All The Arguments You Need: To

Convince Doubters of Feminism

By Pallavi Prasad

In our All The Arguments You Need series, we take on mindsets standing
in the way of progress and rebut them with facts and logic.

One of the most prominent aspects of my identity is that I am a feminist. To

me, it is not only a personal belief, but also a political fight. When I identify
myself as a feminist in social settings, I have noticed it almost serves as an
invitation for sexists, doubters and Devil’s advocates to engage me in
debates. They come armed with arguments against feminism consisting of
myths, misunderstandings, and misconstructions.

I don’t have a problem participating in a discourse about feminism. It is only

when we talk to those who are in the dark about the movement, those who
are on the fence about it, and those who are on the other side of the line,
that we can achieve the goal of gender equality. But, this involves, on my
part, constant engagement and a burden to educate — nay, convince —
people that the advocacy of social, economic and political equality of all
genders is valid and logically grounded in statistics and experiential
evidence. It is exhausting to have to draw constantly on my lived
experiences and recollect relevant research — only to be met with straw-
man arguments and a condescending “Why are you getting worked up?”

If you’ve ever been in my place, and have wished you had facts and hard
data to debunk some of the more absurd arguments against feminism
thrown at you, here’s a quick primer for the next time it happens (which, it
will).

“Where is the inequality? Men and women are already

equal.”
According to the United Nations, one in three women is beaten, forced into
sex or abused by an intimate partner. On each day of 2017, 137 women
were killed by a family member. Women and girls together account for 71%
of all human trafficking. A woman is raped every 13 minutes in India.

These are violent, obvious manifestations of inequality. We can see more

subtle sexism in the fact that women’s clothes aren’t designed for
them, school textbooks still propagate sexist stereotypes, 131 million
girls are out of school globally, 113 countries don’t have laws to
ensure equal pay for equal work, the majority of women in the Indian
workforce earn roughly Rs. 62 for every Rs. 100 that men earn, while
doing 10 times more unpaid labor than men do — the list really does go on.
And, that is a fact, too: According to the World Economic Forum’s most
recent Global Gender Gap report, at the current rate of progress, it will take
another 108 years to reach gender parity. So, no; men and women are not
already equal.

This argument against feminism also resorts to the male-female binary,

excluding transgender, gender-non-conforming and gender-fluid persons,
which is simply the wrong way to go about discussing gender equality. On
that front, too, we are lacking: Half of all transgender people are sexually
abused at least once in their lifetime; 92% of the socio-
economically challenged trans community cannot participate in India’s
formal economy to this day. So, again, no; feminism is nowhere close to
achieving its goal of equality. It’s going to take a minute.

“Women and men are biologically different, so how can

they be equal?”
Sure, there are undeniable physiological differences between the two, but
men and women don’t have different brains with different proclivities to
certain vocations. Research has also found that men and women
are essentially alike in terms of personality, cognitive ability, and leadership
potential. Any difference between men and women is a part of socialization
and not genetic coding.

So, women aren’t missing from STEM fields because they’re ‘natural
caregivers.’ Their absence is more likely because of structural barriers such
as unfair parental leave policies in the workplace, or the fact that 71% of
women field researchers have received inappropriate sexual remarks and
26% have reported experiencing sexual assault.

If the counter to this argument against feminism is that men are stronger
than women and carry out tasks that women can’t, that is also flawed. Men
and women possess different kinds of physical strength; men have fast-
twitch muscles that are good for actions like lifting and moving heavy
objects, while women have slow-twitch muscles giving them the strength of
endurance good for, say, assembly line jobs. Besides, statements such as
“men are stronger than women” are missing a qualifier: Most men are
stronger than women.

“What about male problems like high suicide rates and

false rape charges? Feminism is just sexist against
men.”
Men’s significantly higher suicide rate is directly linked to the fact that they
are far less likely than women to seek support for mental health problems.
This is because they are brought up in a world in which they can’t express
emotions freely on account of it being perceived as a feminine trait.
Feminism seeks to retire all gender stereotypes and inequality, which
would help everyone, regardless of sex and gender. This means issues
such as violence against men will be taken more seriously because it will
be divorced from the idea that masculinity means being invulnerable.

As for false rape accusations, approximately only 2% to 5% of all sexual

assault accusations are false. That means, 98% of times, women are telling
the truth. As unfortunate and illegal the cases of false charges may be, to
expect feminists to drop the fight for equality is unreasonable and based
only on the logically redundant argumentative technique: whataboutery.

Finally, feminism can’t be sexist towards men because of how oppression

works. It has a unidirectional, systemic flow, from a group at the top that
has social and cultural sanction to misuse power, toward the group at the
bottom. Patriarchy hurts everyone — even men — but as long as men are
in a greater position of social power that allows them to oppress women
culturally, socially, legally and financially, they can’t be victims of sexism.

“Feminist women are so angry and aggressive. Why

can’t they relax?”
Of course, we’re angry. We are conditioned from day one to conform to
a certain norm of femininity. We get harassed on the streets. We get raped,
abused and killed disproportionately. We don’t get equal access to
education and opportunity as men get, and when we do, we don’t get paid
as much as they do for the same job. Our reproductive rights are heavily
regulated by men who conveniently dominate most decision-making roles.
We are objectified and sexualized to the extent that entire multi-billion
dollar industries, such as fashion and make-up, thrive on women’s
insecurities. All of these drivers of inequality are exasperating and very
personal, lived experiences for us. It’s not just an intellectual exercise for us
to talk about these things repeatedly. So, of course, we’ll get angry
sometimes, as people do. But feelings and fact are not mutually exclusive
— yet another untruth patriarchy has given us. Feminist women having
feelings does not negate the entire movement.

According to one study, asking women not to “make everything about

feminism,” and insinuating that they are somehow overdoing it in
demanding gender equality and respect, is itself a more recent
manifestation of modern sexist behavior.

“If feminism cares about equality, why is it called

feminism? Why not egalitarianism or human-ism?”
‘Humanism,’ it seems, has come up as an alternative simply because it
sounds a little bit like feminism and, phonetically, it gives the sense that it
might mean being in favor of all of humanity having equal rights. But that’s
just misconception. Humanism is a branch of philosophy and ethics that
says that the source of human morality isn’t God but humanity’s capacity to
be logical and triumph over dogma. So… that’s why feminism isn’t called
humanism.

Egalitarianism is a school of political thought that says that all human

beings are fundamentally equal and therefore should have equal rights to
all resources. Sure, in that regard, egalitarianism has informed feminism by
being a broader view of the fight for equality. But egalitarianism has had its
heyday and has been dormant as a social movement for a while now, and
yet egalitarian laws and practices have not succeeded in elevating the
position of women in society. This is why we need something more — why
we need feminism.

Unlike egalitarianism, feminism is a social movement that is inherently

about action; it’s about tackling the world as it is right now, in which one
particular gender is being oppressed. If all goes well, hopefully, we will all
be able to call ourselves egalitarians. But until then, we need something
specific to solve the problem of wide-ranging discrimination against women
and other gender identities.

Feminism got the name because it started as a socio-political movement

advocating for women’s rights based on the premise that gender,
specifically, is not an acceptable basis for discrimination or oppression.
Through its own chain of reasoning, it has evolved into a movement for
equal rights of all genders, which at no point takes away from any other
human rights movement.

“I believe in equal rights of all genders but I don’t call

myself a feminist.”
Too late. That’s literally the definition: You are a feminist.