Feminism is for females. It is for the sex that has face oppression since the dawn of humankind.
Fetuses that have been aborted and infants that have been killed for being female. - [X] (The practice has been the cause of death for millions.)
Women who have acid thrown in their faces. - [X] (60 percent of acid attacks are on women, according to the London-based charity Acid Survivors Trust International, and acid assaults are grossly under-estimated.)
Girls who have their breasts pounded to make them disappear or stop developing. - [X] (It is typically carried out by the girl’s mother who will say she is trying to protect the girl from sexual harassment and rape)
Women who are burned to death by their new husbands when the woman’s family refuses to give him more money. [X] (The wife is typically doused with kerosene, gasoline, or other flammable liquid, and set alight, leading to death by fire)
Women who are beaten by their boyfriends and husbands and told not to retaliate, even minorly, because it will put them in danger of more serious abuse. [X] ( Globally, a wife or female partner is more commonly the victim of domestic violence.)
Women who are raped by their husbands, which has only been declared illegal in many countries in the last 100 years.[X] (In many countries, marital rape either remains outside the law, or is illegal but widely tolerated, with the laws against it being rarely enforced.)
Women who have been victims of “honor killings.” That’s when a family kills a woman for bringing dishonor to her family, usually by having sex outside of marriage, being gay, getting raped or just being in a relationship the family didn’t like.. [X] ( The murders are sometimes performed in public to warn the other women within the community of possible consequences of engaging in what is seen as illicit behavior.)
Little girls who have their genitals mutilated which leads to major health issues and has only gotten attention globally in the last hundred years or so. [X] (Health effects depend on the procedure, but can include recurrent infections, chronic pain, cysts, an inability to get pregnant, complications during childbirth and fatal bleeding. There are no known health benefits.)
Young girls who had their feet bound until it results in a lifelong disability. This was only stopped in the 1930s. [X] (The process was started before the arch of the foot had a chance to develop fully, usually between the ages of 4 and 9. )
Women who are forced to have abortions. [X] (When the perpetrator causes abortion by force, threat or coercion, or by taking advantage of woman’s incapability to give her consent.)
Women who are forced to get married . [X] (Early and forced marriages can contribute to putting people, specifically girls, into a cycle of poverty and powerlessness. Most are likely to experience mistreatment such as violence, abuse and forced sexual relations. This means that women who marry younger in age are more likely to be dominated by their husbands. They also experience poor sexual and reproductive health. Young married girls are more likely to contract HIV and their health could be in jeopardy.)
Women who are forced to get pregnant. [X] ( practice of forcing a woman to become pregnant, often as part of a forced marriage, or as part of a programme of breeding slaves.)
Women and little girls who are forced into sexual slavery. [X] (Forms of sexual slavery can, for example, be practices such as the detention of women in “rape camps” or “comfort stations”, forced temporary “marriages” to soldiers and other practices involving the treatment of women as chattel.)
Women who have been the victim of mass rape during war. [X] (Although war rape has been a recurrent feature in conflicts throughout history, it has usually been looked upon as a by-product of conflict, and not an integral part of military policy.)
Lesbians who are raped to “correct” their sexuality. [X] (Corrective rape and other accompanying acts of violence can result in physical and psychological trauma, mutilation, HIV infection, unwanted pregnancy, and may contribute to suicide.)
This is female history. This is female oppression. It doesn’t get better.
A: 20% of the Senate is female. 18% of the House is female. There has never been a female President, nor a female VP. Women make up 5% of the Fortune 500, and 5.3% of the Fortune 1000.
85% of domestic violence victims are women, and 96% of reported pedophiles are men. 18% of women will be the victim of rape or a rape attempt (as opposed to 3% of men). Texas just made creep-shots legal, twenty-two states enacted 70 abortion restrictions during 2013. Politicians are working to give rapists legal assistance.
NFL players are allowed back in the field after numerous domestic violence and rape accusations. Lesbians are consistently fetishized in America as being nothing more than a turn-on for men, with the lesbian porn industry being a major part of the porn industry (which routinely glamorizes and fetishized violence against women), which makes eleven billion dollars in profits each year, while the same people who contribute to that will oppose gay marriage.
Commercialized sex trade (strip clubs, pornography, prostitution etc) also perpetuates the problem of human trafficking and it’s a major global problem. A conservative estimate of the crime puts the number of victims at any one time at 2.5 million. Victims of trafficking can be any age, and either sex. However, a disproportionate number of women are involved in human trafficking as victims. The average age of a sex traffic victim is 12 years old.
Men build, own, manage and attend thousands of strip clubs, and spend billions on porn; and yet; present them with the idea of dating a stripper or a porn star and it becomes very controversial. Apparently, jacking off to a woman’s body is cool, but finding the same women respectable to date is a joke.
We’re under-represented in movies, music, and television. In mainstream media, men are given much more air-time than women. White men are given far more time than anyone else.
Between 2007-2012, only 30% of speaking characters in movies were female. The average ratio of male actors to female actors in a film was 2.25 to one.
In music, gender inequality is still a rampant problem. Creative & Cultural Skills reports that the gender divide across music industry related jobs is 67.8% male to 32.2% female.
In official debates, studies have shown that people only feel the floor is being equally shared when women speak much less than men, any more and people become uncomfortable.
Studies have also shown that little girls are interrupted more often than little boys, teaching them what they say is less valuable, and they are usually interrupted by their fathers. When men have complicated relationships with their fathers; it’s deep and meaningful. When woman have the same issues, problems caused by the lack of male presence in her life, “bitch got daddy issues.”
Women are sent dick pics and told it’s flirting. They’re cat-called in the street and told it’s a compliment. Women are made fun of for liking things like shoes and pumpkin spice lattes; a stereotype that all women enjoy the same thing; and that whatever it is is a joke because so many women enjoy it.
I’m not even including the commodification of women’s bodies in advertising, or the debate of breastfeeding in public while breasts are commonly used in the media for male attention. Or how women are treated in traditionally “geeky” communities as posers, or the pay gap (which is a fucking real thing), or ridiculous continuous sexual harassment over the internet, or the issue of slut-shaming and victim blaming or rape jokes, or domestic violence jokes.
