Old School Feminism

 

Personally as a male, any time that I talk about feminism I think I sound like the cover of this magazine right here. It's a touchy subject to most people and a lot of people don't like talking about it but, being a guy, I think it can be tricky especially since most people believe that men can't be feminists. Yet, here I am, ready to talk about it because, that's right everyone, feminism is about men too (just like almost everything else unfortunately).

Today in class we read The Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson and The Declaration of Sentiments by Elizabeth Cady Stanton from the Seneca Falls Convention. Stylistically the feminist one was much easier to read. The original Declaration had a lot of pretentious diction and flowery writing. Although it was specific by pointing out a list of grievances, it sounded like it was trying too hard to be formal, almost as if they knew that they weren't going to be taken seriously. Wow. Wouldn't that be awful.

Speaking of that, the whole purpose of the Seneca Falls Convention was so that women would finally start being taken seriously. More on the background of the convention can be found here. This was the main event that sparked the women's rights movement, This was the birth of feminism in the United States. Women and men (Men were allowed to attend only the second day of the convention) finally were not going to sit around and take this injustice in silence. They read their list of grievances because no one was taking them seriously. It will take years, and years, until this movement will finally catch fire and yet still, there is so much more farther that we have to go. Not everyone today takes feminism seriously.

Both of these works have a single purpose. To list their injustices that they feel that current conditions have placed upon them. The original document was written by a group of old white men, who could care less about other peoples' (women, African Americans, the poor, pretty much everyone else who wasn't them, etc.) opinions. However, the feminist Bible that was written by Stanton serves as the basis of the feminist movement that still is in effect today. She has expanded upon the original ideals of Jefferson and has made them right, or I should say, "more inclusive". Men and women are entitled to certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and if they are not guaranteed these rights they can and should do something about it. So feminists, keep doing something about it, because it is going to all of us, even men, to make things better for everyone.