A Female's Rant

Yesterday, I saw that a friend from work, Tommy,  had posted an article on Facebook titled "I Am a Female, and I Am So Over Feminists." Now, obviously, Tommy is not a female, but he said that he considered himself to be a feminist. The article focuses on the current situation of women feeling empowered by putting men down. Feminists are straying from solely helping women have equal rights, and are moving to the general slogan of "Men Suck." I found this interesting, because the movie "Birds of Prey" recently came out. Being a DC Comics lover, I was really sad to see that it was rated R. Some people told me that it was the best DC movie ever made, which I highly doubted, because nothing beats Wonder Woman. I decided to read the reviews to see if other people thought that it really was that great. I found that it actually has a terrible rating, and the majority of the comments focused on the fact that it was an all-female movie dedicated to bashing men. Such a stark contrast from Wonder Woman, which celebrates both the strengths and weaknesses of both men and women. 

Women are great. As a woman, I think I have to say that, and it's true, but I also realize that women have their weaknesses. We can overly emotional sometimes, and manipulative(passive-aggressive, anyone), and petty, and my gosh, women love to gossip. We are also very tender, and loving, and understanding, and compassionate. Women have children and raise them and have struggled for hundreds of years for equal rights. Yes, we deserve the same rights as men. We have proven that we are strong individuals. That does not mean that we are, or need to be, the same as men. We do not need to belittle men to feel good about ourselves. I am also a female, and I am so over feminists. The article made the point that women are mad that men's sports are broadcasted more than women's, but the article brings up the good point that more men watch sports than women, and they typically want to watch men play. There's nothing wrong with that. Is it fair that sister missionaries have entire stores dedicated to every style of clothing possible, while elders have only to pick what color suit and ten ties they want? Yes. Men's fashion has not developed in the way that women's has, and men only have so many options. I felt so bad for elders on my mission, who had exactly two pairs of shoes, seven ties, and two suits. They wore basically the same thing every day. Meanwhile, I had every color dress, and like seven pairs of shoes, and I could do my hair differently, and it could be as long as I wanted as long as it was well-maintained. Same thing with the elders being sent to the more dangerous areas of the mission. I was grateful and I think Mommy was too, that I wasn't ever mugged or attacked. There are elders who were, and I'm sure their mothers were so worried about them. I'm grateful that I was never in any physical danger and I'm grateful that the elders were willing to go to places like Colombia so the work of God could continue!
I think the most irritating examples in pop culture for me of feminists changing something is in Star Trek, with Spock's famous line, "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!" This last part has recently been changed to "To boldly go where no one has gone before."  This bothers me, because there were several women on the crew of the Enterprise. It was implied that women were part of the "man" mentioned in the line. Why was it necessary to change out the one word?
Sometimes, I look at women around me, and I'm embarrassed that I am grouped in the same class as them. There are girls at my job that are whiny and petty and lazy, but there are also men like that. Some men are rude, and crass, and arrogant. There are also women and men that are hard workers, and who come to work at 5:20am every morning like a giant ball of sunshine. The men in my workplace are respectful of the women, and we all make the same amount of money. I am actually the only female in my area for the first two hours of work, and as such, I have gotten to know the guys in the morning really well, and we have become really good friends. One of them is teaching me Portuguese, another discusses organic chemistry lab with me, and another fan-girls out with me over the awesomeness of Star Wars Clone Wars. I would say that they definitely respect me, especially since they feel comfortable enough to compliment me when my hair looks good. And I can do the same with them. I would never want to exchange my own empowerment for theirs. No one is perfect, and no one's life is easy, so we just need to lift everyone up, and learn to see how lucky we are to live in the time of acceptance, love, and respect. We are all awesome!
Women have never been so respected. We have made great strides to get to where we are, and we should be so dang proud of ourselves. We should also be grateful for those men that have helped that to happen. Teamwork makes the dream work, and the dream continues.