Is Third-Wave Feminism Ruining the World?

When I was in my twenties, I would’ve called myself a “Feminist.” However, now that I am nearing the age of thirty-one in the year 2017, I would never use the term “Feminist” when describing myself. Upon entering the world of social media and YouTube more frequently during the last few years, I have noticed that I am not the only woman who is no longer identifying as a “Feminist” to society. It made me wonder why this is. I knew why I was no longer saying I was a “Feminist” to describe my identity, but that didn’t mean I knew why the rest of the world did. So, I dove in. I began researching, watching all the videos I could and reading all the articles I could. I read articles and watched videos Feminists wrote and made. I read articles and watched videos ex-Feminists wrote and made. I realized many of the women who came out as an “Ex-Feminist” felt the exact same way I did about Feminism and its views.

In this blog, I want to discuss why Third-Wave Feminism seems to be ruining our plant. It has even been described as “cancer” online, which by the way, as someone who has lost several family members to cancer, I didn’t believe was a fair comparison when I first heard it. Three years and several articles and YouTube videos later…and well…Feminism just may be a disease like cancer. Why? Well, people tend to “catch” it, and they change…and not in good ways.

How do I know this? I almost became that person. Okay, so I probably totally became that person but I may still be in partial denial as to how bad I was. I became influenced by a support group I joined online. It was extremely feminist and liberal-based. Everyone in there who was a part of it had extreme feminist and liberal views. I fit right in at the time.

It worked well, that is, until 2016 when the Presidential election began nearing. Yes, I am Canadian, however, most of the members of the support group were from the United States. Therefore, this election was a big deal. I had become close with several members. I noticed they began to slowly lose their minds. They began arguing friends of theirs’ on their Facebook pages regarding their political views, they began to strongly hate on anyone who disagreed with them in any way. The support group almost became a cult. If you refused to attack someone the woman who ran the group deemed as immoral, you were attacked. They would even call Child Protective Services (if you were a United States citizen) or the Children’s Aid Society (if you were a Canadian citizen, like myself) and make false claims so they would come to your house with the police and investigate you…and your entire family and whether or not you were fit to parent. It got ridiculous. I had joined in and attacked a few people on behalf of the person who ran the group. I began realizing that things were becoming very upsetting for me. I was no longer enjoying life. Life was incredibly triggering.

See, the problem with being a Third-Wave Feminist Liberal personality is that you need to find sexism, racism, any form of oppression or negativity going on in the world (or on the world wide web) EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY and fight against it. You need to argue these people and it is essentially triggering yourself over and over again. Now, most of these people are not even truly “triggered.” However, someone like myself who suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (and several of the members of this group suffered from mental health disorders, it was one of the main reasons why you became a member of this support group on Facebook), then you could severely emotionally and mentally traumatize yourself on a daily basis. When you live a life like that, it is not fun. I felt pressured to do so. If you didn’t go to bat for people in this group, you were summoned. A few times, I was too busy with my daughter or husband and I felt as though they looked down on me for not being able to join in because I had a life. My entire life was meant to be dedicated to fighting for Feminism and Liberal views or helping people in the group (or in my case, writing articles for the group as well) and I just couldn’t dedicate my entire life to it anymore. I became a miserable person. I caught the terrible disease of “Third-Wave Feminist Liberal” and I became a Social Justice Warrior and could no longer breathe. I had to get out. When I did, it was a huge fight. They slowly began to tear me apart and plan ways they could attack me and things they could accuse me of. They even tried to accuse me of committing fraud and stealing one of the administrator’s Psychologist credentials from the United States in order to practice in Canada. As you know, that makes no sense what so ever.

However, everyone in the group believed these stories, even though none of them made any sense and I was always completely open and honest about myself in the group. I had become an administrator and therefore I talked a lot about who I was and my past and future plans and tried to help everyone the best I could. None of that mattered. It didn’t matter that what they claimed I did wrong didn’t make sense. Why? Everyone seemed to be in this mob-mentality trance. As if they had caught some wicked disease…or joined a cult.

People have lost friends of theirs who they have had for decades because of one simple disagreement in political views. We used to live in a society where it was rude to ask someone who they were voting for. Now, friendships are ruined over this Third-Wave Feminist Liberal or Far-Right Conservative way of thinking. Both are equally dangerous to society. However, I am not a Far-Right Conservative and never have been and therefore only wish to speak about what I personally have experience with.

Another reason why Third-Wave Feminism is ruining the planet is that it is turning severe issues into buzzwords. Being “triggered” is not just having someone disagree with your opinion or views on a topic and becoming upset over it, feeling personally attacked over it. No, actually, being triggered is an awful anxiety attack that occurs when you suffer from the mental health disorder Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder especially (it can also be experienced with other mental health disorders but is mainly linked to this one). “Racism” once meant being discriminatory or hateful towards someone because of their race. Now, it seems to be a word that gets thrown around whenever the media wants extra attention on their news story or calling someone a “racist” seems to be the way to win an argument if you are an extreme leftist. “Sexism” used to mean discriminating or hating on someone because of their sex (or gender, they once meant the same thing as well). Now, it seems to be every single white, straight male who doesn’t believe women are utter victims of society.

