There is no one feminism; there is no one feminist. Feminism will mean different things for each individual. There is a great danger with accumulating all the different individuals on the large feminist spectrum into one singular ideology. The loudest voices of the movement will be the most heard and this will be how it is presented to the world regardless of how extreme or representative of the female community these voices are. This will inevitably cause waves of resentment by those who don’t agree with these extreme or unrepresentative views and will reject ‘feminism’ because of it. Within it’s definition1 it says that feminism is a range of ideologies and movements. There is no objective feminism. It does’t exist outside the human mind. The common core of the meaning of feminism would be something along the lines of the shared goal of these separate movements and ideologies. These tend to be defining, advocating and achieving equal political, economic, cultural, personal and social rights for women. What constitutes as equality for both genders within these rights and how they should be established will vary immensely. Similarly people have disagreed over the meaning of liberalism, the value of nationalism, what it means to be a christian, or how to enforce communism; just like any ideology. Therefore, to most effectively achieve these varied common goals of the feminist agendas we must approach it with compassion and understanding. We must all constructively try to strip our cultural biases and establish what is best for individual woman worldwide and in turn the whole world. There is no one feminism, there is no one feminist, yet we must unite into one sisterhood. The wide and varied feminist movement cannot possibly unite into one set of beliefs with one approach. Therefore the one all encompassing belief should be respect for each others approach to feminism and fight towards what equality means for different women worldwide. Feminism should be based on compassion; compassion between women and compassion between women and men. We must respect each others individuality whilst support everyones equality.
We should use our compassion to form a sisterhood; to look out for each other as women. That is what feminism means to me. Women of the world are and will inevitably be born with different constitutional and conventional rights as long as we are divided into disparate countries and cultures. We may not agree on what equality for the female gender means but we will nevertheless fight for each others subjective and personal aims and our right to express that. Women must take some responsibility here as it is paramount that women must unite together to progress in the battle for equality.
