Blog 1: Similar views of feminists

Fighting for rights has been somethings humans have started doing centuries ago. Today, feminists are keeping this fight alive, not to acquire new or absurd rights, but just enough to be completely considered as equal to men and remove sexism. Jessica Valenti and Bell Hooks have written about feminism and have given their own opinions on it. Achieving rights by standing up for equality has been the source of motivation for many. Jessica believes that having thoughts such as believing that a person will be paid less for the same position as a woman is enough to demonstrate that there is still some form of inequality remaining in the world and that feminism would help eliminate this thought eventually. In Hook’s case, feminism is losing its power and position in the world. Those who seek equality and to end sexism have been oppressed by society, yet it is not a reason to give up. Society has become dominated by men and it will not change if there is no one to fight back and break free from this system.

Jessica believes that every single action taken or thought processed by each one of us that seeks equality between women and men makes us a feminist. Similarly, Hook believes that feminism is a movement to end all sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression. In both beliefs, anyone could be considered a feminist as long as they seek equality and wish to end sexism. However, Jessica has more individual approach to this movement than Hook, she focuses more on an action that every one of us as individuals would take and would ultimately group to form a force to be reckoned with instead of Hook, who seeks to view this situation as a phenomena that affect us all and we should all make decisions as a group to be more effective. Feminism has been something both of the authors heard repeatedly throughout their lives. They both have released that feminism is not something that is considered good by society. It is something strange, unwanted and useless according to some. They believe that this ideology is wrong and that the unfairness in society is real and needs to be addressed.

 After reading the texts, my view of feminists has changed. I now do believe that everyone that would think of just a scenario in which a woman is being treated unfairly due to any reason and that the person would genuinely think that the act is unfair would be considered a feminist.

 The first few paragraphs of You’re a Hardcore Feminist. I Swear. She mentions that most of the insults are directly linked to a girl. I did not notice that most of the swear word people use are actually terms that are associated with girls and that was a remark very clever from the author as I did not notice this myself. This made me stop and realize that the author had been right and that this fact had more significance than it did on the surface.

 After some research, the writing style that was used in the texts was made clearer. Valenti, a person that had been living in a populated area such as New York and is relevantly young did not fear using swear words. On the contrary, the use of such words helped youngsters understand faster. Hook was a person that had seen the cruelty of racism with her very own eyes. In her text, explaining racism and not being emotionally too driven into it and instead, explaining it in a calm way that relied only on facts was the probably the better approach to explaining her point and promoting feminism in her story.