Feminism Discussion

Today in class, we had a discussion about feminism and what the true definition of the term really is.  As I learned today, feminism is more than just for women, it's equal rights based of gender for everyone, including men.  Many people today assume that feminism supports women power, meaning that feminism is for women to be more powerful than men. That is false, feminism supports equal rights for men and women. Feminists don't want women to be more powerful than men, they just want equal for all. Later, we went more in depth into feminism and what a feminist looks like and what it means to be a feminist.  Feminism for women can include skirts, make-up and other things that would be classified as girly.  People that think that women shouldn't wear those things are going to an extreme point.  Their argument behind it, is that they think it takes power away from men, as if men force women to dress that way.  I believe that to be false, style of clothing is a personal matter, the other gender doesn't force the opposite to dress a certain way.  There are dress codes for style and what is currently popular and dressing that way is completely up to the person themselves.  Women and men should both be able to wear what they like without a second thought.  I believe it shouldn't be taken as a gender issue either, people are free to dress as they please.  Our class also failed to list stereotypes because our class said there are always people who don't fit the stereotype.  We mentioned Justin Bieber as a musician who is for girls.  Stereotypically girls listen to him, but that doesn't limit who can like him.  Of course there are some men who like his music, we failed to identify that as a stereotype because we said that there are men who do like his music.  We also talked about hair length and how men generally have short hair and women often have long hair.  I don't believe that is true, there are lots of men who have longer hair and lots of women who have short hair.  Sure, more men have short hair and more women have long hair.  Currently that is changing, more and more women are getting shorter cuts and vise versa for men.  I think our class had a great discussion about feminism and I believe that creating one definition for feminism is impossible.  I think the term should be defined by each person and can mean something else to every person.