Why does the ‘fem’ in feminism scare some people?

Here is something tragic to consider. The fact that propaganda has forced people into believing that maybe women are just as capable as men. This knowledge didn’t come naturally to most people. We did not grow up with the basic instinct that the lack of Y chromosomes in the body is in fact not a sign of insignificance.

When Homo Sapiens first came around over 200,000 years ago and man set his foot down under the damp roof of a cave, perhaps the woman did not look up and continued gathering grains, not realising that her lowered gaze and shut mouth is what would shape the image of her oppressed lineage. Origination of democracy can be traced back to as early as 5BC. But New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote - only 124 years ago. Do the math to find the alarming number of years for which, women were assumed to have a lower IQ, while being thought of as unequipped to make decisions for themselves. So don’t spit ‘feminist’ in people’s faces, when they try to rationalise your thoughts, because you need to understand that our freedom is brand new and our voices have only recently been given sound. We’d like to flaunt it for a while.

And I would urge all men not to run away from feminism. It’s only the idea of equality for both genders. I cannot understand how people say they don’t believe in it. It’s not religious, it’s scientific – like the shape of the Earth. The ‘fem’ in the word feminism scares some people, but the harmless reason why it has a female touch is because man has already vouched for everything else.

- The reader is a 16-year-old student, based in Sharjah.