This is a rambling, and I just wanted to write my thoughts. I make no claim that my beliefs are those of all feminists, nor are they beliefs others should adopt. This is like a journal entry, very personal and an expression of my inner dialogue.
Today I got on reddit, like so many days before, and happened upon a post which dealt with feminism. Specifically, a picture of a man was posted who was holding a whiteboard which proclaimed that he felt unmanly for enjoying something generally considered submissive, and that he needed feminism. Ironically, this was posted in r/funny (presumably by someone who was not the subject of the photo), thus proving the man’s point. As telling as that whole situation is, the real heart of the matter was found in the comments. As so many feminist posts that had come before, this post’s comments gradually devolved into a cacophony of voices debating the very essence of feminism itself. The usual suspects were present, with some proclaiming that feminism created problems where there were none, others claiming that feminists were actually sexists, and yet more voices still trying to convince the internet that feminism is irrelevant and that we should instead adopt humanism and drop the gender focused movements of feminism and men’s rights altogether.
I’d like to focus on the last assertion, that feminism misses the mark and instead we should adopt humanism as the primary means of addressing social problems. To begin, lets define both terms clearly using a source which many people, lay or specialist, are likely to consult: wikipedia. Feminism is defined thus, “Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for women.“ While humanism is defined thus, “Humanism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers critical thinking and evidence (rationalism, empiricism) over established doctrine or faith (fideism).” Although I might have qualms with aspects of either definition, arguing semantics is not my goal, and as such using preestablished, widely available definitions seems more useful to me.
With these definitions laid bare, we can immediately see that both stances are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, feminism follows from humanism vis-a-vis a shared importance for the agency and intrinsic value possessed by each human being. In the case of feminism, it is merely a focus on a specific subset of humanity, specifically women. So already, we see that to be a feminist is to intrinsically be a humanist with a focus. Of course there are potential exceptions to this rule. Some sects of feminism have adopted a more militant stance towards men (specifically, traditional male-ness), and may consciously or unconsciously remove, neglect, or seek to invalidate men’s intrinsic value and agency as humans, but in most cases these are extreme viewpoints and are not shared by many feminists. For example, bell hooks, a prominent feminist theorist, made calls to work with men, and not to invalidate men as people, to bring about gender equality, while simultaneously drawing attention to the destructive nature of male privilege. But I digress.
Following from this, we can see that at the very least, most feminists are not anti-humanist by way of trying to invalidate the value of men as people. But the claim has often been made that feminism is in fact sexist because it focuses mostly on women and tends to neglect or disparage men, which would in fact make it anti-humanist. Thus, people argue that it is in fact more egalitarian to drop the female focus of feminism and adopt a general stance that all humans are valuable and deserving of equality. While in the service of a notably noble goal, this sort of assertion might be misguided. This assertion ignores historical president and assumes that a general humanist stance can equally address the inequality faced by all individuals in a population, regardless of what subcultures or groups that these people belong to as individuals. People of all types face problems that no others face, and to assume that a one size fits all approach to addressing real problems will help erase oppression is a very tenuous position. Feminism retains value over humanism in part because it is more focused and seeks as much as possible to understand women’s experience of oppression or unequal treatment to deal with problems specific to women.
So feminism partially retains value because a focused movement can more adequately address the nuances of oppression leveled against women, which is distinct from other forms of oppression leveled against other distinct populations. However, there are other reasons why feminism, modern feminism in particular, is at the very least not irrelevant. More so than other doctrines, I have found that feminism better understands systemic problems and tends to produce much more nuanced analyses of social structures such that apparently disparate events, mores, and believes can be understood in light of each other. From what I have observed, humanism has not produced such specific analyses, though this may simply be my lack of experience with humanist philosophies. Part of the reason that feminists champion things, such as a better set of gender norms for both men and women, which may also encompass trials and tribulations experienced by men is because feminism has come to the conclusion that gender norms as a structure hurt both men and women, but really oppress women, and that in order to do away with the system altogether, you must also address male gender norms.
The arguments for the validity of this approach are many, but the key here is that often times feminism adopts a stance which is potentially liberating for both men and women, despite men holding more power in general as compared to women. And this very nuance is often what people focus on when people say, “Well if you’re striving for both men and women, why use feminism anymore? Just call it humanism.” Again, this is misguided. The view that we must also deal with harmful male gender norms, just to continue using my pervious example, was produced out of an analysis of harmful female gender norms using feminist theory and an understanding of systemic oppression. The view that we should have a general philosophy which values both men and women equally, and which assumes men and women face equally the problems of oppression, which people seem to be calling humanism, did not provide, and in many cases does not provide, the necessary tools to advance the causes of both men and women in the world in which we live. It’s not intellectually sound to look at the name of a philosophy, assume it’s only about women, and call for its departure from modern discourse, taking with it all of its contributions to the development of very sound theory.
Now more than ever feminism can help us advance the equality of all peoples, because feminism has evolved to be more than just a cause by women only for women. Yes, its current focus is more on women than men (for good reason, as previously stated), but its contributions go deeper than that. It has grown to understand, or at least make some rudimentary sense out of, entire systems of oppression which affect both sexes, different races, different ethnicities, and different cultures. Out of a focused approach has come a better general understanding of the world, much unlike the humanism people have called for which seems to imply that out of a general focus we will produce a better general understanding of the world, which I believe is not tenable.
