What is feminism?
“British suffragist and journalist Rebecca West famously said, “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” In other words, feminism is a commitment to achieving the equality of the sexes. This radical notion is not exclusive to women: men, while benefiting from being the dominant sex, also have a stake in overcoming the restrictive roles that deprive them of full humanity.”
taken from: http://www.redletterpress.org/feminism101.html
Yesterday a friend of mine talked about someone saying that another one looked ‘so gay’ and by that meaning that the other person looked alright, happy and, more than that, beautiful. The discussion that followed had to do – again – with labels and how sometimes labels are not just a sign of prejudice (which sometimes they are not) but that they are in their core of meaning the real core of a prejudice against something.
Maybe we just have to go back and redefine everything, redefine concepts, genders, attitudes, social hierarchy, define them in a way that they stop being “radical notions” about something because some of those radicalisms are pretty much outdated already. Maybe not everywhere, but if the effort is made towards the changing of meaning of some real and basic concepts – basic as Man and Woman for instance – and if we go even further on erasing some of those concepts from the characteristic of “radical” (that are always responsable by bringing an idea of difference between equally classifiable individuals) in Western Society would be a an improvement in terms of getting over with a range of prejudices that set a trend of behaviour towards what should not be – still – a problem in terms of classification, that goes wider than just a biological classification system in which we are based.
Although NI UNA MÁS focuses on the subject of feminicide, it talks about human existence, raising awareness to a problem, but more than a problem that involves women it’s a problem that has to do with a difference taught to us since we are born. A difference that makes us believe that rights are not the same for everyone, that we measure our importante and pertinence based on strength and power over the others, that we are made of an equation that equals the human to how much power can we exercise outside of ourselves, not even considering that we are – by external evaluation of others ‘value’ – judging what we are in that moment.
by Daniel Pinheiro (www.momentsmemoires.blogspot.com)