Not a Feminist But a Female ‘equalist’

“Give us equal wages, but let him pay for my dinner”. “We want the same education as men but give us reservations too”, “treat us equally but we want our seats reserved in trains too”. Somewhere along these lines, the meaning that feminism stood for blurred a bit by our need to be privileged. Feminism, the advocacy of women’s rights to equality, empowerment of women .It became the voice of the mute, so many fights have been fought under this banner to give women the same recognition as men, but at some point, feminism lost its political agenda. It became a tool for self-empowerment and individual gain and turned to a more vapid and violent version of itself.

Feminism started with the goal to abolish the hierarchical system of society-the patriarchy, which gave men all the power in government and society and largely excluded women from it. Overtime this system evolved and women were accepted into positions of power. But was that a solution of patriarchy? ”If you have women in positions of power behaving like men do, that is not a defeat of the patriarchy, that’s just patriarchy with women in it.”, the famous author Jessa Crispin said in an interview. The motive was to abolish a gender bias system favoring men from exerting unnecessary power over those below them, only to replace them with women in those positions? Perfect!

Feminism today has become a topic that no one would want to discuss openly today (especially men!) in the fears of being attacked by those selective feminists who’ve long deviated from the concept of it. Then how can we expect the society to get used to the idea of this gender equality if one can’t even discuss about it freely? We cannot get them to listen to us by making them feel attacked on.

Another problem with the feminism which makes it so hostile to others is the language it speaks-only women.

We don’t want to be treated differently from men, but the moment we say “feminism” is where we create the difference. We are asking for equality, but a word like feminism has a rather polarizing effect. We cannot destroy one bias by creating another. We need a binary language that’s more understandable and welcome to both the parties. If it’s equality we are asking for then why make it about one gender by calling it ‘feminism’? Why not use ‘equality’ and call it ‘equalism’?

Feminism simply has become an outdated word that is creating unnecessary friction between men and women. I am not saying that we don’t need to stand up for ourselves anymore, no. I am saying that ‘feminism’ is too strong a word that exaggerates a women’s point of view. So maybe now it’s time to let go of this term, like we have with so many words we don’t require anymore such as-suffrage, and assume a much less threatening word to address the issue of gender equality with.