#Bringbackourgirls

Let’s get something straight: I am very ambivalent about the term “feminism.” I once went to hear Katherine Hakim speak and almost exploded from all the cliche, anti-male, culturally ignorant opinions extolled that evening. And, yet, this is the state of modern day feminism for many Western women. It seems to me that being a “feminist” is to be an equal, opposite reaction to the “privileges” it is assumed our male counterparts have enjoyed for centuries. There seems to be a presumption that males have been sexually uninhibited and unfettered by the chains of children and the glass ceiling and PMS and culturally engrained notions of beauty since the beginning of time- so now it’s “our” turn to behave similarly. Personally, I think “feminism” when used in this manner is as simplistic and offensive as the notion that all women can be categorized as one of the four Sex and the City character archetypes.

That being said, at least I have the freedom, the luxury, of ranting against said ideas of modern feminism. Most women on our planet do not. Sometimes, that’s hard to remember, and, for me anyway, it is mind boggling to conceptualize. In many parts of the world, women are little more than vessels for reproduction. Read: instruments for bringing more men into the world. It almost seems as if these women live worlds rather than miles (though many) away; some of the things they have to worry, think and care about are as distant to me as my position is to those supposedly unfettered, uninhibited privileged males.

Maybe it is because we shallowly assume there’s a lack of common ground. Maybe it is because of presumptions of privilege. For whatever the reason, it has taken the “Western” world, numbed as we are to what most women on the planet have to endure every single day, too long to hear this woman, and others like her. It makes me wonder if it is time to rethink our ideas of feminism, and what it is to be women. Even if it does seem like we’re worlds apart, there’s a lot more that we have in common when we strip away all the assumptions and dissonant discourse. Do you agree?