Feminism Vs Equalism

Feminist movements have been taking place for hundreds of thousands of years, even if participants didn’t (or don’t) associate themselves with the word. When and where did the word feminism even come about? The word “feminism” comes from the French term “feminisme”, in association to fighting for the equal legal and political rights for women. I had a friend last year with whom I was conversing about women’s rights. The conversation boiled down to me asking if he considered feminism a vice or a virtue to our society. I realized that feminism has taken on a completely different meaning than what was intended when he argued “Feminists aren’t bad-- just the angry feminazis.” Like ants swarm a rotten banana on the street, controversy swarms

Men view the word feminist as a sexist term in and of itself, because it has “fem” in it, meaning woman. Although feminism strives towards equality at ALL costs,, feminism and equalism are NOT the same. Changing feminism to equalism would imply that men would have to take a step down to be equal to the female gender, further arguing that women are weak and have to have men do everything for us. Feminism proves that we can take that step UP to be equal to men and not have to settle to meet somewhere in the middle. Feminism proves that we are strong, abled beings that can do anything a man can. Feminism is basically women bringing out the best in all of us... But why stop there? Men can, too! Feminism is NOT exclusive to women, as most might think. Male celebrities, such as actor Matt McGorry from Orange is the New Black, openly identifies as an “Intersectional Feminist” in his Twitter

In fact, feminism is a black term, a white term, an everything-in-between term. What we don’t realize is that besides gender, feminism also heavily focuses on race (which is what we call Intersectional Feminism), ensuring that it does not matter whether I’m Caucasian, African American, Latina/Latino, Chinese, etc. but that we are all equal and should not base our social status by the color of our skin. However, lots of us fail to see this racial-equality side of feminism, only being familiar with the so called “white feminist” side. White feminism often eliminates people of color from the conversation of feminism, setting aside the race issue and only focusing on gender equality. Not all feminists who are white are White Feminists, but most White Feminists are white. I like to say that white feminism isn’t real feminism, because if I want women to rise equal to men, but ignore the fact that it’s especially harder for women of color, given racial oppression, than it is for Caucasian women, then what’s the point? Do we really want to live in a world that encourages people of color to be confident and outgoing, but not bat an eye when a person of color is harassed on the street by a white