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Joss Whedon Perfectly Explains Feminism

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Joss Whedon perfectly explained feminism at Equality Now’s “Make Equality Reality” event. A lot of our readers here at Evil Beet call us feminists like it’s a bad thing. I think we all have different definitions of what it is. I can’t explain it better than what Joss Whedon said. I’ll post the video, but here’s the transcript, via E Online. Yeah, it’s long, look for the TL;DR at the bottom:

“Ist” in it’s meaning is also a problem for me. Because you can’t be born an “ist”. It’s not natural… So feminist includes the idea that believing men and women to be equal, believing all people to be people, is not a natural state. That we don’t emerge assuming that everybody in the human race is a human, that the idea of equality is just an idea that’s imposed on us. That we are indoctrinated with it, that it’s an agenda…

…My problem with feminist is not the word. It’s the question. “Are you now, or have you ever been, a feminist?” The great Katy Perry once said—I’m paraphrasing—”I’m not a feminist but I like it when women are strong.”…Don’t know why she feels the need to say the first part, but listening to the word and thinking about it, I realize I do understand. This question that lies before us is one that should lie behind us. The word is problematic for me because there’s another word that we’re missing…
…When you say racist, you are saying that is a negative thing. That is a line that we have crossed. Anything on the side of that line is shameful, is on the wrong side of history. And that is a line that we have crossed in terms of gender but we don’t have the word for it…

…I start thinking about the fact that we have this word when we’re thinking about race that says we have evolved beyond something and we don’t really have this word for gender. Now you could argue sexism, but I’d say that’s a little specific. People feel removed from sexism. ‘I’m not a sexist, but I’m not a feminist.’ They think there’s this fuzzy middle ground. There’s no fuzzy middle ground. You either believe that women are people or you don’t. It’s that simple…

…Genderist. I would like this word to become the new racist. I would like a word that says there was a shameful past before we realized that all people were created equal. And we are past that. And every evolved human being who is intelligent and educated and compassionate and to say I don’t believe that is unacceptable. And Katy Perry won’t say, “I’m not a feminist but I like strong women,” she’ll say, “I’m not a genderist but sometimes I like to dress up pretty.” And that’ll be fine.
This is how we understand society. The word racism didn’t end racism, it contextualized it in a way that we still haven’t done with this issue. Does that mean that this will end the problem? Yes, definitely, we’ve done it.

TL;DR: feminist is not a bad word, calm down.

I wonder if Katy Perry will respond…

Meanwhile I still think Selena Gomez has no idea what the word “feminist” means.

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4 CommentsLeave a comment

  • You talk about feminism on this site-which I think is wonderful, I fully encourage and support it- but them promote disgusting, mysogonistic sites like Drunken Stepfather, which demean women and talk about them in nearly every article like they’re nothing but objects to be ogled at. If there is a reason for this; please explain!!

  • Mindlessly learned idealistic b-shit. People are not equal. Never were, never will. What you, americans call racism rarely is. Saying that women are not the same as man is not sexism, they are different phisically as well as psychologically. White people are not the same as black. They are white! Saying that black man looks like gorilla is not racist, sometime they do. Exactly like white people sometimes looks like old baboon. So what, we all are just apes. We are similar to our cousins.

    What racism, sexism and other xenophobias are – lack of understanding, that differences are valuable, fear of people that in some way are different from us and agression that comes from this fear. People are not equal from the beginnings of their life – one is born in weathy familly, talented and loved, other is poor and unable to develop his talents and some are born without their brain and die terrible death in their first days.

    You call it equal? Yes, you call it equal beacause the differences are unnerving for you, you don’t feel comfortable noticing them. You don’t believe that people can be equal in the eyes of law, if you are forced to notice that they, in fact, are different. That is racism, sexism, homophobia speaking through you. God!