminists, hoping to erase the negative connotation it had received, in order to advance. Not until the 90’s did the third wave of feminism emerge. This wave is shaped by the questioning of the fundamental pillars of gender in societies all around the globe. A wide range of opinions exist on women’s sexuality, social conditioning, gender roles and how to solve such a wide range of issues. Feminism shifted towards a concern for the way young boys are moulded and began treating micro issues from their source rather than their symptom. The literature that our society grounds itself in, from Aristotle, to Machiavelli, to Martin Luther, was de-constructed and criticized for teaching patriarchal values. Concern for all people actively began. But mixed views and goals only tore the group further, crippling the term feminism to the general public and to young girls like myself.
It wasn’t until I realized that these issues were affecting me and that the further I grew from a child to a woman the larger these problems would become. I had never considered that I would be explicitly told not to enroll in engineering by my peers because of my gender. The protection of bodily integrity became an active pursuit in my life, not knowing if it was worse to be named a tease or a slut. The more I learned about victim blaming, the more scared I was to walk on the street and the more I reflected on my twelve year old friends going on diets, the more I never wanted to have children. Life experience was harnessing my ambition and it became clear that this was no one person’s fault. The blame could not be put on any group of individuals. Feminism is about pushing the world in the direction we want to go rather than backlashing against what has been done in the past. It is about the creation of opportunity, the protection of people, and the integrity of equality. Regardless of the size of each problem, ranging from my enrollment in engineering to the sex trafficking across the world from me, this push for an equal environment is one that deserves an untainted and fully understood name.
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