What’s your experience with feminism? What is feminism to you? Would you consider yourself a feminist? These are all questions I asked my friend Thomas on my couch one afternoon. I was truly curious to hear what he had to say, I wanted to get a male’s perspective on feminism and reproductive rights. Going into the “interview,” I didn’t expect Thomas to consider himself a feminist. And honestly, after we talked, he probably still doesn’t and could even be more confused as to what feminism is. However, even if Thomas wouldn’t label himself as a feminist, he does actually have a few opinions that would line up with a one.
My friend Thomas was raised from age 3-18 by a single mom; she worked 3 jobs to be able to provide for him and his younger brother. (Yes, she’s a badass.) When Thomas talked about his mom, you can tell that he really cares about his mom and thinks that she’s pretty great. Something that came up over and over again was that his mom made sure he and his brother knew how to treat women. In general, he was raised in a way that stressed treating people equally. However, Thomas doesn’t think that his mom would consider herself a feminist.
I got a kick out of Thomas when we were talking about feminism because he kept saying that he didn’t have any knowledge of feminism. And really, I don’t think it’s that he doesn’t have knowledge about it, I think it’s more so misknowledge. This is likely the situation for a lot of people and possibly due to the fact that gender study classes aren’t generally taught in high school and aren’t really required in college. For a quick look at what feminism is, check out this story: Feminism For Dummies. As for people not wanting to identify with the term “feminist,” this article does a great job of discussing the issue.
Throughout our discussion, Thomas kept applying feminism and coming back to the workplace as the main way to discuss his views on feminism. For him, this is the area that he has the most experience in and is the easiest topic for him to talk about in terms of feminism. Overall, Thomas is incredibly career and work driven, so he sees the workplace as a place that should be focused on work ethic, not gender. He strongly believes that everyone needs to work hard and earn their own way, not get ahead or be handed anything due to their gender.
When I asked Thomas about reproductive rights, he was incredibly open minded. He is a strong believer that women should be able to do what they want with their bodies. He thinks that decisions about keeping a baby should be a collaborative decision, but essentially the woman’s decision. In terms of birth control, he strongly believes that it should be free and on both parties to have. Ideally, he would like a world where men can get a vasectomy when they are young and then be able to reverse it once they are actually ready to have kids. (As a woman, I’d love to have women not start their menstrual cycle until they’re ready to have kids.) Unfortunately, nature trumps and we can’t have all of our wishes granted.
Overall, this conversation opened up my eyes a lot and really made me realize that we need more education on gender issues. It seems that there are a lot of misconceptions about feminism and education could help to open up people’s eyes to what feminism really is.
The Real F Word 