How to Engage Men in the Fight for Women’s Rights

Running head: HOW TO ENGAGE MEN IN THE FIGHT FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS

How to Engage Men in the Fight for Women’s Rights

Jiachen Song (Jesse)

Concordia College

HOW TO ENGAGE MEN IN THE FIGHT FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS

Abstract

  Fighting for women's rights are essentially fighting for equal rights. It based on respect the gender difference between men and women to seek elimination of women discrimination and promote equal rights. However, some radical feminists advocate the theory of male original sin, they ask for every rights and unwilling to undertake any obligation had already stigmatized feminism so that people equate support women’s rights with anti-men. This essay aims to talk about what is the real feminism, what they are looking for to make men know why they should support feminism, and what is the most effective way to engage men in the fight for women’s rights.

Keywords: women’s rights, feminism, equal rights, pseudo-feminists 

HOW TO ENGAGE MEN IN THE FIGHT FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS

How to Engage Men in the Fight for Women’s Rights

Women’s rights are also called feminism. Its history should be traced back to the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, 1848. There were 68 women and 32 men who sign a Declaration of Sentiments, which called for equal treatment of women and men under the law and voting rights for women. Since the first wave of the women's Liberation Movement in the late nineteenth century, women's rights are to fight for equality between the sexes. It also includes demands for civil and political rights, opposition to aristocratic privileges and polygamy, and the emphasis on the intellectual and competent differences between men and women. The most important goal is to strive for the equivalence of family labor and social labor and the same value of political rights. From beginning to end, the purpose of fight for women’s rights is equal rights instead of anti-men. Hence, by understanding the purpose of women’s rights, and by being engaged in this movement, then men will realize they are fighting for equal rights in general.

What is women’s right?

“The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women requires that women be accorded rights equal to those of men and that women be able to enjoy all their rights in practice.” (UNITED NATIONS, WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS, P33, 2014). From the beginning to the end, feminists strongly opposed gender based inequalities such as polygamy to seek the same rights as men. If use in one word to conclude what they oppose: Patriarchy.

Patriarchy is “social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly: control by men of a disproportionately large share of power” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). In simple words, men occupy dominant privileges in society and family. Maybe some men lean towards patriarchy because it gives male privileges. However, there is no free lunch in the world. Rights and obligations are always equal. Patriarchy gives men more privileges and requires men to take on more obligations. At the same time, women are deprived of their rights, but also deprived of the opportunity to undertake obligations. In ancient farming society dominated by manual labor, women's share of social production was generally much lower than men's because of their different physical structures, such as low muscle content, and their material needs were relatively limited at that time. At this time, the deprivation of women's social attributes did not bring much pressure on men. However, in modern society, when work consumes more brain energy than physical strength, patriarchy oppression of women requires men to double their efforts to fill this gap. When patriarchy gives more social and economic resources to men, it forces men to assume social and economic responsibilities such as buying houses and supporting their families; while patriarchy defines women as weak, passive and incompetent, it also forces men to be strong, active and competent. For men who are unwilling to assume such an image, society will give them a low evaluation. This is for the reason that men generally feel the pressure today, because patriarchy is imposed on them this pressure by privilege. What feminism seeks is for both men and women should undertake this obligation equally and enjoy the fruit equally.

Why men should fight for the women’s rights

As mentioned above, patriarchy imposes more obligations on men when it gives them more privileges, which deprives women of their right to work in the social distribution and production. Fighting for the women’s rights is not only fight for men’s daughter, mother, wife and other female relatives’ rights, but also fight for men’s equal rights. This will no longer forced men to bear the burden that should not belong to them. With the participation of women in social productive activities, women have more independent economic autonomy. They no longer depend on their husbands or families, alleviate the economic pressure on men that undertake family life such as housing, reduce the responsibilities imposed on men by patriarchy, and also make men have more freedom of choice.