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Feminism is needed in America

Con picked three very weak arguments to attack here. 1. Wage gap: No one is saying a woman and a man with the exact same job make a different amount of money. Its not sexist, just a fact about what jobs women have and what the average pay between the genders is. Women take years off work to have kids, and are less likely to advance at the same rate as a man because of it. No issue here. 2. Rape: How is this relevant in any way to feminism? Men get raped too. Rape happens. Women are very well legally protected from getting raped. 3. Power: I find it odd Con uses this argument, because it actually contradicts her point. It is very true that CEOs and top government officials are overwhelmingly male. Look at the statistics Con provides. Women still do not seek positions of power for whatever reason (discrimination, peer pressure, desire to have a family, etc) and this is a reason for feminism to exist. A government should represent its people, and a country half filled with women should be represented by a government roughly proportional. There should also be more people of colour in congress, but that's a different issue. Now to my own arguments. I'll concede that so-called feminazis have given feminism a bad name recently. Any group will have radicals that make the whole look bad, we can't judge the idea of feminism by a few loud voices. A) Feminism, by definition, pushes for equality. We can all agree that equality is a good thing in society, and while women are not legally discriminated against (anymore), there are many other forms of discrimination. Saying we do not need feminism is like saying we don't need to worry about the rights of black Americans because there's no legal discrimination. This view ignores things like racial profiling, voter suppression, harsh drug laws, a broken welfare system, low quality access to education and healthcare in poor neighbourhoods. This view is naive and narrow minded in both cases. B) Women are horribly under represented in STEM fields. The amount of women choosing to study in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields are at an all time high, yet are still abysmally low. This is due largely to the fact that women are not encouraged to pursue these fields, even when they show promise at a young age. In elementary school, there are no real differences between female and male test scores in math and science. However in high school, the scores are very different, with boys outscoring girls 3 to 1. This is a stark contrast from scores in the 1980's, which were 13 to 1 in favour of boys. The reason for the change is not biological, but social. Girls haven't gotten smarter in the last 30 years, but it has become more normal for them to study math and science without judgement. This isn't to say that science and math teachers are actively discouraging girls from studying in their fields, but rather research shows that parents, guidance counsellors, and other instructors tend to push intelligent boys to persevere in tough subjects like physics and calculus, whereas girls are usually encouraged to switch to easier subjects at the first sign of trouble. The fact that this attitude still exists, and is robbing us of bright young scientific minds, is an excellent reason for feminism to exist. http://www.nytimes.com... http://news.sciencemag.org... C) The vestiges of the patriarchal society we are just recently emerging from still remain. While society is rapidly progressing towards equality, there are many holdovers who still think in terms of the past. Many, especially the older generation, still expect women to raise children and stay home, and frown on the childless, career motivated woman as "selfish" or "masculine". Many women also think like this too. Lots of women take their husband's surname when marrying, a tradition that hearkens back to the days of women being literal property. The media rarely showcases women for their intelligence, benevolence, or athletic ability, but often showcases them for their beauty. There's nothing wrong with being beautiful, or being proud of it. Men are also sometimes praised for their aesthetics, but much more often for athletic endeavors, business practices, charitable donations, innovations, and other features. This shows men as a varied, balanced group with a range of skills and attributes, and no one way to be useful. Take the Bechdel test for example. The test is for films, and to pass a film must have A) At least 2 named female characters B) Those two characters exchanging dialogue about something other than a man. Surprisingly, well over half of all Hollywood films fail to meet the requirements of the Bechdel test. In recent years this has been improving, with female driven film series doing well at the box office (Hunger Games, Divergent, etc). The Reverse Bechdel Test (2 male characters who talk to each other about something other than a woman) is almost never failed. So what does this tell us about feminism? Well, the Bechdel Test isn't meant to evaluate specific movies, but to observe trends across Hollywood. While the results point to more gender diversity in film, the results are still skewed in favour of male centric films. http://www.forbes.com... http://www.jhunewsletter.com...