What is a feminist?

There are few words in the public sphere today as inflammatory as the words feminist or feminism.

Both in media and social circles the word feminist is often preceded by adjectives such as hairy, rabid, crazy, evil, pathetic, repressed, lesbian, frustrated, whining, whingeing and worse. It is not surprising then that the concept of feminism itself is regarded by many as synonymous with Nazism, sexual deviance, demonisation, mental instability, anti-Christianity, Leftism, Rightism, immorality and even the breakdown of modern society.

Feminism is not a new phenomenon. Traditionally Mary Wollstonecrafts’s Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792 heralded its appearance. In fact many scholars are now finding that the hitherto undiscovered works of women from as early as the beginning of the 1600’s disclose a feminist tradition that precedes even Wollstonecraft.

Why then is it still such an emotive subject?

First, there is a large section of the population who, knowing very little about the subject, regard it as a new discipline: a product of the swingin’ 60s. There are, after all, few people around who remember further back than the ‘60’s in terms of The Woman Question. Although some people, it must be acknowledged, have a hazy idea of the suffragist’s political movement used as comedic sidelines in such children’s classic movies as Mary Poppins or the perennial favourite My Fair Lady.

In a society which many regard as bedeviled by violence, failing economies, religious zealotry, and increased social welfare dependence, it is inevitable that some people will hark back to a largely mythical past when all was right with the world.

Though sifting back through two world wars, a worldwide depression, influenza pandemics, high infant mortality rates, low life expectancy rates, plagues, crusades, witch hunts and primitive medical experiments it is difficult to pin-point exactly when this utopia existed.

With such a worldview however, anything perceived as modern and controversial - the abolition of capital punishment, feminism, the Greens - can be seen as the scapegoat factor. Anxious to make sense of an increasingly non-sensical world situation it is tempting to think “Ah, but if it weren’t for Them all would be well”.

The advantage of choosing feminism as the scapegoat factor is that, to date, no feminists have claimed responsibility for either blowing something up, shooting anyone or taking hostages. They are relatively safe protagonists.

Second, it is fact that the human species exists only as male or female. Therefore each one of us who has been treated unfairly or badly at the hands of another must, by necessity, have received that treatment from either male or female hands. Those who, for whatever reason, find themselves unable to come to terms with their life experiences often succumb to the temptation to decry instead the entire opposite sex our opponent represents.

This serves a twofold purpose: as each gender comprises approximately half of the total population it is inevitable that support for one’s stance will be found. Additionally, by claiming victim status the wider question of how or why to come to terms with the fact that bad things happen to good people need never be faced.

While the above could supply the answers to the question of why feminism and feminists are so often targeted, the reasons for the inflammatory rhetoric could probably be ascribed mainly to complete misunderstanding or indeed widespread ignorance.

After the slaughter of numbers of women in the Middle Ages the Querelle des Femmes or Woman Question swept across Europe and the Continent during the Renaissance (circa 1400-1600). The hundreds of tracts, pamphlets, books, articles, ballads and papers vilifying women and holding them accountable for everything from the fall of mankind to the plague are a matter of public record. Some are even accessible through the Internet.

It is only natural that, women being deprived of a public voice in order to refute these writings at the time, some women now feel the urge to take up the cudgels of behalf of their sisters who were forced into silence.

To do so however in the name of feminism is wrong. Just as taking the personal opinions expressed by any one person and applying them to each member of an entire organisation, or indeed gender, is wrong.

It is also the means whereby the centuries-old quarrel between men and women is dragged unabated into the new millennium. The only difference is semantic: instead of labeling the combatants “men” and “women” the labels misogynists and feminists are used. Same unresolved Querelle des Femmes or war of the sexes. Just different labels.

It says little for us as a species that after all this time we still haven’t worked out that some human beings are good, some human beings are bad. Ergo there are bad women and bad men as well as good women and good men. It’s the way of the world.

For those left wondering what then the words feminist or feminism mean in a post-modern context the answer is fairly simple. The feminist movement started as a political society based on humanism. Its first campaigns were for education and the right to vote for all of society. Along the way there have been many different feminist theories and stances.

Academically the concept of feminism is used to provide an indication of a particular perspective of a field of study: thus feminist psychoanalysis, feminist literature, and so on, are simply ways of looking at a particular subject from a female point of view. A feminist scholar therefore is not a ranting, raving hirsute manipulator but a person, male or female, who looks at the woman’s angle.

Issues such as the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendments Bill in America illuminate how little headway feminism has made as a political force in recent years. For this reason modern feminists (sometimes rather confusingly referred to as post-feminists) both male and female, have returned more to their humanist roots than their political ones.

Today a feminist in the social context is simply a person, once again male or female, who is concerned about injustice and the rights of those who are under-represented such as certain groups of women, minority and ethnic groups, those living under oppressive regimes and children. Although the movement has spawned off-shoots both more and less political, more and less radical and more and less visible, post-modern feminism most certainly is not about hating men, envying men or wanting equality with men.

A feminist is not a woman with hairy armpits and a chip on her shoulder. For those with no wish to plough through hundreds of books detailing the convoluted history of the movement until the present day: a feminist is anyone who thinks that every person - regardless of gender, age or ethnicity - has the right to follow their own dreams.

The right for either a man or a woman to stay at home and raise a family is a feminist imperative. The necessity for every woman, regardless of inclination or aptitude to follow a proscribed direction either as a homemaker or a career person, is not.

The right for either a man or a woman to reach their career goals, be it as a florist, nanny or CEO, is also a feminist imperative. The need for every working woman to ape her male counterparts is not.

Feminists do not believe that all women are caring, sharing and empathetic. They don’t believe that all men are violent. Neither do they believe that the way to correct the wrongs in a patriarchal society is to turn it into a matriarchal one.

Among a hundred other freedoms feminists believe in are: the right to breathe fresh air; remain a virgin; have enough to eat; choose one’s own lover; be elected or employed on one’s own merits and not to be judged or categorised by society for exercising these rights.

So go on, people. Fight your gender wars, vilify each other, stick on labels, generalise and be hateful to your heart’s content. Just leave feminists out of it.