FEMINISM VS MASCULINISM

ANALYSIS
Feminism as a social movement

As mentioned previously, feminism is the belief in the economic, political, and equality of women. Feminism is usually divided into 3 waves:

• Women’s Suffrage and the Seneca Falls: This wave started in 1848 at Seneca Falls Convention where feminists demanded their right to vote. This wave ended in 1920 when American women earned their right to vote. Countries like New Zealand, Australia, Finland, and the United Kingdom gave women the right to vote previously.

• Women’s Liberation: This wave started in 1963 with the publication of The Feminine Mystique, document which argued about how women were still relegated to do unfulfilling roles in society like homemaking and childcare. This wave ended when The Equal Rights Amendment was passed by the Congress in the USA in 1972. This amendment banned discrimination on the basis of sex and sough legal equality for women. One year later The Supreme Court guaranteed a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

• Third Wave Feminism: This wave is the most recent one. It fights against racially discrimination on women. It argues that white women are treated better and have better opportunity than other women. This wave also confronts sexual assaults and “rape culture” and it is a proof that misogyny is still around and there is still work to be done to ensure women have equal rights (History, 2022).

Feminism is a movement that has worked and is still working to reach a stage of equality of rights and opportunities between genders. This has created a better society. However, a response to feminism is masculinism which is an antifeminism movement. Masculinism argues the importance of masculinity of white heterosexual men in North America and European societies. This movements believe there is a feminine dominance in both public and private spaces. Supporters believe men are experiencing an “identity crisis” in today’s society (Melissa Blais & Francis Dupuis-Deri, 2011).

Networked Social Movements are movements that are critical off topics like politics, and mainstream media and these are often organized sporadically and without one specific leader (Castells 2015, in Lindgren 2017). Masculinism is a direct response to feminism.

Even after years of protests and fights for equal rights, according to one article, women remain far from equal both in the Western world and globally. Feminism is still very important and women of today should be as courageous and strong as suffragettes from the past (Croakey Health Media, 2022). Social Media has been a tool that feminist activists have been using to raise awareness about problems and discrimination that still happens today. The rise of social media and technology has made easier for victims to share their experience with others (Gill & Orgad, 2018). The support from others plays a key role in supporting actions like these (Li, Frieze, & Tang, 2010). However social media can sometimes be unsupportive and judging rather than empowering and supportive to people who would like to share their experience to raise awareness about serious problems. For example rape culture and victim blaming are highly present on social media. (Rentschler, 2014). Recent studies focused on feminist social movements on social media disclosed that sharing sexual assault experiences and talk about issues related to the topic, can have a positive effect. Through sharing experiences and ideas on social media as a community, people can gain support from others who support who share same ideas and concerns about the same topic. Plenty of social movements tend to use an hashtag that makes it easier for them to be recognised but also for others who support the movement to share it and reach a wider audience. The use of social media allows movement to reach people all over the world in hours. (Kent, 2013). Users online can engage with a movement by liking commenting or sharing the movement’s content and creating their own movement. Some of the most known hashtags are for example #MeToo and #SlutWalk.

These movements also have reactions in the real life, not just on internet. The #MeToo movement caused, according to The New Yorker, 201 cases in which men lost their high-status jobs due to allegations made public. Therefore, some perceived this as a threat to men as there was concern about false allegations. It also sparked discussions about sexual violence, gender relations, and masculinity. From these debates certain individuals were able to share their views and gain plenty of followers. Some of the most active feminists on social media are Jameela Jamil and Malala Yousafzai (Mashable, 2020). Meanwhile the most famous masculinism activist is Jordan Peterson. These individuals have a lot of influence as they have a large number of people who follows them and therefore could share radical opinions, resulting in all the followers sharing and promoting the same radical idea. These radical ideas could fuel to the gender hate phenomena that is spreading on the internet. A lot of these ideas could not be the solutions for the problem of inequality. A lot of times when these influencers have interviews or share an idea, it gets reposted all over social media, by users who have the same view or completely disagree, allowing others from different movements to interact with the content. These interactions are not always the most positives as some users with very radical ideas tend to argue without respecting other users.

Feminism is still needed globally as women are still discriminated in certain aspects of their life by men or even women themselves. Digital feminism movements need to keep raising awareness about these issues online. We still have a long way until negative statistics such as sexual harassment and rape drop significantly. Gender hate does not help society to reach equality. Masculinism advocates men’s problem, however the way they raise awareness is not the answer to solve those problems. Perhaps raising awareness about issues such has men’s high suicide rate rather than imposing old and sexiest concepts in today’s society would benefit all of us over all.