Why Third-Wave Feminists Are Giving Feminism A Bad Name

Feminism. The word every privileged, middle-class, suburban white girl jumps for joy over hearing, apparently. Whilst it may very well be the second most popular “f-word” here in the western world, does modern-day society actually understand the true concept of gender equality and what feminism really advocates? Rhetorical question, of course; it seems very unlikely.

Many of us with half an education in history and of course the ability to tell apart males from females are fully aware that inequality between genders exists in abundance in all corners of the Earth. 200,000 years after the first emergence of modern humans, women all over the west decided that they'd had enough shit from the male species viewing us ladies as subordinates. Eureka! This sudden outburst of sassiness resulted in the feminist movement arising and becoming as popular as ever amongst women worldwide. However, it seems that a lot of us are losing touch with the true meaning of feminism and what it stands for as a whole. As a society, we have managed to forget that the whole point of feminism is to highlight the inequality between men and women. We've managed to lose all track of emphasising the importance of women having equal rights to men on political, economical, cultural and social levels. We are no longer looking at how to tackle the issues that women face with everyday sexism, unfair pay in the workplace and what society expects from them but we've somehow managed to arm a large, delusional army of a particular type of feminist.

Thus, the “third-wave” feminist and their blood-curdling ideology is born; the UKIP of feminism where Nigel Farage is now Nigella Farage as he now has a vagina and an extremely distorted view of what feminism looks like. This is probably the worst kind of feminist you will encounter in life so it's advisable to really give them a wide berth. You may not be familiar with the term “third-wave feminist” but I'm sure you've more than likely met the occasional one or two (or ten thousand if you spend a lot of time on the internet). Third-wave feminists come in all different races, shapes and sizes but as a not-so-extreme-but-possibly-slightly-exaggerated generalisation, the majority are mostly as described in the lead paragraph of this article. These are your privileged, middle-class, suburban white girls; usually aged between 13 and 25 years old. You never have to look very far before you spot one of these parasites as they've become some sort of pandemic disease spreading rapidly in society. Tumblr is a breeding ground for third-wave feminists and you'll find that this is only as far as you have to go to discover that they more often than not like to emphasise their hardships regarding inequality by moaning incessantly over social media. This is probably because they can communicate and find comfort in other third-wave feminists that haven't actually experienced the true harshness of gender inequality at all. After all, being a feminist is pretty hipster, isn't it?

"Men are pigs. Treat them like pigs. Even nice guys are pigs. The odds of you meeting a special snowflake are 1 in a million. It will not happen. Just fuck, puke on their heads, and play video games." themodernmisandrist – tumblr.

The problem with the third-wave movement is that they have completely tarnished the whole reputation of modern-day feminism which has led to a lot of people dissociating themselves from the views and ideas that feminism once stood for. With many thanks to our newly acquired best friend, you know, the third-wave feminist, feminism is now about female superiority, misandry and to put it bluntly, anything that puts men in a bad spotlight. If there wasn't such an abundant presence of this type of feminism and the absolutely ridiculous ideologies that come with it, I believe that the topic of feminism wouldn't be as controversial as it has grown to be. I have encountered many of these third-wavers and they really do share the worst views on equality, which inevitably sets the reputation for feminism as a whole.

Prime example is the video that went viral a few months back, of that woman walking through New York City, claiming to be catcalled by almost every man on the street. Okay, granted there were some things that were said/done by guys in that video that could be classed as straight up creepy. But last time I checked, being called “beautiful” and told to “have a nice day” wasn't labelled as catcalling, let alone being put in the same category as sexism or degradation of women. However, if you take a look at that video in a different light say... if it was another woman on the street that had called the woman in the video beautiful and told her to have a nice day, that video would never have even been published, let alone gone viral. It's quite sad really, that this particular group of individuals look for specific ways to make men look bad. Of course, there is a fine line between being complimentary towards the opposite sex and being down right sexist however in a time where third-wave feminism is so prevalent, it does seem like a man can't even compliment a woman without facing an accusation of being degrading and belittling towards said woman.

The third-wave movement gave me such a distorted view on feminism during my teenage years at school. I'd often tell people how much I hated feminists because the only type of feminism I was exposed to was this third-wave bullshit that advocates this whole misandrist lifestyle, which obviously was something I wanted to dissociate from as much as I could. But then I grew up and did my own research into the advocacy of feminism and why gender equality is important, this lead to me adopting more of an egalitarian viewpoint. However, I will identify as a feminist. If you support gender equality, you are indeed a feminist too.

Unfortunately though, the damage has already been done and the parasitic third-wave movement has achieved its one goal of tarring all feminists with the same brush. Although there's a large group of us that would love to eradicate the third-wavers, it's no wonder why so many people are avoiding touching on the subject when you've got third-wave feminists putting feminism in a very negative spotlight.