feminist of the week: david allen hippchen
Name: David Allen Hippchen
Age: 25
Occupation: Student
Hometown: Homer City, PA, United States
Describe yourself in one word: Human
What is your definition of feminism?
A movement started by women that was once for establishing equal rights between men and women.
What is your feminist philosophy?
Women deserve equal rights to men, pure and simple.
Can men truly be feminists?
If you ask can men be advocates of women’s rights, the answer is yes. If you ask if men can be feminists as feminism is now, the answer is no. Feminism has become less about equality and more about “getting even” with men.
Is Feminism important in today’s world?
In the third world, absolutely – women all over Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are still oppressed every day. In the first world, feminism is obsolete and needs to work towards equal rights for all rather than dividing groups against each other while looking for the same things.
What are the main challenges men are facing in a feminist world?
Unjust demonisation. If you are a male you can’t talk to a female or a young person of either gender without being immediately suspected of wrong doing and/or called a rapist or pedophile.
How can we, as a people, get beyond the feminist movement?
By advocating HUMAN rights; we are all people and we all deserve to be treated as such. No-one is equal, but we are all human, and we can all agree that everyone deserves better as a whole.
How has social media helped the feminist cause?
It hasn’t. If anything, social media has given a louder voice to the radical end of feminism, which would have a world where men were in the position that women fought so hard to get out of, effectively silencing any progressive movements within.
What role has feminism played in transforming advertising and media?
What is the next step? Feminism has allowed for women and girls to be portrayed as strong leading characters. An example of this would be in any Animation by Hayek Miyazaki.
Do you think that feminism has a branding issue? If so, why and how do you suggest the movement can fix it?
Yes, I do. I’m, frankly, tired of hearing about how only feminists can fight for rights, and that men have no right to do so for themselves. We are all human beings, we all have the same rights, and we should all be allowed to fight for them. The branding issue with feminism is that it’s only FOR WOMEN. It’s high time that we all started to move together for the rights of human beings and stop wasting time on specific groups.
Is feminism simply a myth? If so, what is your “cure” for “feminism?”
Feminism is a very real movement, one that I respect very much. We don’t need a cure, we need a re-purposing.
What does the future of feminism look like?
I see feminism taking hold in the third world and feminist women of the first world learning a valuable lesson from them about how to overcome oppression as a species rather than as only a gender.
What’s your advice to other feminists?
Rally together as humans. Forget race; forget gender identity, move towards the future and rally with all of humanity against all oppressors.
Is Feminism a phase? If so, what is the next phase?
I wouldn’t use the word phase, but it is definitely a step. A step in the right direction, one towards the end of all oppression for all peoples in all places, regardless of what we choose to label them.
I don’t quite understand what you’re trying to do here Lip – these are pretty tired tropes of first world, white middle class feminism. I don’t think people like David need any help to get their voice heard.
Hi David,
I’d like to refer you to some great websites on gender workplace and domestic violence statistics within Australia (a first world country, would you believe) that you might like to have a gander at before you disregard the first world as a place which no longer needs feminism.
http://www.whiteribbon.org.au/uploads/media/updated_factsheets_Nov_13/Factsheet_5_Facts_and_figures.pdf
https://www.wgea.gov.au/sites/default/files/2014-02-10-Stats_at_a_Glance.pdf
As you can see, women account for 3.5 percent of CEO’s in the country despite the fact that more women than men complete year 12 certificates, undergraduate degrees and postgraduate degrees. That doesn’t quite add up now, does it David? Outside of leadership roles, women still make an average of 17.5 percent less money than men. Sure doesn’t sound like equality to me!
If you jump over to the domestic violence side of things you might be surprised to read (surely not, have you been living under a rock?) that nearly two-thirds of Australian women report experiencing at least one incident of physical violence or sexual violence by a man over their lifetime. Two thirds David!! And that is just one fact that knocks me over when i read these statistics, which is why I am appalled to hear you call first world feminism ‘obsolete’. I’m not surprised you have encountered angry feminists, because when women hear views like yours it’s pretty damn hard not to get mad.
Calling yourself a feminist and then making claims like ‘If you are a male you can’t talk to a female or a young person of either gender without being immediately suspected of wrong doing and/or called a rapist or pedophile’ is bit like saying ‘i’m not racist but…’ and then continuing to say something racist.
Don’t use the label as a disclaimer David.
Disappointed in Lipmag for this feature, and sincerely, disappointed in David.
“Feminism has become less about equality and more about “getting even” with men.”
I’d like to know how many discourses on feminism and gender studies David has read, researched and had interest in to come up with this basic one-liner disguised as a definition?
Here’s my issue with David being “Feminist of the Week.”. By saying that feminism is “a movement that was started by women that was once for establishing equal rights for men and women” undermines the fact that women are inherently weighted against (in both, the third world and the first) purely due to their biological make-up. Feminism is about raising the social status for women, because we are unfairly discriminated against. Please note that this goes further than getting the vote or equal pay, it’s about the fact that when women like me were born and men like you, David, were born, we never started at the same check point.
In my opinion, David has missed the fundamentals of feminism and is a lousy candidate for Feminist of the Week.
To add, maybe if there weren’t so many men raping women on a daily basis, people wouldn’t be so cautious of rapists and pedophiles.
Feminism’s branding problem is that it’s for ‘women only’? Please. David’s comments clearly espouse a few of the major misconceptions of feminism that make people distance themselves from the movement. Namely that it’s a movement filled with man-hating extremists who would love to see nothing other than all men castrated and oppressed in a chance to ‘get even’ with them over the wrongs of history. The only way we want to ‘get even’ is in social standing, choice and opportunity. It sounds like the typical ‘not all men’ defence that has become so frustrating to listen to and completely derails the conversation. Rather than being defensive, give listening a go. Here is a great article by Phil Plait on ‘how not to derail discussions of women’s issues’:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/05/27/not_all_men_how_discussing_women_s_issues_gets_derailed.html
Of course men can be feminists, but is it so surprising that sometimes they are greeted with wariness considering the historical tendency to privilege men over women? It is incredibly frustrating for women who have been campaigning on feminist issues for years only to have their voices ignored to then have a man say the exact same thing and be heard A prominent example that comes to mind is when Charlie Pickering’s article on violence against women went viral and people sat up and went ‘oh my god he’s right!’ despite the fact that this has been a central issue to feminist movement for decades. While it was great that he wrote an article about it and that it reached so many people, this is indicative of the prevailing tendency to value men’s voices over women’s…even if it is not intentional.
Additionally, please do check out the statistics that Maddy has cited here, David, as they prove that feminism is far from obsolete in the first world. We may have significant substantive rights compared to women in developing countries and are privileged to be able to easily access education and basic health resources. But that doesn’t mean discrimination and sexism don’t persist. Did you know that in Australia the pay gap between men and women is actually now increasing? I can’t even imagine where it stands in the States considering the Republicans recently actively voted AGAINST a bill that aimed at legalising equal pay.