Sunday, July 21, 2013

This Is My Thing About The Word Feminism.

The term "sexist", much like the term "racist", is neutral in it's etymology. Sex and race in and of themselves are unbiased terms, but their respective "ism"s have come to represent systematic disenfranchisement of a particular subset.

Feminism as a word places the emphasis on revaluing one such subset--namely women in a male-oriented world. However, the way in which this is done is up to interpretation. Historically and somewhat stereotypically, the word feminism indicates female empowerment to the point of disenfranchising men.

In my own interpretation though, feminism values women exactly as much as our society has always valued men. Feminism is a synonym for gender equality because it by definition values women but on it's own does not devalue any other group.

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