Feminism or Masochism

It has come to my attention that some equality movements want to curb freedom of speech.  An example of this is the recent attempt to ban page 3 because it was inappropriate and degrading to women.  The word I noticed most was ‘ban’ which suggested controlling of what people can publish or even see.  What I think I’m seeing more and more often is signs of attempted repression by use of the moral          

high ground and these movement titles (such 

as ‘feminism’).  This article focuses on feminism as it is something that I hear about on a daily basis and seems to be the most hypocritical and confused of any modern movement.

Source: Chanel S/S 15

Also,  feminist politics may not enter into the mind explicitly during the throes of fantasy or love-making; but the fact that women may be increasingly interested in reading about, and perhaps partaking in, sex that deals openly with power relationships does not represent a retreat from equality. In fact, it may count as evidence that we’ve edged closer to it than we thought.  

Feminism started, as most know, with an outcry for equality.  This meant votes for women and the ability to make choices like who to marry and what to wear.  Thankfully women won most of what they wanted.  Men no longer oppress women as normality and although equality has not been fully reached and there are still some men who oppress women illegally, social norm is that women are free, voting and working citizens.  Ideally feminism should now focus on other oppressed women both worldwide and victims to spousal abuse and sexual abuse and I’m sure right minded feminists do this.

However, the feminist movement recently seems to have started focussing on how society has adapted to this in bad ways by sexualising and objectifying women’s bodies.  They both suggest that women who sleep around and wear inappropriately exposing clothes are sluts, and that men who look at, admire or appreciate these women or images of nude women, are potential rapists and by the mere act of looking are ‘raping women with their eyes’.  To me these views go back to a masochist society in which women were required to cover up all their skin in order to prevent men gawking while men were expected to only court a woman by strictest guidelines in the presence of the male family member that basically owns her.  A modern example may be Muslim societies that suggest that if a woman shows her hair she deserves to be raped and that men can’t help themselves!

It is true that there are men out there who abuse women but why is it that a man can no longer admit to being attracted to a woman without it being called objectification.  Try natural human thoughts and an instinct to seek out a suitable mate.  If we adhered to the rules of these modern feminists, the human race would die out; if men weren’t allowed to be attracted to women publicly or, God forbid, hit on a woman in case she felt it to be too forward or her friend felt that she wasn’t pretty enough, then no one would ever get married or have children (unless of course we went back to arranged marriages!).  Equally if women had to cover up any of their female beauty whether it is their body, hair or face then the same result could be expected.

Source

• The official student newspaper of UPSU (2014) Feminism or Masochism

[Retrieved from: http://theknowledgeplymouth.co.uk/feminism-or-masochism/]

• Lowder, B. (2012) Is submissive sex anti-feminism.

[Retrieved from: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/04/17/masochism_and_feminism_is_submissive_sex_bad_for_equality_.html]