Blog PostsAre You Now, or Have You Ever Been, a Feminist?

2014 seemed to be the year of female celebrities saying that they weren’t feminists. From Shailene Woodley to Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, young actresses and singers have answered the question, “Are you a feminist?” with responses like this one:

“I love men, and I think the idea of ‘raise women to power, take the men away from the power’ is never going to work out because you need balance. With myself, I’m very in touch with my masculine side. And I’m 50 percent feminine and 50 percent masculine, same as I think a lot of us are. And I think that is important to note. And also I think that if men went down and women rose to power, that wouldn’t work either. We have to have a fine balance.” – Shailene Woodley

“I’m very proud of being a woman, and as a woman, I don’t even like the word feminism because when I hear that word, I associate it with women trying to pretend to be men, and I’m not interested in trying to pretend to be a man. I don’t want to embrace manhood, I want to embrace my womanhood.” – Evangeline Lilly

These quotes indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of what feminism is. Even in 2014, women in the media still equated feminism with thinking women are superior to men, putting women in a dominant position over men, and thinking women should act more traditionally masculine.

I have no doubt that we will continue to hear female celebrities publicly misinterpret feminism in 2015. Online magazines and commenters will continue to criticize these women, and the cycle will go on.

What I’d like to know is when journalists plan on routinely asking male celebrities if they’re feminists.

Feminism at its core is about equality among the sexes. Yet for some reason, only female celebrities are regularly asked whether or not they’re feminists.

Should we not be equally concerned that men also believe in equality among the sexes?

Forgive the imperfect comparison, but it would be a little strange if only black celebrities were asked whether or not they believe in anti-black racism?

I’m reminded of the interesting decision by The Today Show to cancel their interview with Amy Adams because she allegedly didn’t want to talk about the information revealed in the Sony hack that she received less payment for American Hustle than her male co-stars. Meanwhile, they didn’t ask Bradley Cooper any questions about the Sony hack when they interviewed him a few days earlier.

There seems to be a pattern here of questioning women whether or not they believe in gender equality and how they fare in a world with male privilege, and not questioning men whether or not they believe in gender equality and how they feel about benefiting from male privilege.

And we wonder why there’s so much confusion about what feminism really means. How can we expect female celebrities to embrace gender quality when the very question about gender quality is only posed to women?

I’m sure the question is well-intentioned…sometimes.

Other times, I have the distinct feeling that journalists aren’t asking these questions because they really care about feminism. They’re asking because responses to that question always trend, and articles deconstructing those responses also trend.

From now on, I’m not going to judge female celebrities’ responses to the “Are you a feminist?” question until male celebrities are routinely asked the same question. When the question is only posed to female celebrities, the implication is that only women should care about gender equality – and that’s kind of the opposite of what feminism is supposed to mean.

 

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