If Feminism is About Equality, Then Why is it Called Feminism?

There are various counter movements to feminism.  One of them even has the ridiculous name of “Meninism”.  They aren’t very large, or organized, and there’s not a section of the book store devoted to them.  Their aims are all over the map, some more noble than others, and this is obviously a reflection of the varying attitudes of their adherents.

I doubt there is a single woman on the planet who takes them seriously.

But perhaps they should.  The premise of feminism is that we live in a patriarchy, a world run by men and according to men’s rules, and as a result women are mistreated by men, and they suffer emotionally, materially, and even physically.  None of these things are untrue.  However, mistreatment of one gender by another is hardly unilateral.  The rules of our world are also in fact shaped heavily by the needs and desires of women, and women continually reinforce the matriarchal constructs of our society.  Men also suffer, yet their suffering is of no interest to anyone.  Men are taught to hide, ignore, and bury their feelings.  A man is a joke if he insists that his hurt feelings regarding women are relevant.  Hurting men emotionally is fair game.  Hurting men materially is accepted and encouraged, and even supported by law.  Attempting to hurt men physically isn’t taken seriously, even when it succeeds.

And the actions of feminism bring additional harm to men.  Most feminists, when they are thinking philosophically, believe that this is not the aim of feminism.  Yet in actual situations where gender inequality is at issue, when the conflict is no longer theoretical, equality tends to take a back seat to victory, and men who are seen as obstructions are run over.  Those same feminists, when they aren’t thinking so critically, will sign on to anti-male ideas and propositions.  And then there are many feminists who are quite overtly anti-male, who seek explicitly to hurt men in some kind of emotional and material fight for dominance.

Is it any wonder that men feel threatened by feminism?  It is not mere anxiety or insecurity.

In the end, it may not be such a useful idea to blame men for the problems of women, any more than women should be blamed for the problems of men.  Men and women are simply different, and it is those differences, and our inability to understand them from the other perspective, that creates all of the gender conflict.  Blame evolution, or blame the Creator, and then be done with the blame and the fighting.  In the end, equality will be attained by convincing everyone, men and women, to treat each other equally.