Today we are going to talk about the biggest assumptions around feminism and bring them back down to facts. In a world of too much noise, sometimes its good to go back to basics and not assume what people know or don't know. 

If you already know all this, why not keep it handy anyway to send to people in those moments when you are tired of explaining the same things over and over?

Feminists hate men

False. Actually, we would argue the opposite. Feminists believe and trust in men to be much more than what patriarchy reduces them to. Feminism holds men responsible and wants to equip them with a lot of intellectual and emotional tools to navigate life within a new, and kinder, masculinity. 

The fact that we recognise men as privileged in a patriarchal society is not hate-related, just an evidence-based reality.

We want better from men, and for men. How could that be hate?

Feminism is intersectional

True. Feminism is not ONLY about gender and sex but it is a movement that fights to achieve overall justice. One of the biggest problems in feminism is being accused (sometimes rightly though) of losing perspective of the bigger picture and focusing on the problems of white, heterosexual, body-abled middle-class women.

Every problem that feminism deals with is important, but to be relevant and real it needs to tackle all sort of privileges and injustices: race, ableism, ageism, transphobia, fatphobia... and that starts with us, feminists.

Feminists are angry

Neither true or false. Feminists are people that believe in equality of rights and opportunities for all. Some of them find the inequalities really infuriating, some others have a more optimistic or positive approach. Being angry towards injustice shouldn't define a whole person as angry, and definitely shouldn't define a whole movement. 

To find out which kind of feminist you are you can always take our short fun test here.

Feminists devalue motherhood.

False. Feminists defend choice and respect the decision of a woman. Most of all, feminism values her independent of the fact of being, or not being, a mother. The fact that the woman is given a whole value in herself, and not depending on another person or just one aspect of her life dignifies, and not devalues, motherhood.

Feminism is not a VIP club

True. You don't have to apply to be feminist, you don't need to get validation from a certain "feminist" authority to feel "qualified" enough to call yourself so. I find it particularly damaging to the movement how different approaches sometimes try to invalidate each other under the premises of being "the real feminists". There is no such thing because it is a movement made by people that have different approaches of how to achieve a desirable goal. And although the desireable goal is the same for all of them, a world with the same rights and opportunities for all, the ways to get there, and the implications that it has might be different.

Some of the most thought-provoking and passionate feminists that I know have completely opposed ideas about some topics yet I wouldn't ever doubt of their right to be call feminists and we don't do any favours to the movement when we do so.

So let's make feminism the default option, the very minimum of decency, even if we are all guilty to fail our own principles every now and then!

Feminism is just for women

False. Feminism is for everyone, actually not being a feminist should have to be justified and not the other way round. Men benefit for feminism too, but even if they didn't, why couldn't they support a movement that is beneficial for the whole society, and particularly for 51% of the population, even if there is not a personal gain for them? Again, we trust men more than that! Not because they are fathers, husbands, brothers, sons or friends, but because they are human beings with the innate capacity to understand what it is right.

If we spent all the time invested in explaining and justifying why feminism is ok in actually proactively supporting feminist measures we will be way ahead of the game. We want to fight the stigma and get everyone to wear their feminism as a badge of honour, one conversation at a time!