Is Gender Equality enough?
Gloria Watkins, or Bell Hooks, as she entitles herself in her books, is an American professor, feminist, and social activist. Her publications carved out a platform for feminism to reborn as an inclusive movement — a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.
Even though gender equality is behind most feminist-media messages, it is a reformist idea, as it leaves out women from lower classes, who do not have the same rights as men, nor the same rights as other women. This perspective highlights that women's liberation is not about men, but about the existing system of oppression and class domination.
Thus, in the 60s/70s, there were conducted group meetings, also called consciousness-raising, which challenged females to confront their inner sexism and acceptance of the patriarchal system. The discussions among the groups were essential to portrait the feminist movement as an inclusive one, and not anti-male. In fact, women can be as sexist as men. When women, especially white privileged women, gain class power without unlearning their internalized sexism, the divisions between the movement intensify. And it's crucial that men also join the cause and detach their self-identity to the capacity to dominate.
By the late '70s, women's studies were accepted as an academic discipline, and the group meetings were replaced by complex texts published in an elite set of the university, which made feminism lose its mass-based potential.
It is then crucial to make feminism available for all, through media and education, with an unbiased curriculum and less jargon. The emotional well-being of women and men would be enhanced if both embraced feminist thinking and practice.
Gender equality is important. But due to the fact there is still a patriarchal system dominating, it is not enough. Revolutionary feminism is the way. Just like Feminism is for Everybody.
“Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. ”