fuckyeahfeminism

katoleary:

So, I’ve posted this link approximately 4000 times, and the people who really need it either aren’t reading it or aren’t getting it, but I thought I’d try once more, just for the hell of it.

Of all the condescending, dismissive, and factually incorrect accusations used … to attempt to silence, shame, or in some other way discourage feminists from addressing sexism in all its manifestations, perhaps none is quite so stupid as the charge that feminists are “looking” for things about which to be offended—as if feminism is a product that will go out of production if there aren’t enough buyers and sales are waning because sexism is, like, so over, dude.

…

Tangentially, the idea that addressing “the little things,” like being told to smile or misogynistic t-shirts, somehow demeans feminism or distracts from “real” or “serious” sexism is utterly, completely, devilishly wrong.

Feminism seeks to address all manner of issues, big and small. That women can (and do) utilize the tenets of feminism in every aspect of their lives does not undermine the history of the feminist movement, but instead does it a great honor. Feminism was never meant to be restricted to suffrage and equal pay, held in reserve like a finite quantity that could run out if it’s used for “the little things.” Feminism is a renewable resource.

The idea that feminism should be kept under glass, broken only in case of a “real” and “serious” emergency, is predicated on the erroneous assumption that “the little things” happen in a void, as do, presumably, the “real” and “serious” things, when, in reality, they are interwoven strands of the same rope. And as soon as one begins to judge the worthiness of feminists’ attention on a sliding scale, even generally-regarded “serious issues” like equal pay are dwarfed by global concerns like sex trafficking or government-sanctioned use of rape as a tool of war. It doesn’t have to be one or the other—feminists can multi-task.

And, in a very real way, ignoring “the little things” in favor of “the big stuff” makes the big stuff that much harder to eradicate, because it is the pervasive, ubiquitous, inescapable little things that create the foundation of a sexist culture on which the big stuff is dependent for its survival. It’s the little things, the constant drumbeat of inequality and objectification, that inure us to increasingly horrible acts and attitudes toward women.

Irrespective of intent, the recommendation to “ignore the little stuff,” so often intertwined with accusations of looking for things about which to get offended, is not just ill-advised, but counter to the ultimate goal of full equality. It’s like a knife in my gut when I see feminists accusing other feminists of “hurting the cause” by focusing on “the little stuff,” because that’s It—that’s the stuff, that’s the fertile soil in which everything else takes root and from whence everything else springs, that’s the way that the fundamental idea that women are not equal to men is conveyed over and over and over again.