EQUALITY

Some days ago, I went online and had a chat with a well-educated Jakarta twenty-nine-year-old guy who is already married. When I told him that I am a feminist and right now I am shaping my teenage daughter to be a feminist too, he commented, “Men don’t like feminists.”

“Well, I know many men consider feminists as enemies.”

“Not really as enemies, though.”

“Yeah … maybe that’s too much. The word “threat” may be more suitable. But I believe broad-minded, open-minded, independent, intelligent, and confident men will not think that way. They will not consider feminists as threat.”

Jokingly, I added, “Well, if all women in the world become radical feminists—many radical feminists are lesbians—those men will be jobless.” LOL.

That’s why straight men don’t like feminists. Their existence as superior creature over women is threatened. They will no longer be needed.

That short chat reminded me of a movie entitled The Stepford Wives where men feel threatened by their wives who are more intelligent, more successful, more powerful. So, to “make” their wives submissive and domestic, they put a certain chip in their wives’ brain, and voila … those women become robots, very submissive to their husbands, do what women “are supposed to do”, e.g. taking care of husband and children, serving their husbands in bed anytime they are wanted, taking care of their appearance (slim, pretty, tidy), behavior (dependent, weak, sensual, emotional, illogical) and do all household chores flawlessly. By the end of the movie, Walter Eberhart shows his confidence by rebelling that women-created-to-be-robot “tradition” in Stepford. He believes that communicating with his successful wife is a better choice to make their marriage work well and live together happily rather than making his wife—Joanna Eberhart—become a “robot”.

Men who are indoctrinated to be superior, more powerful, more successful, more intelligent than women will be inferior to find out the fact that they are even the weaker, less successful and less intelligent than women. In the past, before women went to school to get knowledge, they accepted their “destiny” as the second sex for granted. Men enjoyed their “golden” years as the superior. When women got their right to get knowledge and then actualize themselves in public sphere, inferior men found it as a threat. To silence those intelligent, creative, and active women, men are supposed to work harder, they are supposed to be happier because their life partner are more reliable. They are supposed to feel challenged to show their guts.

Read the following two stanzas of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s poem entitled “Reassurance”:

Can you imagine nothing better, brother,
Than that which you have always had before?
Have you been so content with “wife and mother,”
You dare hope nothing more?
…
Peace then! Fear not the coming woman, brother.
Owning herself, she giveth all the more.
She shall be better woman, wife, and mother,
Than man hath known before.

When feminists just want to reduce men’s burden, why should men even consider feminists as enemies? Why should they feel threatened and frightened? Why should they want to go on the status quo? It shows their inferiority, doesn’t it? It even shows they are the weaker sex, right?

That’s why as I mentioned above, broad-minded, open-minded, confident, and intelligent men will not feel inferior in front of feminists (read  women who are aware that they have exactly equal right with men in all facets in life, women who realize that they are as good as men in public sphere, and consequently, men are also as good as women in domestic sphere). Equal relationship is much better than superior-submissive relationship, isn’t it?