For an Ivy League graduate she makes some elementary errors in her speechifying. From the top:
I am reaching out to you because I need your help. We want to end gender inequality—and to do that we need everyone to be involved.
Why do we need to end gender inequality? She doesn't say a peep. She's speaking to a worldwide audience and many in that audience don't accept the notion. Her feminist audience in the West does buy in but then they're not the ones who need convincing.
Why is inequality bad? Inequality is a sign of diversity. Every graduate of a university has been propagandized into believing that diversity is good. Why then isn't the diversity represented by inequality also good? She doesn't say why inequality needs to be eradicated.
This is the first campaign of its kind at the UN: we want to try and galvanize as many men and boys as possible to be advocates for gender equality. And we don’t just want to talk about it, but make sure it is tangible.
OK, you've told us what you want to accomplish, now how about telling us why you want to accomplish your goal and why men and boys should support that goal.
I was appointed six months ago and the more I have spoken about feminism the more I have realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.
For the record, feminism by definition is: “The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.”
Feminism being equated with man-hating. Brave of her to publicly state this equation. Will she explore how that equation came about? I don't know as I writing this as I'm reading through her speech.
As to the theory aspect, again she assumes a benefit from feminism without arguing or proving that the benefit exists. What do those terms even mean, to her, to her Western audience or to her international audience.
I started questioning gender-based assumptions when at eight I was confused at being called “bossy,” because I wanted to direct the plays we would put on for our parents—but the boys were not.
When at 14 I started being sexualized by certain elements of the press.
When at 15 my girlfriends started dropping out of their sports teams because they didn’t want to appear “muscly.”
When at 18 my male friends were unable to express their feelings.
I decided I was a feminist and this seemed uncomplicated to me. But my recent research has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word.
Gender roles exist because they serve a purpose, they're not just arbitrary inventions. A bossy woman is not romantically appealing to men, so this puts her at a disadvantage in the romance department. A woman who controls a relationship with her husband tends to find the husband less and less appealing as time passes and so marital stability erodes. The nature of women is to be submissive to a man she respects, so a bossy woman will, when single, find few men appealing because she beats them in the social realm, then if she does find a mate her bossy nature emasculates her mate and she begins to disrespect him. People know this, even if only on a subconscious level, and so social custom develops around this observation and women are encouraged to not express their bossiness in order to ease their way in life by not learning a bad habit.
You were being sexualized at 14 because you were becoming a woman. Part of being a woman is being comfortable with your sexuality. Sexual attraction between men and woman is the perpetual motion machine which keeps society functioning and progressing. This dynamic is at the root of much of life. At 14, and being in the public eye, your emerging sexuality was simply part of who you were and what your fans were interested in.
At 15 your girlfriends changed their behavior because they were also realizing the sexual component of who they were as young women. Feminism too often means de-sexualizing, women and men becoming sexless and interchanageable cogs. That's never going to be a popular alternative because ignores human nature.
Your 18 year old male friends were unable to express their feelings because they've always been unable to express their feelings. This isn't a role that boys/men take on, like an actor. Boys and girls are different. Men and women are different. You imply here that masculinity is a learned trait, not something intrinsic to biology and to brain development. Time to step away from feminist theory and take a look at the biology underlying sexual development.
What seems uncomplicated to you is a worldview that is in fact fairly shallow. If you don't understand what is taking place around you, then the world will look fairly simple. This phenomenon likely underlies why Feminism is so unpopular.
Apparently I am among the ranks of women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, anti-men and, unattractive.
Why is the word such an uncomfortable one?
I am from Britain and think it is right that as a woman I am paid the same as my male counterparts. I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body. I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decision-making of my country. I think it is right that socially I am afforded the same respect as men. But sadly I can say that there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to receive these rights.
No country in the world can yet say they have achieved gender equality.
