Cue the Hate Mail! I’m Gonna Rustle Some Feminist Jimmies!

         Recently people, particularly women, have been ticking me off to the umpteenth degree.  Like fury∞. And honestly, surfing on the ultra liberal, social media website called Tumblr to find Texas Senator Wendy Davis treated like a martyr for feminism after she promoted access to abortions, even in especially unsafe conditions, has finally burst my patience gauge. (If you haven’t heard about Senate Bill 5 and that whole fiasco in Texas, google it. Educate yourself. Knowledge is power.) My anger is hardly Christlike, and I’ll be the first to admit it, but when you’re angry, you’re angry. There’s not much you can do about it, and honestly, it’s a healthy emotion and I’m only human.

            But more than anything, this kind of behavior saddens and disappoints me. When the anger subsides, what I really feel is sadness. This societal idea of what it means to be a woman and what it means to stand up for our rights is completely skewed. If a woman loses anything, especially politically, or women lose some of their “rights” that my female counterparts believe they deserve, feminists have their heads spin so fast they turn into PMSing, typing Tasmanian devils with major attitude problems. Even people who aren’t even normally politically active go absolutely nuts on social media websites as if they are experts. The “patriarchy” is blamed. They scream “misogyny” and talk about this horrible societal oppression that we as women supposedly experience in the United States. And GOD FORBID you disagree with them. They’re females talking about feminism, therefore they are infallible. If you are a woman who disagrees, you automatically hate yourself and have been brainwashed by the “patriarchy.” Man hating is rampant and an obligation for any self-respecting woman who has had her “rights” interfered with. And God bless the man that even blinks in the direction of an angry feminist, let alone tries to argue with them.

This, ladies and gentlemen, has become behavior standard of modern feminism, and it’s pretty terrifying. What used to be a radical few has steadily become more and more to the point where I am not confident saying that those who behave like this are outliers in the feminist movement.

Let me tell you right now, that is not true feminism, and people who demonstrate that lunacy ought to be ashamed. Our feminist leaders of the previous generations who fought for things like our right to property and our right to vote would be absolutely ashamed, and I refuse to think otherwise. I don’t think screaming, half naked, red-faced women with badly painted signs is what they imagined when they envisioned the future of their movement.

To be a modern feminist, it is almost expected that you take it to the extreme. Birth control and abortion are considered necessary women’s rights. Stay-at-home mothers are often looked down upon as an oppressed woman held from her true potential by the power of the male. And God help you if you’re devoutly religious, especially Catholic.

Many modern feminists believe that the Catholic Church is anti-woman by nature. After all, how can you be a feminist and not support birth control and abortion, two things that give us control over our reproductive systems? Without them, we’re just breeding factories for our husbands and our religion! How can a woman stay at home, caring her husband and children, and have any self-respect and worth? She’s not working! She has to want something outside of the home!

Modern feminism is flawed. Very flawed. And it may be up to some of the people feminists dislike the most, the religious, to help mend this broken mentality. Obviously, modern feminism isn't working. Women are awful to each other and self-esteem is at an all time low with eating disorders at an all time high. If we're supposed to be "empowering" ourselves, we're failing miserably.

Now, it's our turn to speak.

I’m going to tell you right now, believing in abortion and birth control doesn’t make you a feminist. Screaming at men and blaming any undesirable thing on “misogyny” and “the patriarchy” does not make you a feminist. Man bashing does not make you a feminist.

What makes you a feminist is valuing yourself, if you’re a woman, and the women around you as human beings with a natural and divine role that is equal to men’s, but not the same.

You heard me. I can hear the angry drums of the radical feminists in the back of my head. Though we are equal, we are not the same, and this idea is what modern feminism just steamrolls over. Modern feminism believes in exact sameness, when men and women are not made the same. Equality is not the same as sameness! Even the dictionary says so:

e·qual·i·ty

  [ih-kwol-i-tee] 

noun, plural e·qual·i·ties.

1.

the state or quality of being equal;correspondence in quantity, degree, value,rank, or ability.

same·ness

  [seym-nis] 

noun

1.

the state or quality of being the same; identity;uniformity.

See the difference? Equality involves value while sameness involves specific characteristics. Something can be equal and different, and this point I will repeatedly stress throughout this series.

Thus we come to the purpose of my feminism series: proving that you CAN be Catholic and a feminist, and there’s even more than one type! I have three categories of feminists, two positive and one negative, which are soon to be revealed. Just bear with me and hopefully your mind shall be blown, or at least a bit stimulated.

And I promise, I’ll bring in the Faith.

God bless,

Elizabeth