When you continually use these words to describe things, even how I described their meanings just now, they lose their meanings. Then when someone is actually triggered, actually being racist, actually being sexist, instead of it being taken seriously, people roll their eyes because they think it is just some extreme leftist “feminazi” bullshit. Oh, and the word Feminazi that we all use, that is basically taking the word “Nazi” and turning it into something that doesn’t mean what it once did either. I’m also talking to you, Feminists, as you also call every Alt-Right person you come across a “Nazi” or a “White Supremacist.” Stop ruining the true meanings of words.

Also, stop adding words such as “Mansplaining” and “Manspreading” into the dictionary. I also manspread. So do you. You also mansplain to men. Let’s not pretend we don’t interrupt EACH OTHER and don’t all sit with our legs open sometimes. It is sad I need to even say that…

Third-Wave Feminism is embracing Sharia Law and it is becoming an issue. Do you know what is happening in Germany and Sweden at the moment? Go take a look. That is all I will say. The media is not being honest about this. Recently in Ontario, a man was charged for not respecting Sharia Law. I make fun of Christianity all the time. I have never been charged. We had stopped charging people for choosing not to respect religions.

Third-Wave Feminism is ruining Free Speech. Have you seen what has happened at Berkley? It was once known as the school of Free Speech. It began the Free Speech Movement and now it seems to be starting the Anti-Free Speech Movement. As a blogger and writer, I am actually horrified that my right to free speech will one day be infringed upon. I live in Canada. I do not even know why that is a fear of mine but it truly is. It is not because of white, straight men either that I am fearful. I am fearful the women who are feminists are going to infringe on my rights.

Third-Wave Feminists are now man hating. #killallthemen. Need I say more? The only thing I want to say is…Second-Wave Feminists tried very hard to teach society that Feminism was solely about wanting equal rights and opportunities for women and did not hate men. When Third-Wave Feminists do things such as “#killallthemen” or start blaming every single issue they experience in normal everyday life on “white, cisgender males” then that undoes everything Second-Wave Feminism tried to prove to society. Thanks for that…

What are they doing to solve real issues? Due to Feminists accepting Sharia Law as a peaceful religion that is no longer oppressive to women, we are now never going to fight for true equality all over the world. You see, women in places where they practice Sharia Law are being circumcised. We were once fighting against that. Feminists today do not seem to see that as a problem. They are not fighting for education in third world countries like they once did. They are not bringing up issues to do with these places and how oppressive they are to women at all anymore. In fact, they seem to be embracing it. It is odd and I don’t understand it. I have tried very hard to, I saw the Women’s March in Washington and I am just…confused. “Appalled” is another word I would use to describe how I feel about this…

Third-Wave Feminism seems to be at war with white, straight men and anyone who may have voted for Donald Trump. Even if Canada, if you agree with Trump’s views at all, you can be penalized by those you love…you could lose friendships you’ve had for decades and have family members block you from their social media accounts.

I think Feminists need to re-evaluate what they are fighting for. Many have referred to them as “Feminazis” and many others have even began started calling them “Women Supremacists” and whenever a woman identifies as a “Feminist” today, she is no longer taken seriously. It seems to be a trend to reclaim your womanhood by saying you are no longer a Feminist.

This is scary to me as well. I believe the Feminist Movement, the one I knew and loved several years ago when I was studying Social Service Work in college, is needed. We need to ensure women continue to have rights in our western society. We need to fight for the rights, especially the basic human rights, of women in third world countries, especially places where they practice Sharia Law. We also need to have a movement that women can turn to if their rights are ever infringed on because society will never be perfect.

However, until Feminists begin to realize the world will never be perfect and it will never completely change in order to do whatever it is they want and say in the moment, I believe they will continue to see a decline in the members of their movement. At the moment, the popular website Everyday Feminism is asking for donations because it may not make it until the end of May. I think that tells you how popular this new Feminist Movement actually is, especially since Trump was elected.

When I was first becoming a Feminist, it was all about empowering each other. We were lifting each other up. Now, it seems to be more about finding victim-status in anything a woman or minority can and claiming we need extra protection or special treatment because we are not able to handle bad words being used towards or around us, we cannot even see a man spread his legs too wide without feeling objectified, and soon merely looking at us the wrong way will be considered rape. It seems to be a constant victimhood. As someone who actually was a victim in her life at one point, I do not want to live my life as a victim. It was very tiring to me and I actually oppressed myself in doing so. I think we need to go back to telling women they can accomplish anything, empowering each other to be all we can be, stop arguing and judging everyone and be survivors instead of victims.

Feminists need to realize that they are being regressive and oppressing themselves and until they do I, along with many other women of the world, refuse to identify ourselves as “Feminists.” I think they need to realize that as well and stop calling us sexist and telling us we must not want to have rights.

I want rights, obviously. This is why I am horrified of Sharia Law being acceptable in Canada. I want to keep my rights as a woman! However, I want to go about keeping them the right way. I want to get society back on our side. I want to have men understand why we have this movement again. I want us to fight for what is truly important. I want Third-Wave Feminism to go back to Second-Wave Feminist views and protect our rights in western society while we fight for the rights of women not lucky enough to live in western society.

Now, who else out there feels the same way?