The Psychology of Feminism: Conflict and Cannibalism
The world is ablaze with a recent speech by Emma Watson regarding gender-equality. My facebook is crawling with shares from many friends who I do not usually associate with being feminists. In fact- all the right-wing feminists are suddenly quiet. I wondered why.
This morning, my question was answered with this link from a friend:
http://www.blackgirldangerous.org/2014/09/im-really-emma-watsons-feminism-speech-u-n/
I urge you to read the article yourself, but I will summarise what I took from it.
Mia McKenzie argues that Emma Watson is not yet a ‘real feminist’ based on these points:
1) Emma says women are unwelcoming for men to join the debate. The real reason men haven’t joined is because “men benefit HUGELY” from sexism.
2) Emma says gender-stereotypes also hurt men. That’s irrelevant because women suffer so much more.
3) Emma says men should care because of their relationships with women. That empowers men more, and dehumanises women.
Has anyone had a read of her article? Am I wrong in my summary? It sounds like Mia is exactly the sort of man-hating feminist Emma Watson had spoken about.
Mia quotes: “Men have never been overwhelmingly interested in fighting that fight.”
She quotes: “Men do benefit from gender inequality. (They really do, Emma)”
Why are we pointing out who’s to blame, who’s a ‘real feminist’, generalising men? Why are we creating this false dichotomy again of ‘there’s women who really suffer, and there’s men pretending to care’?
What Mia is effectively doing is creating more distinctions. Men can’t believe in equality because it’s a conflict of interest? Seriously? Now there’s an Emma Watson feminism movement, and a Mia McKenzie-style movement, is there? Know what happens? In psychology we call it out-group derogation.
Out-group derogation occurs automatically- we as humans always seek categories, and a phenomenon occurs where we favour people who are like us (in group) and discriminate against those who are not like us (out group). The only way to solve this problem is to create a general, super group. So instead of men vs. women, we are human beings. Instead of real vs fake feminists, male vs. women feminists, equalists (the other branch of fake feminists)- it should be the movement for gender equality.
No, lets not get bogged down by technicalities and recognise we are all humans beings, and some of us can want gender equality even if we are men.
Tags: Derogation, Emma Watson, Favouritism, featured, Feminism, In-group, Mia McKenzie, Out-group, Psychology