The past few decades have seen remarkable strides for women’s rights. The surge of feminism in this period has led to many great strides for women. The landmark Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, allowed women in the United States access to safe, legal abortion; women began gaining equal opportunities in workplaces; and generally, conditions for women worldwide have been improving. Even recently we have seen the rise of the Free the Nipple movement and intersectional feminism, and this year will mark the first time in history in which women will be allowed to vote in Saudi Arabia.
Yet, with all that women have accomplished in these past years, the finish line for equality is still miles away. It seems like the more that women try to push back against sexism and oppression, the more opponents of feminism attempt to silence those voices.
In more modern times, feminism has pushed that women are not the property of men and that a woman’s body is her own. However, the sexist idea of a woman as property continues to hold prevalence throughout the world. Men continue to commit acts of violence against women who reject them, assuming they should be entitled to a woman’s time, attention and affection.
In 2014, Elliot Rodger murdered six people in Isla Vista, California, because he couldn’t garner the affections of “attractive women.” He began by writing that he felt that he deserved the attention of women, then he moved on to throwing coffee onto women who ignored him. Later, he would attempt to push women off of a ledge in anger and finally his misogynistic hate cultivated in him murdering his roommates, two women outside a sorority and another student before eventually turning the gun on himself.
Meanwhile, women who speak out against sexism also become targets for a wide range of threats, from having their personal information released to the public, to having people threaten to murder them.
Doxing is the act of having someone release personal information to the public, often on very well-trafficked social media sites. Recently, several high-profile feminists or critics of misogyny have fallen victim to being doxed. Feminist gamers Anita Sarkeesian, Felicia Day and Brianna Wu have all been doxed, and have become the subsequent victims of threats of rape and murder. Wu eventually felt so unsafe that she ended up leaving her own home. Sarkeesian was supposed to speak at an event at Utah State until someone threatened to kill her and others in attendance in order to seek “revenge” on feminists.
Perhaps the most well-known case of anti-feminism would be the 2012 shooting of girl’s education activist Malala Yousafzai. Beginning when she was 11 years old, Malala wrote for the BBC about her experiences living under the Taliban in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. She expressed her views on equal educational opportunities for women and girls and was shot at point blank range by a member of the Taliban.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said it best: “Extremists have shown what frightens them the most: a girl with a book.” Malala simply wanted women to be able to have the right to an equal education, and she almost lost her life because of it.
We live in a world where, even today, men are afraid of women becoming powerful, of having those same accesses to education, jobs and opportunities to succeed. The ideas of women as the “lesser” gender, or of women owing men something continue to persist. We still live in a society where outspoken women become victims of horrendous threats and extreme violence. Until society moves past stereotypical gender roles and misogynist ideals like those of the Taliban and Elliot Roger, women will never really be equal.