Yes, you are one of those women. At least for this speech. You weren't one of those women when you publicly stated that you found bold men appealing. It's likely that you're a woman who doesn't actually know what she thinks, a woman who would abandon this position the moment the right man came along and hit all your right buttons. You though are not unattractive and you likely now that.
As to your pay, you weren't paid equally to your male peers, Danial Radcliffe earned more than you and he earned more than you because his pay was determined by his value. This is a rock solid rule in free market economies.
As for you making decisions about your own body and women being involved on your behalf, this is the problem of women in public life that we don't see with men. Male politicians focus on how to govern society, women politicians focus on what's good for women. Male reporters write about wars, politics, economics, female reporters write about gender stereotyping, beauty standards, Governor Palin's clothes and shoes, Secretary Clinton balancing her role as mother and Secretary of State. You don't improve society by misusing public resources to focus on gender issues.
To the issue of respect, no one affords you respect, we all have to earn respect. More men than women seem to understand this which is why we so frequently see women complaining about the lack of respect afforded them. Using female political power to try to engineer outcomes, equality of respect, is a doomed effort and the fact that you champion this as a desired outcome speaks to how deeply you've been infected with an ideology which runs counter to human nature. You can't be made to love someone, hate someone, or respect someone simply because a feminist commands you do so.
You'll never a country constructed like you envision because such a country would be erecting a charade and it would soon crumble from human nature eroding the foundations of the facade.
I'm going to skip down a bit.
Men—I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too.
Because to date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society despite my needing his presence as a child as much as my mother’s.
I’ve seen young men suffering from mental illness unable to ask for help for fear it would make them look less “macho”—in fact in the UK suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20-49 years of age; eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease. I’ve seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don’t have the benefits of equality either.
You still haven't defined gender equality nor explained why it's desirable.
If you've seen men suffering from mental illness but unable to ask for help, then why didn't you provide them with the help that they couldn't ask for? They're mentally ill men. Woman are more verbally communicative creatures from birth than are men, so this quest for gender equality seems to be a quest for sexless norms of some sort.
Men show far greater disparity on all sorts of metrics than do women. I could explain the biology of why this is so but it's not central here, men are more often intellectually gifted and intellectually stunted than women, men more often achieve in society and also fail in society (prison, homelessness) than women. Evolution has "designed" men this way. Suicide is not simply an outcome of social forces and learned gender roles, in many cases depression is not situational, it has biochemical roots and one can't train men to be talky and emotive and outgoing in terms of relationships. Most women will tell you that they have a deeper social network than do their husbands. For a husband, his wife is usually his closest confidante whereas women will yak about their intimate lives with their girlfriends. This, in part, explains why women tend to have an easier emotional adjustment after death or divorce - the man quite likely has no one to talk to.
We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence.
If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.
Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong… It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideals.
If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by what we are—we can all be freer and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.
I want men to take up this mantle. So their daughters, sisters and mothers can be free from prejudice but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too—reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned and in doing so be a more true and complete version of themselves.
Ah, you silly girl. As with most feminists you don't give women agency. What you describe here is women being reactive to men. If men change, then women will too. If men change from being aggressive then women don't have to be submissive. And so on. This is funny for its naivete. You claim to be a feminist, well then take control of your own identity, don't make it dependent on men taking the lead and changing first.
The problem with the position you've expressed here is that you've stated that you don't find such men attractive, you respond to the type of man you want to erase from the world. As a woman you're not alone, women tend to prefer masculine men, not meterosexual non-men who cry and are acutely attuend to your feelings and are solicitious of your moods and submissive to your desires.
You keep yammering on about changing male identity as though it was created by a bunch of dudes in a secret cabal somewhere and written down and passed from man to man during secret initiations into manhood.
The overarching problem of your worldview is that it is divorced from reality, the reality of the world we inhabit and this problem with feminism also informs Leftism. The only people who are going to support your speech are other true believers. There was nothing convincing in the speech and many foundational issues were not addressed. For your next speech try to refrain from pushing this viewpoint and instead explain to your audience why you hold the axioms you do.
