I’m a cis male and I believe in the importance of feminism, but I hesitate to call myself a feminist because it seems like there is a presumption of understanding women’s experiences as if I was part of the Me Too movement. In some binary sense given how hateful and shitty men can be I’m absolutely a feminist, but I wouldn’t declare myself to be one. What is your standpoint?
Well feminism is from Latin “femina” - a woman, so it is a fight for women’s rights, and not for gender equality. Men also face lots of expectations that can be called toxic, like supressing their emotions, being the one responsible to bring the beacon home, going at war etc. These things are out of scope for feminism.
If you have to pull out an etymology argument to justify a political position, you’re wrong by default. Because you’re blatantly ignoring the actual movement & extracting whatever meaning you want out of that word.
Feminism fights against the patriarch, which in modern terms include both traditional restrictions placed on women and men. So the fight against patriarchal expectations placed on men, among them toxic masculinity, are absolutely part of feminism as a political movement today.
Etymology doesn’t exist separately from the meaning of the word. If something is called “womanism” (the literal translation from Latin), that means it actually does have to do with women.
Yes, I have heard a lot of feminists talk about also fighting against patriarchal expectations placed on men, but again the opposite of patriarch is matriarch, not gender equality. So women are still considered victims and men are considered aggressors - or victims of other men, for that matter. It’s still in essence a fight of women against men. If it wasn’t, it would be called something else. For example, humanism, because the word “human” makes no gender distinction.