FEMINI-STEEM

The FEMINI-STEEM discord server was set up as a place initially for entrants of @beanz International Women's Day Contest to nominate their posts or the posts they find and recommend to win.

With the help of 6 judges

@bluefinstudios, @shadowspub, @dcardozo25,

@battleaxe, @angelveselinov, @idenkcall

We will be working our way through the hundreds of entries to find the best of the 3 categories.

• Videos
• Art
• Writing

If you are working on an entry for the contest please be aware that there is only 6 hours left to enter.

So far the contest has been a huge success with entries from both men and women from many different cultural backgrounds. It has been incredibly encouraging and heart warming to see so many different perspectives of feminism in the one place. We've had some perspectives from young and old, male and female, Christian and Islamic, mothers, fathers, lgbt people and even a porn director.

My hope is that when communities are launched that there will be appreciation for the many perspectives and respect for the different stages of feminism which exist from one continent to another and the issues they face.

Feminism has never really existed as a "community" before, but has been more like many communities as part of individual movements which collectively make up one of the waves (eras) of feminism. Sometimes there are even groups or communities who claim their agenda is feminist while other feminists can argue that their agenda is actually anti-feminist. For example the third wave feminism issue of freedom to express sexuality is arguably contradictory to the issue of self objectification and dehumanisation of women in the media. The adult industry is another self contradictory issue within feminism where some feminists want to empower women in the sex industry and reform the "male gaze" to something more sensually appealing to women, while other feminists see it as a toxic industry for women regardless of those sex workers who are lucky enough to be treated very well by their directors and employers.

The co-existence of issues like these means that feminism doesn't have a clear direction or agenda. There is no black and white and there are no clear-cut answers. It is far too broad of a concept for every feminist to be on the same page, and yet many assumptions are made about people who identify as feminist by people who are less educated on feminism and only experience it as propaganda. Keep in mind that more than 90% of the world that we see comes from the media - social or not - all media outlets are regulated by centralised authorities and even in social media we who use it use filters and propaganda similar to the mass media. The media will have you believe that feminists are making demands of you to change your ways. And of course, in some places people are doing that while using the "feminist badge" as their claim to superiority. Despite all that, the truth is that identifying as a feminist does not define any of your personal beliefs or values apart from one.

WOMEN ARE PEOPLE

and should be treated as mans equal

...
This is regardless of whether or not you acknowledge the inequalities of the present world.
Note : Feminism can mean a theory or a movement. Activism is the use of direct actions in opposition to or support of a cause. There are feminists and there are feminist activists. One uses confrontation to force change, the other uses awareness to educate and inspire people. "Desperate times call for desperate measures." But chemotherapy won't cure a cold.

SOME OBSERVATIONS

As mentioned already, the contest entries covered a vast amount of perspectives of womanhood and feminism. The title "What it means to be a woman" and "Women who inspire me" both brought expressions of appreciation for femininity. I want to address this first by saying thank you for recognising the value of these qualities, but secondly by reminding you all that no woman should be expected to fulfill the characteristics being prescribed to women.

GENDER PRESCRIPTIONS

What is gender?

In some places you will find gender defined as being either male or female. Unfortunately in these cases gender is being mistaken for sex. Your sex is determined by your chromosomes and this determines whether you are male or female. However gender is a (wo)man-made selection of characteristics brought together to compliment one another and then be prescribed to the sexes to which they are considered more suitable.

Consider the table below for the traits prescribed to each gender, then ask yourself if you can assign yourself completely to one side and not to the other. Notice that for most of the traits listed, you cannot be both traits in the same row at the same time. Although the characteristics are almost all as likable as the counterpart in the column next to it, you can see that there is one clearly more self serving while the other is more useful to have around you.

MASCULINITY	FEMININITY
strong	gentle
tough	fragile
insensitive	emotional
self-reliant	affectionate
heroic	vulnerable
rational	sensitive
focused	attentive
competitive	reserved
ambitious	supportive
athletic	elegant
dominant	cooperative
constructive	nurturing
assertive	accommodating
egotistic	altruistic
technical	conversational

The cultural construction of gender would have occurred over many centuries. Gender became more and more defined with the growth of globalisation, the spread of religion and there's been growing emphasis ever since the beginning of the age of information. Before all of this, gender only existed as a tribal construction, the emphasis or importance of which would have varied from tribe to tribe.

The hunter / gatherer theory is only based on our own biased presumption that the roles we have today are natural and therefore males and females must have been designated separate roles. It was assumed for many years that the vikings who fought and pillaged were only male until recently. Anthropologists now report a significant percentage of the armed vikings were women.

There's nothing stopping a woman from choosing traits from the box of masculinity and it won't make her any less of a woman. Although a man or my children might appreciate the more emotionally serving characteristics of femininity, I will personally appreciate my competitive side, my constructive side and my ambitious side and I should never concern myself on whether this is at the expense of a suitable partner who might prefer more availability. Similarly, any man who accepts the traits that he has which happen to fall into the list under femininity is no less of a man. It takes great strength of character to appreciate these characteristics which appear to be underappreciated by others around you.

For anybody who's reading this uncertain that they can be any of these "masculine" traits without losing their "feminine" beauty, or fear losing respect by embracing your "feminine" traits, ask yourself is it more important for you to have the respect and love of somebody else or to have the love and respect of yourself. Ask yourself irrespective of the gender they are prescribed to, which should you be teaching your sons and daughters. And why treat them like a social experiment by raising them differently.

Finally, I'm not asking anybody to change who they are. What I attempt to do is to make people aware that feminism is about freedom. There are values in both traits on both sides of the gender spectrum, and there are times when one is more useful than the other. Balance would be ideal, but we are only human and so we can't be perfect. As beautiful as the "Super women" appreciation posts are, it is a lot to expect of women to be that way. We are in fact imperfect.

So whoever you are, embrace it.

Whether you are male or female, whether you consider yourself a man or a woman, whether your traits are masculine or feminine, embrace them. Because they are just made up designs that do not restrict you.

FEMINI-STEEM