Why Boys Should Be Taught to Be Feminists

I’m a strong man because I was raised by a strong woman. The most important thing my mother taught me was that my sister and I were equal. My sister built robots while I painted, she played football while I was a gymnast – we participated in fields that ‘weren’t for our gender’ and that was okay. We didn’t revolutionise the conceptions of gender-specific activities but we refused to abide by society’s patriarchal norms. In society, men hold the power while women are excluded. Seven out of ten women experience violence (UN Women). Women are “30 percent less likely to be called for a job interview than men” and tampons are taxed as luxury goods while Viagra is taxed as a necessity (Universitat Pompeu Fabra). Feminism aims to restructure these norms by cultivating “political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” (Merriam-Webster). It doesn’t bring down men to boost women, it brings both men and women to the same position of opportunity. Feminism is not an extremist movement. It’s an equality movement. Being a bystander enables discrimination. The Chekroun-Brauer Bystander Principle states that the more people who passively observe abuse, the less likely one is to intervene. Being complacent is equal to being complicit: if you passively observe misogyny and do not speak out against it, you are supporting the dissemination of patriarchal and misogynistic social norms. However, when just one man opposes this system, it catalyses a chain reaction, encouraging suppressed men and women to do the same. We have long focussed on systemic oppression and violence against women but not the root of the problem: the men committing these acts of violence. Society needs to teach men to not be perpetrators of discrimination, not teach women how to avoid victimhood. We need to stop misogynists themselves by ensuring boys don't grow up to be one or "women will never be free” (Valenti). We have to teach the next generation of men to constructively criticise the patriarchy and seek to restructure society because these boys who are taught to respect women and oppose misogyny are the ones who can catalyse the reaction. We should teach children to be angry with society because gender is a “grave injustice... We do a great disservice to boys on how we raise them”; we stifle their humanity (Adichie). By defining masculinity so narrowly, we make it into a tight cage, teaching boys to fear weakness, vulnerability and their true selves. We teach them to fear ‘emasculation’ and the rising power of women but we should teach them to respect and value all: this is the essence of feminism. This is why I call myself a feminist. This is why you should too. Sources: Valenti, Jessica. "Opinion | What Feminists Can Do for Boys." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia, 25 July 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/opinion/feminists-misogyny-patriarchy.html. Adichie, Chimamanda. "We Should All Be Feminists." TED, December. 2012, https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_we_should_all_be_feminists. Chekroun, Peggy, and Markus Brauer. "The Bystander Effect and Social Control Behavior: the Effect of the Presence of Others on People's Reactions to Norm Violations." Wiley Online Library, 29 July 2002, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.126. "Facts and Figures: Ending Violence Against Women." UN Women, Nov. 2019, www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures. "Definition of FEMINISM." Dictionary by Merriam-Webster: America's Most-trusted Online Dictionary, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feminism. "Women Are 30 Percent Less Likely to Be Considered for a Hiring Process Than Men." Phys.org - News and Articles on Science and Technology, 26 Mar. 2019, phys.org/news/2019-03-women-percent-hiring-men.html.