Feminism: A Touchy Subject

I am going to start off this post by sharing my own experience with feminism and hopefully everyone reading this will excuse me for my past arrogance. I grew up with two sisters both of whom were very athletic and high achieving, and in a family that really focused on equality between race and gender. Because of this when feminism was introduced to me as a Grade eleven student I really didn’t understand why feminism was such a big deal because I had always grown up being taught that everyone is equal no matter their gender. So when my Grade eleven teacher starting talking about feminism and how male dominated are society was and still is I am ashamed to say that I basically tuned out of the whole lesson. One of the reasons I did this was because of the negative connotations the word feminism had to me because of previous knowledge I picked up from various sources about feminists. I like many other many was given the image that feminists were all “man bashers”. It was easier for me just not to listen because the way I was raised really sheltered me from the rest of the world in a way because I was unable to realize that outside of my home that the society that I was living in was very male dominated. It wasn’t until University when one of my Professor’s was talking about feminism that I actually listened to the points she was saying and began to realize how male dominated are society still is. Now I wasn’t naïve enough to say I had never realized that there was feminism at all in our society but I just thought that the feminism women experienced wasn’t that big of a deal at all. The Professor that finally got through to me explained feminism in a different way than I have ever heard it before and the main difference was there wasn’t the accusation that we as males usually feel when the topic of feminism is brought up. Instead of instantly accusing males she focused more on the differences of men and women and how women were portrayed in the novels we were reading. This brought a whole new perspective to my ideas of feminism and I began to realize for the first time how male dominant are society really was. My point behind this whole story is that I believe that as Teachers we have to watch how we present feminism to our students. Many of these male students associate the word feminism as a direct accusation against them because they are male because of the negative connotations that society has placed on the word feminism. I believe when you accuse anyone of something that they will automatically shut down and instead of listening begin to look ways to argue their point. Appleman’s textbook gives us an example of a way we can use to help protect against males taking offense to the word feminism instead calling it gender theory. We will also have to careful in the way we present the material that is very feministic because we have to watch we don’t seem like we are accusing are students but instead are just trying to get them to realize gender differences and how they are created. By helping are students become more knowledgeable about ideas such as gender roles, and how gender is created we will hopefully help students become more aware of their gender place in the world along with other peoples gender place in the world.