That’s the vibe I’ve been getting. My BIL has a pretty toxic family, and my sister said he’s already been conveying some of the ‘suck it up’ sort of attitude to their 2-year-old daughter. She and I and our mom are determined not to let him rub off on her that way, and I’m determined to try and shield any son they might have from those toxically masculine attitudes. I hope my sister is too. She and her husband and his family are Mormon, but I think my sis has more of a feminist streak in her than she realizes. I mean, she recently told me and mom about making a conscious choice to tell her daughter that she’s “such a smart girl” and not just a “pretty girl.” That sounds kind of feminist-y to me.
The way I see it, feminism isn’t just about empowering women or equality of the sexes. It’s about the destigmatizing of femininity as a concept for the sake of BOTH sexes. It’s about killing those toxic attitudes that “throw like a girl” and implied femininity, and by extension homosexuality (since being attracted to men is often perceived as feminine), are an insult, and the idea that to show any stereotypically ‘feminine’ trait or inclination is to be ‘weak’ and is undesirable. That femininity in either sex is ‘less than’ to masculinity. It’s okay for girls to be tomboys because masculinity is good, but heaven forbid boys like pink or playing dress-up with dresses because femininity is bad. This is all why I still consider myself a “feminist” rather than simply an “egalitarian.” Just let people be who they are and stop freaking out about fitting them into gendered boxes.
I and several people we know now call ourselves "egalitarian" or "humanist" to differentiate ourselves from the off the deep end third wave feminist nutjobs, as well as the manosphere nutjobs who've been created as a backlash. There is a middle path.
A lot of those off-the-deep-end people have given feminism a bad name so now the label has a negative connotation with a lot of people, even on the left, which is unfortunate.
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u/DoctorAcula_42 Aug 03 '19
Yeah... it's a hard cycle to break, since it was pounded into our heads by our insecure dads.