Until we all live in a world where no little girl can be shot in the face or sold as a slave for wanting to learn to read, where no teenager can see video of herself being raped online, where female genital mutilation is not afflicted on up to 90% of women in an area, where no woman gets death threats for expressing an opinion, where no one can be paid less than their peers for the same work or lose their job for getting pregnant... FUCK YEAH we need feminism.

Well written essay -- this part I found very thoughtful:

If you feel that you have so far lived your life unaffected by even the mildest form of sexism – anything from feeling uncomfortable when a man catcalls you in the street, to feeling scared walking home alone at night in a secluded area – and are treated with love and respect by every man in your life, then to you I say: I’m glad for you. If you don’t think you need feminism, then that is a victory for the movement. You have fulfilled all those dreams that every suffragette being force-fed in prison and every ‘witch’ burnt at the stake dreamed you would one day.

But perhaps take a second to consider the life of the Pakistani woman who was beaten to death by her own family for marrying a man of her choosing. Or the life of the Indian woman who was raped, beaten, and murdered on a bus by a gang of men. Or the life of the little girl in Niger who was sold to a man more than twice her own age and forced to carry a baby that may kill her to deliver. Do they still need feminism?

And perhaps take a second to consider this too: Even in our liberal, Western world, why do women still only fill 24% of senior management jobs? Why are more women than men domestically abused or even killed every week at the hands of their male partner or ex-partner? Why is there still a pay gap (in the UK specifically) of 15% for women doing the same jobs and working the same hours as men?

i am always baffled as to why feminism is a bad word.  who doesn't want to love females and see them thrive?  success for one gender does not mean failure for another.  we all win with love.  "i don't need feminism" is a painfully ignorant thing to say.

It's a bad word because one of the first things a master of propaganda does is demonize certain idioms in our language. And right now the masters of propaganda want to demonize the word "feminism".

*sigh*  so true.  what a shame though.  imagine how good this world could be if we didn't waste our precious energy keeping half the population down!