On Oct. 1, 2018, Andrew Klavan released a Youtube video titled “Who Needs Feminism?” In this video, he discusses how he believes that modern feminism has bullied society into believing that women and men are more or less the same.
At the start of his video he claims that “Feminism is a mean-spirited, small-minded and oppressive philosophy that can poison relationships between the sexes.”
This seems to be a bit closed-minded. Many women who have adopted the philosophy have experienced unfairness due to their gender. Whether that unfairness is not getting hired at a job or receiving smaller pay, they have a reason to fight for equality and to say that fighting for equality is “mean-spirited” doesn’t make any sense. These women are fighting back because of some mean-spirited individuals who have delivered pain in the past and present.
Later on in his video he mentions that Feminism has developed the historical mythology that men have oppressed women, and now must be suppressed in their turn to even things out.
With this line, Klavan makes it seem like women are the bad ones in this situation but this doesn’t apply to every factor of feminism. For example, when it comes to women demanding the same pay as men, feminists don’t fight to lower men’s pay,they fight to raise their own wages.
Our modern generation is familiar with the fight of equal pay, but many have never heard of women fighting for a decrease in a mans pay. Kimi Nakamura, a sophomore at Azusa Pacific University says, “I’ve never heard of women fighting for the lowering of men’s [salaries], I have always heard the fight for equal pay.”
You could argue that the fight for equal pay would either raise women’s pay, lower men’s pay or somewhere in between, but that isn’t the main goal of this particular feminist ideology. The aim is to receive equal pay. Feminists do not go into the fight demanding that men receive a smaller pay, in reality, they fight for their own wages to be increased.
Men have always had the natural advantage of having a little more spending money when it comes to work, but women aren’t fighting to take that away, they’re fighting against this natural advantage and are attempting to make it a normal aspect between men and women.
Klavan also mentions that “New technologies and effective birth control allow individual women to tailor gender roles to their personal liking or abandon them all together. None of this is a reason to attack men. In fact, these new opportunities are largely the result of men’s inventions and their ideas.”
If you were trying to make a video on why feminism is unnecessary and uncalled for and then make the statement that women have men to thank for allowing them to succeed isn’t the right move. It’s like a really bad apology “I’m sorry I did this to you but because of me, you have something so much better, no need to thank me.”
One thing this video does do well is pointing out the difference between the thoughts of feminism and classical liberalism. Though some of these feminists may theoretically fall into the classical liberalism category, which states that we are all equally loved by God with the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, many modern-day feminists see themselves in the actual feminist’s category.
Though Modern-day definitions of feminism include some aspects of classical liberalism, women still consider themselves feminists and if that motivates them to make a change in our society then how is that a bad, toxic or hateful thing or action to do?