Among the new wave of non-feminists, or apologetic feminists we can count Beyoncé, Kaley Cuoco, Carla Bruni, Taylor Swift, Bjork, Sarah Jessica Parker, Madonna, Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson and Lady Gaga. These women have publicly come out in favor of less drastic ideals which are often less abrasive to ear. “I’m a humanist” Madonna, Demi Moore, and Sarah Jessica Parker say. Perhaps to women like Kelly Clarkson “[feminism] is too strong [a word]”, or even completely outdated for this generation of women “who don’t need feminism” anymore as Carla Bruni would assert. I wonder if these same women would have admitted this only two decades ago, in 1993 when marital rape was, for the first time, defined as a crime in the United States. Of course no victory is bipartisan on this issue, some states still differ on its actual definition. South Carolina, ever a bastion of socially progressive legislation, still marks excessive violent force as a criterion to define non-consensual sex within a marriage as rape. Again, this is still within context of the American legal system where marital rape has been defined as illegal in forty-nine (and a half) states. Don’t worry, South Carolina; you’re still ahead of China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Yemen, just to name a few. These countries represent safe havens where husbands can remain beyond legal reproach. So, I ask these famous role models whose audiences extend far beyond the shores of these forty-nine and half states: is ‘feminist’ really too strong a word? Violence against women differs based on location and demographic. No two scenarios in which domestic abuse or violence against women (and those who identify as women) takes place are the same. This alone can be a dangerous admission; it can be a potential “out” for those who would rather chose not to discuss the topic at all. Feminists, they say, are invasive, backwards, violent in their assertions of female dominated societies, incorrect, outdated, or simply irrelevant. Yet, despite individual circumstances which intimately affect the status of women within their interpersonal relationships, one finds it necessary to enumerate possible causes which these situations share. One of which is the dissemination of misinformation regarding the definition of feminism. It is, by nature of the respective movement, the push for equality between the sexes. Feminism is not about women being stronger than men or above men socially. Feminism is about equality and making the world safer for both men and women. It’s about a young girl looking up at heads of state and noticing women in more equal ratios. It’s about not being afraid to walk down the streets in broad daylight; it’s about not having to perform a ridiculous dance routine in the darkened distance between the door of a building and her parked car with her keys between her left hand knuckles, and her right hand fingers on 9-1-1. It’s also about the right not to be trafficked, to be stolen, to be forced into sexual slavery. This is true feminism, and it aspires to make the world a safer place for those who inhabit it equally, and furthermore it aspires to allow them to inhabit it equally (I’m looking at you China). So how is it that such famous women still choose to err on the side of apologies? Many women will argue in favor of abandoning feminist standpoints because they, like their male counterparts, do not believe that the inequality still exists, or feel that loving men means that they cannot assert their rights to corporal and corporate safety. After all, not receiving the extra thirty-three cents that white women (transgender women and women of color are subjected to drastically lower wages) have historically been denied, is something that a woman will not notice until her salary is compared to her equally performing male counterpart. In that sense, many of the inequalities women face today are negative in nature. This is to say that a woman may not notice the inequality at work until it is exposed in comparison with the truer standard to which white men are often held. Perhaps this is what women are referring to when they argue that they have not felt oppression in their lives. Still this is both ignorant of the bigger picture, and woefully incorrect. The reality is that these women are the ‘lucky’ ones. Emma Watson’s famous speech at the United Nations, which called for increased participation among men in the cause for equal rights, is another example of how modern, soft-core and short-term feminism often misses its mark, despite being both socially acclaimed and superficially advantageous to women. The truth of our need for feminism is a much uglier picture painted with the blood of the 8,391 Indian women who were burned alive, as arranged brides in 2010, due to dowry disputes. We need feminism for the women who are raped on college campuses and ignored by their administrations, the women who are unable to receive help from authorities in cases of stalking without the stalker showing aggression towards her property, or violence towards her. Moreover, the young girls who look up to these famous, apologetic feminists are the ones whose lives suffer most from their admonishments. These young girls are forced into marriages, are denied their religious rights to head covering in the name of “western freedoms”, are dismissed from school for showing “too much skin” or perversely for allowing their bodies to “distract the students around them”, are shot for attending school, or are even murdered for refusing to be catcalled on the streets. Asserting one’s rights for safety, walking to one’s car without fear of assault, the right to education, the right not to be trafficked or sold into outright sexual slavery or the slavery of an unwanted marriage and early motherhood, the rights to life all have nothing to do with not loving men, and everything to do with society not valuing women. But, we clearly care about women because we, as a society, and as individuals love them, and through that love we value them, right? That’s why thousands of people tweeted #HeForShe after Emma