In the essay, “Feminist Politics Where We Stand” bell hooks defines feminism as: “a movement to end sexism, sexist, exploitation, and oppression.” What I understand from reading this is that feminism focuses on wanting and working towards a change for the better. Oftentimes many believe that when someone is a feminist, they hate men which isn’t the case what so over. On the contrary, being a feminist means that you want to stand up and demand a change. A change where men and women arent put on a different pedestal based upon what they look like. Its main focus is to be able to limit and get rid of how unfairly women tend to be treated. A line that stood out to me while reading this is as follows ” From its earliest inception feminist movement was polarized.
Reformist thinkers chose to emphasize gender equality. Revolutionary thinkers did not want simply to alter the existing system so that women would have more rights. We wanted to transform that system, to bring an end to patriarchy and sexism. Since patriarchal mass media was not interested in the more revolutionary vision, it never
received attention in the mainstream press. The vision of “women’s liberation” which captured and still holds the public imagination was the one representing women as wanting what men had”(pg 4). The reason for which this stood out to me is because it aided me in truly seeing things through a different lens/perspective. I won’t sit here and lie, before, I was under the impression that feminism had to do with simply finding and gaining equality between men and women such as equal pay and opportunities. Yet after not only reading this chapter, but also reading the definition, it made me realize just how much more there is for me to learn. I was under a certain impression towards feminism because I never truly looked deeper and far more beyond the little information I came across. When it comes down to gender, I never truly understood why there are certain ‘rules’ or rather stigmas set. I knew that anatomy and certain features can disguise whether or not one is a male or female. Yet I never liked how people would often say one can’t do certain things simply because of their gender. Why can’t males be emotional and why are females viewed as too emotional? I personally felt that one’s gender is entirely up to how one feels. If someone is born a male but identifies as a female we shouldn’t have to bring them down for that. On the contrary, we should embrace everyone who they identify as. Gender roles tend to get in the way a lot especially when they are always brought up. Even if one may think they are simply joking they need to realize just how hurtful it can be as well. I remember watching a video and in that video, they’d tell boys to do things like a girl (example: running) in which they would run and seem to enjoy the way they think girls run. Yet when they asked a girl to run like a girl, they simply ran fast and the demeanor was completely different. Things such as “you act like a girl” can also be very hurtful. What exactly makes ‘acting like a girl’ bad? Why is there even such a difference between acting like a girl or acting like a guy?