Tuesday, June 12, 2012

I'm A Feminist Because...


transcript below the fold

So I was reading comments on one of my videos on my NicolaFoti channel, which is a beauty channel. Some of you may be saying, "Why do you have a beauty channel; you're a boy," and that's the exact point of this video.


Why do boys call other boys "girls" when maybe they're not as strong or when they do something "feminine?" Why is that even an insult? Does being a girl make someone less of a person? Are girls just inferior jokes? And it's not just boys--girls use it too. Stop! Stop perpetuating your own discrimination!


If you said no, why not? Because kids at school might make fun of them? Because they're not adhering to societal gender roles? Maybe as parents, we should start educating our children otherwise.

It's been almost a century since, at least in the United States, the women's suffrage movement succeeded in passing the 19th amendment so that they could vote. Something I learned while looking up the exact date is that Mississippi didn't ratify the 19th amendment until 1984. That's the year I was born! That's crazy. Mississippi is widely considered the most religious state, so it seems that they were just following orders. In the first book of Timothy in the Bible it says: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent." Of course not everybody follows that Bible verse, but it's in there, and the elected officials in Mississippi at the time obviously did, so that's all it took to oppress an entire group of people.

On the flip side, I saw Hal Sparks talking about you need the "balls" to do something, but in reality, testicles are the weakest part of a man. And do you really need them to be able to do something? *besides produce sperm Since only men have "balls" it suggests girls could never be good enough to do something that men do.


This just proves to me that women are still not considered equals, as much as our society may have progressed, and as much as we, as a global culture, think we may have. And it also appears that women's struggle is pretty close to the gay struggle. Aside from those who use religion to oppress gay people, there are others who just think gay men are feminine, which apparently is a negative quality, and that gay people don't exactly fit into gender role norms and so they see them as less than men. What is "less than man?" Is man the top of totem pole? I mean just because you're a straight, white man that makes you better than a gay, black female? This I don't understand. And even within the gay community, there are masculine gays who think they're better than more effeminate gays just because they're closer to society's ideal. I've known gay men who have acted feminine since they were little. Do you think they were jumping on a trampoline one day and actively thought, "Hey, you know I'm gonna start moving more fluidly like girls do, and maybe I'll change my voice so it's higher somehow." No! That's just how they are. And what's wrong with that? And what's wrong with "tomboys" and girls that tend to like boy things. I'm pretty sure you know my answer. It's nothing. Nothing's wrong with it.

And guess what, your genitalia doesn't necessarily determine your gender. Surprise, here are transgendered people in the world who may have been born with a penis but psychologically and in every other way possible they're female. And likewise, there are people who were born with a vagina who have an internal sense of being male. This isn't weird--it's nature. And you have no right to discriminate against these people. What, just because you have a penis and you feel like you should have a penis so, you know, you're better? And yeah, I said penis and vagina. They're not bad words. They're body parts.

I'm a feminist because I'm sick of the word "girl" being an insult. I'm tired of pink not being for boys and I'm tired of gender roles that restrict a child's ability to grow into who they are.

So why don't we change it? Why don't we stop feeding into archaic ways of thinking, and open our minds. Whoever said a thought couldn't change the world is sorely mistaken.