Feminism, Pseudo Feminism and Misandry

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In light of recent events like the ‘Bois locker room’, fake Snapchat rape screenshot and the suicide of Manav Singh, the Instagram youth voiced their dissent came out with their stories solidified by proof or otherwise and held so-called ‘Social media trials‘. Everyone seems to have an opinion and their own narration of what happened and what did not happen and suggestions as on how the law should or should not tackle these issues. However, in the early phases of the movement, the institution called ‘Law’ appeared to be missing when the youth took to their Instagram stories calling out and declaring individuals of the gender opposite to theirs Guilty of bullying, molestation, attempt to rape or RAPE. It is shocking to learn that these allegations have been put by and on underage teenagers, most of them being fourteen to fifteen year old.

Since everyone has been voicing their opinion on social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and so on, the words FEMINISM , PSEUDO-FEMINISM and MISANDRY are often getting mixed up without people educating themselves of their true meaning.

For starters, Feminism is a movement which demands treating women equally as men in terms of rights and opportunities and has been designed with a hope to provide women with a better status in a patriarchal society, ceasing them to be considered as the weaker gender.

There is a fine line between feminism and pseudo feminism. Pseudo feminism, on the other hand, is pretending to be a feminist and harbouring the belief that feminism aims at making women and only women rightful of respect and privilege hence, considering all other genders as inferior. To explain this I’ll provide an example, In a bus, a young woman refuses to offer her seat to a seventy-year-old man quoting “I am a woman”, this is what we call pseudo feminism. #Metoo movement came out to cater as a platform where women could open up about workplace harassment or harassment in general. however, with the existence of the concept of pseudo feminism, the #Metoo movement has it’s real motive misjudged. Everything that happened in the recent cases is a misjudgement of the #Metoo movement where a girl calls out a boy for attempting to rape her without solid proof, causing the boy to commit suicide. My point being, Sexual objectification and rape discussion are not a meagre issue and the persons guilty, must be punished by law not, social media trials.

Talking about misandry. Misandry is the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against men or boys in general. Some hashtags that managed to catch our attention were #Allmen and #Notallmen, making evident a social media war between the two genders. Misandry is just as malicious as Misogyny and both practices stand as obstacles refraining us from achieving an equality-based society.

In simple words, as a society, we must stop allotting a gender to the culprit and view them just as a culprit like the law does . People, irrespective of their genders, should be held accountable for their actions by the law. It is also important to realise that social media cannot be used for passing verdicts and judgements and it is also important to understand the differences and not mix feminism with pseudo feminism and misandry .

I will conclude by saying that no gender is superior to another and as a society we ought to be neutral.