Feminists in the mist

I am a male, and I consider myself a feminist.  That may seem like a strange thing for a man to identify himself as nowadays.  I've heard a lot of talk from people claiming that the job of feminism is done.  That we have achieved equality and equity.  That feminism is obsolete.  And besides, isn't feminism only about women anyways?

These notions are precisely what inspired me to start writing this blog.  Feminism doesn't just matter, it might matter now more than it has before; albeit in a different way.  We don't live in the world of TVs Mad Men anymore, the playing field is much different now, and maybe more complicated.

As for feminism relating only to women, that's false.  My understanding of feminism has always been understanding power dynamics, notions of identity, and how gender is performance fraught with expectation to adhere to established orthodoxy.

Perhaps I should talk more about why I decided to start this blog.  I don't really know that much about feminism.  I have a sense of feminism being extremely important, but I don't think I know as much as I should about it.  At the heart of it, feminism is a humanist ideology, and needs to be understood on those grounds.  The problem that I have encountered though is that there is so much out there it is quite daunting trying to find a starting point.

Every time I walk into the women's studies section of my local bookstore or library, I have no idea of where to start.

As an ideology, to an outsider, it can feel a bit insular, but I also get the feeling that it is one that is quite marginalized.  In a way, all ideologies or philosophies are quite insular, and difficult for outsiders to get into.  But people already have a sense of who are the prime movers and shakers in other ideologies, philosophies, or sciences.  Most people, who might have access to reading this already, are already familiar with names like: Marx, Lenin, Nietzsche, Plato, Freud, Darwin, or Einstein.  When it comes to feminism however, it seems like a person would have to already know a bit about it before they could name any of the important people.  Right now, I don't think I could name five prime feminist thinkers.  I want to change that, and this blog is a tool for me to to advance my own knowledge of feminism and to work through what I might learn about it.

So how can I consider myself a feminist when I don't feel that I know that much about it?  Well, like I said, feminism is at its heart a humanist ideology, and I care very much about people, and about treating them properly.  I think that's enough for me to be sure of for me to feel comfortable identifying myself as a feminist.

As for feminism being something that is marginalized, I say this because I don't really feel like people really take it seriously anymore.  Like I said, I have heard people say that feminism's job is done and now it's obsolete.  This is something that is troubling enough when men say it, but it's downright disturbing when women say it.

There is an astounding amount of evidence in the world showing that gender inequalities still exist and that double standards still rule the day.  It is easy enough to turn on the television or open a magazine or do a google search to figure this out. 

I will leave you with the result of a google image search of my own.  I typed in "women's studies", and this is what I got.

 

 Hopefully nothing comes to blows for me.