Feminism and the Degradation of Man Essay Example

Feminists have been active in their role for decades. The first women who were proponents of women's rights, advocates for self-promotion of women's freedoms and leaders of women into the 20th century, I believe would be appalled at where the current "feminists" have taken their cause. In the late 1960's a movement ensued, a movement of great proportions. This ideological stance of women needing to empower themselves against men and their "inherent violence" began a degradation of men's roles in family and society. Men have been silenced as fathers and husbands. In the early 20th century, boys were taught to protect women, open doors for them, help them carry their groceries and never to hit a woman. The feminists would have us believe that those same men were suppressing the women who were the recipients of such actions. As if to say that helping a woman with her groceries would take away from the woman's abilities to do it herself and degrade her potential to be equal to a man. The women who spearheaded the feminist movement were not intending to belittle the role of man; they simply wanted others to see the importance of women's opinions and beliefs in society. Given, there are many instances of conditioning by men to suppress the role of women in society, such as voting, land ownership and holding public offices. These impractical and offensive notions have been done away with due to the quintessential need of women to change the view of themselves as helpless, needy subordinates. Women are not simple, nor are they helpless, but they do have basic needs, as do men. Some feminists would have us believe that the role of men as husbands and fathers is no longer necessary to achieve the imagined utopia of a non-gendered nation. Jillian Sandell of the University of California Berkeley said in her essay, On the Edge of Change, "That women are now arming themselves against men means that what has hitherto been a metaphorical ‘war' of the sexes is now