Feminism today  is vastly different from that of past decades.

The basic goal of feminism is establishing equal rights for women. Women have been, and still are to some extent, seen as inferior to men. Feminists want to bridge this gap between male and female, making the same things apply to everyone.

Women’s rights rallies and organizations have been going on for years, however the terms “feminist” and “feminism” did not gain their popularity until the 1970’s. Things of this nature have caught the public and government eye, as was the intent, and women have gotten things like the equal right to vote and the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.

But many women claim that they are still victims or second to men in the modern world. They want to make more changes to the way women are viewed and the rights they do or do not have. While this should be a wonderful thing, equality shouldn’t even be a question. But has the movement taken its goals too far?

So many women are more eager to bash men than to fight fairly. They play the victim card rather loudly and are losing sight of the whole purpose of feminism in the first place. Christina Sommers, an author and modern feminist, stated in a PBS interview that there are two kinds of feminists: equity feminists, and gender feminists. Equity feminists want fair treatment for not only women, but everyone alike, while gender feminists feel as if they are trapped inside of a “man’s world” and obliged to serve male culture. This, she says, is silly because women in modern society have more rights and opportunities than ever before.

(Read more of Sommers at www.pbs.org/thinktank/trascrpt132.html)

Equity feminism has historically been the most popular form of the gender rights movement. Those who fought for the right to be equal to men, not superior. Now, most women who consider themselves to be feminists, it would seem, are leaning more towards, if not fully immersed, in the role of the gender feminist.

An Oxford journalist debate on abortion was cancelled because the leader of an active women’s rights group on campus told them to call it off.  The two doing the debating were men and therefore, were figured by the aforementioned to not have any knowledge of what it would be like to have an abortion and therefore, have no right to debate over it.

Women have gone so far as to fight for the right to be topless in public. The “free the nipple” movement started in 2012 with  the release of a movie done by Lina Esco. She led this “movement”, if we can call it that. Thousands of women paraded down the streets of New York City topless in August, 2014.  They wanted to call attention to gender inequality and how we need to make a change. This may seem all well and good, however, it has been legal for a female to be topless in public in New York since 1992, so the purpose of the rally would seem to be more of a cry for attention than anything.

The point of feminism was initially to establish gender equality and give women the rights they fully deserved. Many women have fought and won different battles of the sexes on issues ranging all over the place. But as time has passed and the world has progressed, feminists and women in general have become more aggressive in the way they go about these things. Women need to focus on the higher purposes of feminism, and rather than trying to be better than men, be on the same level as them. Women deserve just as much respect as men, that is not a question. It is simply how one approaches a situation and whether or not what they focus on is really what is important. So if it is the right to vote or equal pay for equal work, great, but the movement should choose more wisely in identifying what causes are truly worth the fight.

It is a wonderful thing to be a woman and women have accomplished so many things over time, that we can all be proud of. Feminism essentially is a great thing as well, it is how we use it to everyone’s benefit, and in the right ways, the ways that the original feminists thought it up to be, that is what is most important.