Watson’s speech at the United Nations calling for involvement, or even pictures of #BringBackOurGirls while it was trending. That worked didn’t it? Well, not if the actual goal was to free the 276 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram which has recently been in the news for leaving over 2,000 slaughtered in the Nigerian town of Baga, on Lake Chad. If the goal was to increase twitter followers and improve their internet ‘street cred’ then I’m sure celebrities found that objective was accomplished. We need feminism not because things are kind of okay if you live in a “first world country” and are a white woman of reasonable wealth, but because women beyond the shores of these rich nations matter. Moreover, if you think the picture gets any less bleak when ‘“first world” cash is added into the equation, think again. We need feminism because even in these “first world countries” women are murdered, trafficked from sporting events and sold into sexual slavery, beaten, raped and are en masse denied legal assistance by the very men that maintain this system of oppression. “But Natalie’s just being melodramatic about this (like always)” you say, “it can’t be that bad, women report rapes, like, all the time (and other stuff too)”. Actually this is not even true in countries where the legal system has set up channels for these women to report rape. In fact, they hardly report incidents of sexual assault which effectively makes it almost impossible to stop at a legal level. Only 32% of civilian rapes (37% of female veterans in the United States Military reported being raped at least twice, 14% of veterans reported gang rape) are reported to police, of which 7% lead to arrests and 2% to convictions. Perhaps the reason women refuse to report en masse is that they know if these rape charges go to trial these women must sit in front of their alleged rapist and answer questions that exonerate themselves of any guilt. “What were you wearing?”, “did you have anything to drink that night?”, “are you sexually active?” are just some of the few questions used to ensure that her reputation is tarnished for being raped and that 98% of rapists will never see the inside of a jail cell. Furthermore, even when these 32 out of every 100 rapes are reported it still seems that the United States is comfortable letting 400,000 rape kits go untested in the last decade. Well, #notallmen oppress women, right? Most men are not rapists, do not perpetrate violence against women, and have not directly contributed to these aforementioned statistics. What do they have to do with it? The answer is everything, you have everything to do with the problem, and the solution. This is especially true if you believe that rape culture is not a prevalent issue at NYU Shanghai. I sat in a classroom and listened to a boy tell me once, in front of a teacher who did very little to condemn it, “that sometimes men just needed to ‘fuck’ women” (That’s right, I just called you out NYU Shanghai). His comments met a roomful of shocked, but silent, male students. Perhaps they did not believe that what he said was fair, just, moral, right, or even accurate, yet not one told him that he was wrong, #NotEvenOneMan. The attitudes that allow rapists to hide in plain sight of the law, and remain safely unconvicted are alive and well at this school. We are supposed to be a future generation of lawmakers, policy advocates, government officials, lawyers, doctors, judges and humanitarians, yet how can we bring justice to these roles when we refuse to acknowledge the marginalization and systematic abuse of less than half the world’s population, especially when we contribute to it? It seems commonplace now to call for action to respond to violence against women and those who identify as women, or those in the LGBT community. It seems that everyone in some sense is, at least superficially, in support of equality. But, even if you believe #notallmen need to feel obliged to take up the mantle of ending violence against women, and/or you agree with these famous celebs on feminism’s outdated relationship to women today, there is still no denying that one recent way it seems to hit home more forcefully to men is asking “what if she, the victim in question, was your sister, mother, daughter, or cousin?”. This question is capable of encapsulating society’s still prevalent problematic point of view surrounding gender violence. She doesn’t have to be your sister, your daughter, your mother, your friend or your cousin to matter. She doesn’t have to belong to your life, like cattle in your backyard, to be of value. Women that are not intimately related to you are being burned alive because their dowries are not good enough, stabbed in the streets for refusing to be catcalled, trafficked and sold into lifetimes of sexual violence, raped at parties. It may be your sister, and if the statistics are at all accurate, there’s a high chance it actually is your sister. It is more than likely, especially since these statistics don’t seem to be trending downwards, that the girl who doesn’t quite remember what happened after Johnny Frat Bro gave her her first drink in that really grungy fraternity basement is, or will be your daughter. But so what if it’s not? I ask you, #notallmen, who believe that just because you haven’t contributed that you’re off the hook: do we stop caring about her when we can’t see her? Do we continue to look the other way when our friends objectify, joke and act questionably and often violently towards women when they’re drunk (or even in class)? Do all of us truly choose believe that India, for example, is too far away to make a difference, or that our trending hashtags are a job well done even if nothing happens after, that we have nothing to do with this problem if we haven’t physically contributed? Surely, these answers are no. Not all apologetic feminists and #notallmen believe this, right?

Further Reading: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/Worldswomen/WW_full%20report_color.pdf

This article was written by Natalie Soloperto. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Tirza Alberta