Feminism and the Reinforced Binary

Feminism as a word from the Latin fēminīnus meaning woman. I think that this is one of the simple reasons that people choose not to identify using feminism; Feminism, despite claiming the definition of "activists for gender equality," does in its very root etymology, neglect men, and people of non-binary gender. Even the feminist symbol does not include the symbol for men or people of non-binary gender.

This is the feminist symbol

And this is a symbol the represents all genders

Additionally, many people who identify as feminist present society is such a way that dichotomizes gender - this often takes the form of "men do this and that to women" and sometimes includes "women do this and that to men." Quite apart from its truth value, we can see that it neglects to discuss the issues of non-binary genders. Many feminists, I am sure, recognize that non-binary gender people exist, but I seldom see any who constantly include those individuals in part of their world view. Many feminists use exclusively 'she' in their writings. which certainly works for enacting revenge for the years of male-specific language, but does little to solve gender equality problems when it outright neglects non-binary people.

Intersectionality

In response to Skyla - full post here

Personally, I support intersectionality as a conceptual theory. That said, I don't think it is a good idea to go labeling it as a feminist theory; it seems counter-effective. The idea of intersectionality, as far as my understanding goes, is that all social rights issues share features, and that equality is best achieved through recognizing that, refusing to play in the oppression olympics, and fighting together. So, it seems strange to try to elevate feminism using intersectionality.

Personally, as someone who recognizes the intersection between social issues, I try to use the broadest, most inclusive term that I can. I generally refer to myself as a humanist (and transhumanist, but that's another topic) foregoing the less specific labels like feminist, masculist, (insert thing here) activist. I think that the best way to achieve equality is to give up words like 'feminism,' and focus on the largest group that we can. I am not sure if holding on to these terms are actually doing any good anymore, I imagine that soon, if they haven't already, they will start to harm equal rights movements.

We see this sort of problem all of the time. We try to become equal by vilifying those who are not part of a group, or praising those who are part of the group. I mentioned in one of my last posts that this doesn't work. Instead of "driving the difference spike" by promoting Female History Month, Black History Month, Black Female History Month, etc., we need to use history and include people from all these groups.