“I’m not a feminist but….”

I follow ‘Man who has it all’ on facebook.  For those of you who don’t know him, he takes things that have been posted on social media or written by other people, about women, and changes the noun from female to male.  He reverses sexism in writing.

Every time I read his memes I find myself travelling a rollercoaster of emotions.

One of the things that I find mind blowing about what he posts is that the reversal makes the sexism so clear.  I almost feel ashamed saying this as a feminist because I know the comments are sexist, I would call them out for being sexist if I read them in their original form.  

Somehow reading them in this reversed form makes them ridiculous and it is this silliness that relegates the original comments to the ‘worthless’ pile and makes me not believe that anyone could say or think this in all seriousness.  The comments lose their power and the stupidity of the person saying them becomes benign. Why do they become benign? Because of course no-one would think this about a man, it is clearly nonsense.

It’s at this point that I realise these comments are not toothless, they are how people think.  The people who say them will often believe they are not being sexist, that there is nothing wrong with what they have just said, of course it is ok to say this about women and, the most amazing aspect, that theirs is a valid point because it is true for them.  This is when I feel so disappointed and sad.  

Potentially the final nail in the whole scenario is that some women believe that asking to be equal or standing up for themselves is too daunting, they don’t want to feel badly thought of so the sentence begins ‘I’m not a feminist but…’  Women, it seems, have been duped into believing it is not a good thing to always expect to be equal with everyone else and to say something when it is not happening, that it is better to be liked by everyone in the room and not offend anyone.  This is, after all, how many of us were raised.  It becomes offensive to ask to be treated the same as everyone else.  This is often backed up by someone in the room saying ‘it’s not aimed at you’ or ‘don’t take it so seriously’ or ‘you can’t deny there are obvious biological differences between men and women’ as if that has some bearing on the right to equality.   As well as not being equal women who highlight sexism are also ridiculed and undermined. No wonder people often opt for silence.

We have achieved allowing ourselves to be belittled about standing up for everyone to be equal.  If a woman doesn’t want to be associated with asking for equality does that mean she is embarrassed about all of her opinions, does she even want to make her own decisions.  Shouldn’t this be making us angry….all of the time?

Men seem to think they cannot be feminists because they are not women. I am not sure if this is a way out of believing in equal rights or just that they are ‘by standing’ because they, again, don’t want to offend the men who are sexist (I’m not sure they are worried about offending sexist women.  How sexist of me!).  

I was tempted at this point to thank ‘man who has it all’ but that is patronising 'him' and other women. Surely this should be the position that we should expect from every human being and we should be calling out everyone who does not identify as a feminist.  

I would, however, like to thank ‘man who has it all’ for taking my anger down a notch when I read his flipped and ridiculous quotes and laugh, it gives me the opportunity to not go to bed outraged every night.