Guest op-ed

It’s time to start using the F word

Contributed by [professor name]


Feminism is the demand that women have equal social and political rights.


In Equal Means Equal, Jessica Neuwirth reports that 91% of Americans agree men and women should have equal rights and protections under the law.


So why do we need feminism?


Because our nation’s founding document does not actually have an Equal Rights Amendment insisting on nonbiased treatment for all sexes and genders.


Women in the U.S. are, on average, paid 79 cents for every dollar a man makes in the same job. Women’s work is not valued as much as men’s.


Women graduate college in greater numbers than men but occupy only 17-26% of top management, government, and administrative positions—the infamous “glass ceiling.”


One in five women in the U.S. will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. The rate for college students is one in four. Every day, three women are murdered by their husband or boyfriends. Ours is a culture predicated on violence toward women.


And 61.9 million Americans just elected president a man who publicly bragged about forcing unwanted sexual contact on women. A man who is habitually dismissive of intelligent women, praises those he finds sexually attractive and insults those he does not, and whom several women have accused of assault.


His supporters may not condone such behavior, but they voted for him anyway. The takeaway? Sexism—up to and including assault—will be tolerated in powerful men, even if we don’t wish it on our mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, or ourselves. On November 9, a friend of mine—a college professor with a Ph.D. and several publications, a wife and mother—was ogled at the gym by a man who remarked to his friend, “Now that Trump is president, we can grab that.”


Feminists blame a whole host of social evils on the patriarchy (“rule by the father”), a system of power that protects and privileges men—particularly rich white men—at the expense of everyone else. A patriarchy defines women by their reproductive ability and values them on their sexual appeal. White women are protected when they are pure and sexually desirable. Nonwhite men are treated as threats and criminals. Nonwhite women are doubly invisible, doubly at risk.


Patriarchal preference explains why Hillary was reviled for “shady” conduct while supporters excused Trump for bankrupting businesses, cheating workers, vendors, and small business owners, defrauding students with a fake university, and running a fake charitable foundation. And encouraging his supporters to use violence, and punctuating his campaign with racism, xenophobia (hatred/fear of foreigners), and misogyny (calling Hillary a “nasty woman”).


Even my brother saw the double standard. “If Hillary were a guy,” he said, “no one would care about emails and Benghazi.”


To be clear: feminists don’t hate men. Valerie Solanas cast the mold for the crazy feminist when she wrote the SCUM Manifesto and shot Andy Warhol. Most of us don’t find these actions productive. Also, most of us have dads, cousins, brothers, sons, friends, husbands, and friends’ husbands who we like just fine.


Feminists don’t want to deprive men of the privileges they’ve enjoyed: better salaries, preference for jobs and promotions, full human rights. We just want these privileges to extend to all. Feminists believe the patriarchy hurts everyone. It makes women victims, objects, or servants, and it demands an aggressive, damaging masculinity from men.


Feminists don’t want to destroy traditional roles for women. We want the roles of wife, mother, and homemaker to be freely chosen. And we want full and final control over our bodies and our reproduction. Not our doctors, not our husbands, not our elected officials.


Yes, feminists are angry. We’re tired of being ogled at the gym and talked over in board rooms. We’re sick of seeing rape charges dropped against talented athletes. We get riled up about other sorts of discrimination, too. We hate seeing tax breaks for the wealthy while assistance programs offering food and health care to women and children are under attack. We’re furious that black men are shot in the street while white men with a history of mental illness or domestic violence have unfettered access to guns. And we’re fed up with a culture that tells our boys to “man up,” that drives our girls to self-mutilation, that bullies our gay, queer, and transgender kids to the point of suicide.


But. We just had a woman nominated to a major-party presidential ticket, and 63.6 million people thought she would do the better job. If 91% of us believe in gender equality, then we just might make it happen. We can start by defining people on the basis of personality rather than gender. We can insist that every person has dignity and worth. And we can start making our leaders, our legal system, our businesses, and our culture deliver on the promise that is America’s true greatness: liberty and justice for all.