Feminism; it’s completely mental.

I have always been a feminist for as long as I can remember, even before I knew that there was even a feminist movement in the world. I was that kid that would sulk because I had to perform female duties such as helping out in the kitchen and my brother and father would not have to. When I question my mother and grandmother about this, the answer they always give was, “You’re a girl, you have to do this.” I never understood that answer and I still don’t. I’ve written a feminism piece previously titled, ‘Women can belong anywhere they want’. Even though feminism is recently seeing some progress in recent years, it has also became a dirty word. Some people are ashamed to be called feminists because of the negative connotations that is brought about from the misunderstanding of feminism. Therefore, I would like to bring up a little problem I see in our modern day society with regards to our perception of feminism and women.

The original intention for feminism is to achieve equal rights for men and women, such as women being able to vote just like men. Many think that we are suppressing the rights of men in order for feminism to achieve their goal. That is wrong. For simplicity, let me put it in an analogy of people getting pie slices. Traditionally, men get a whole pie each, while women only get 6/10 slices of the pie. What feminism aims to achieve is that women also get a whole pie each just like men hence attaining equality. Some misunderstand that feminism is to bring men down by only giving them 6/10 slices of the pie in order to attain ‘equality’. With this analogy, I hope the essence of feminism is very least explained.

With that misunderstanding (hopefully) cleared up, I would just like to talk about the perception of feminists. I am a feminist and I am also assertive, outspoken and I say what I need to say, mostly in a polite and tactful way. Such traits are said to be masculine and when displayed by a man, he is called an ‘alpha male’, completely desirable by society. However, when a woman like me displays those traits, it is suddenly undesirable and being scowled at, often getting comments like “It’s probably a feminist thing”. I think this is a form of double standard that many women have to deal with on a daily basis where we are called ‘bossy’, ‘know-it-all’ and the common ‘b-word’ to describe female dogs. This sort of mindset definitely boils down to the traditional patriarchy that I grew up with, where men and women have traditional gender roles and characters that we are supposed to embody. Is this double standard a problem? Definitely. Such a simple thing can affect many things that a woman potentially can do, but because of this narrow mindset, many women are not able to go places, literally and metaphorically.

Such a subtle problem is definitely not as urgent as the need to stop other female problems such as rape and honour killings, but it is a contributing factor because everything starts from the mind. I do feel that this is worth emphasising on as many people, even governments, forget that education to change the mindset is one of the most important and key ways to create a change along with the physical implementation of policies.

Women can belong anywhere they want.

Being a feminist, I hate absolutely hate it when people try to impose a gender role on women. I am that daughter that you will probably never want to have in your life because I was born a feminist. I come from a traditional Asian family and in my family, the women have to set up the table and take care of the food etc, while the men sit on the couch and watch television. When I was 10, I unleashed my first feminist tantrum where my mum nagged at me to set the table up and I lost it. I just went, ‘Why do I have to do this? Why can’t they (brother and dad) do it instead? They’re so lazy and they don’t even clear their dIshes and I HAVE TO IT?!?!?! WHAT IS THIS HOUSEHOLD?!?!’ And I stomped to my room and locked myself in. From then on, my parents learned to not impose gender roles on me as much even though they still do it anyways.

My point is, why are we restricting the genders to a certain stereotype such as ‘women belong in the kitchen’? Women can belong anywhere we want and it’s just society that doesn’t let us belong where we want. Lesser women are represented in politics and how much good does that do to our society? Do men know about the pains of women and the struggle and needs women in their country need? The thing I’m trying to get at is that women are much more than what society sees us worth. Hell, we are much more than what we see ourselves! We grew up in a world where men are seen as the more superior gender but bloody hell, to hell with that. Without women, men wouldn’t even be here. We are under-rated and women all around need to understand that we are not a second-class gender.

My role in society is not to be at home to cook and welcome you home as a domestic servant and expect to please you in every way possible. My role in society is to be able to do what I want. I can be a politician, a lawyer, a head chef, a surgeon or a housewife if I want to. My role in society is my choice. I can belong wherever the hell I want because I am still human after all.

This post was pretty driven by the frustration in my head after reading a blog that pretty much imposes gender roles to women throughout all his blog posts. So, to women all around, celebrate yourself and the women around you!