For the sake of conciseness, I’ll summarize feminism’s roots in one brief sentence: Feminism began as a means to an end of women receiving equal status in the eyes of the law and, consequently, equal status in the eyes of society as a whole. It stemmed from the denial of women’s rights to vote and work for equal pay, and, from an unbiased standpoint on humanity, it made perfect sense and was a long time coming. Today’s so-called “feminism,” though, is another beast entirely.

Women today march around kicking and screaming in a stubborn refusal to be “subjected to men’s will” any longer. They demand insurance-covered contraceptives, cite statistics of inequality in wages of the genders and claim that putting on heels and earrings for a night out is giving in to our subjugation by men.

Quite frankly, this is all a load of crap. Instead of reflecting our feminist foremothers’ passion around being seen as humans rather than being defined by gender, these displays of animosity toward males do nothing more than destroy the credibility of the equality argument altogether. Feminism has become a clever disguise for the idea that we women, not men, “run this shit.”

Take, for instance, the outrage over the wage gap. My feminist friends will not relent when it comes to the fact that women’s salaries — depending on their age groups — are between 75 and 85 percent of men’s. This statistic, however, is sadly misleading. First of all, women comprise almost 60 percent of the population in both undergraduate tracks and graduate schools. And though I typically hear the argument that this should lead to higher women’s salaries, my fine-feathered friends neglect that the more time spent in school, the less time spent slaving year after year for the same company (and slowly climbing the payscale ladder). Education is definitely a wise investment, but every extra year of school can delay the job search. And though having more degrees may lead to faster, more lucrative promotions, you’ll initially earn less than colleagues of the same age who began working at the company sooner.

Secondly, we women possess the miraculous gift of giving birth to our world’s future generations. It’s somewhat difficult for a company to continually promote an employee who can take three- to four-month (and typically longer, by choice) lapses from the job at really any time. Women can’t expect to take up to 10 years off from their careers and still come back and earn as much as male counterparts of similar ages.

Those who cry complete unfairness in the wage gap seem to forget that men and women lead completely different lives. The natural deviation between the genders’ lives is bound to lead to discrepancies between salaries, which don’t necessarily point to inequality. Though yes, the world isn’t perfect, and yes, various forms of inequality do exist almost everywhere we look, we need to stop placing every issue into gender-versus-gender terms and see that we can be equal without being exactly the same.

The only true feminist in mainstream media anymore is Nicki Minaj. Yes, I said it. Nicki, in all her wig-clad glory, is the prime example of seeing oneself not as a man or woman but as a person. She herself has said, “I’m trying to entertain, and entertaining is more than exuding sex appeal … I’m trying to just show my true personality, and I think that means more than anything else. I think when personality is at the forefront, it’s not about male or female.” Nicki — who also refers to herself as a king and runs in the heavily male-dominated rap industry — is solely out to prove her own worth, not her worth in comparison to a man’s. She represents everything genuine about traditional feminism — in a nontraditional way, that is. We ladies could learn something from her.

So, the next time you’re looking to rail against the “War on Women” and complain about how oppressed we’ve been for far too long, ask yourself: “Am I a real feminist?” Because if you are, you’ll feel no need to worry and whine about everything you’re missing out on that men might have. You’ll simply pursue whatever it is you want to do, expect nothing to be handed to you freely and avoid constantly comparing your situation to someone else’s. You are powerful, and you are equal. And so am I. And so are men.

Contact Claire Chiara at cchiara@dailycal.org.

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Or at least that’s ostensibly the message of the soap company’s recently released “Real Beauty Sketches” commercial.

The three-minute clip is part of the company’s “Campaign for Real Beauty,” which claims to have “started a global conversation about the need for a wider definition of beauty,” according to the campaign website. The marketers want to “make beauty a source of confidence, not anxiety.”

The ad has taken the Internet by storm, with The Huffington Post calling it “The Most Powerful Ad Campaign We’ve Ever Seen.” It has also taken my Facebook feed by storm, and that makes sense. Here’s why:

The commercial depicts a series of women being invited into an airy room, where they are hidden behind a curtain as a male forensic sketch artist draws their faces based only on information they provide him about their features.

The women are entirely self-deprecatory. They comment on deepening wrinkles, unwanted freckles.

“I would say I have a pretty big forehead,” one says. “I kind of have a fat, rounder face,” says another.

And then a second set of women is introduced, and we are told that they have casually interacted with the first set. Each of these second set then describes one of the original women while the sketch artist draws new pictures. These women provide entirely positive descriptions.

“It was a nice, thin chin,” one says.

And then the grand reveal: The original women are shown the sketches, based on their self-descriptions, alongside the ones from the other women’s descriptions. Based on conventional standards, the first set is much less attractive than the second set. We are too harsh on ourselves, that juxtaposition says.

Theoretically, that’s a really nice idea; my Facebook friends have certainly thought so.

But let’s be real: For all of the commercial’s attempts at appealing to women through soft lighting, beautiful spaces and a refreshing “you’re probably better than you think!” mantra, what they’re selling is not a “wider definition of beauty.”

Because the commercial doesn’t say that having looks that do not align with conventional standards of beauty — like wrinkles and a “fat face” — is okay. What it says is that your flaws probably aren’t as bad as you think, that your chin is probably thinner than you think.

And that “wider definition of beauty”? It apparently doesn’t involve overweight women or women above the age of 40, none of whom are shown. It also only hesitantly includes women of color, who get no speaking time in the “after” reflections portion at all.

What the commercial does say is that in order to see their own beauty, women need a rational man to show it to them, to put the truth there before them with the careful precision of the male forensic artist’s drawings.

In one of the “after” scenes, the male sketch artist physically leads one of the women to this truth with his hand on her arm before standing beside her as she looks at the sketch.

“Do you think you’re more beautiful than you say?” he coaxes, getting her to the truth mentally as well.

“Yeah,” she demurs, enlightened now. “I should be more grateful of my natural beauty.”

Forget every other damn commercial telling us the opposite — if we’re not convinced we’re beautiful, if we’re insecure about our looks, it’s our own damn fault, and we need improvement.

The commercial then cuts to a scene with one of the other women holding onto a man with a close-up on her face vulnerably pushed up against his chest.

“We spend a lot of time, as women, analyzing and trying to fix the things that aren’t quite right,” she narrates. “We should spend more time appreciating the things we do like.”

That’s right: We women are always overanalyzing. But no fear! With a good strong man holding us up, we can be coaxed out of this silliness: We can live the “after image” they allow.

Fuck that. I don’t need Dove to tell me that my flaws aren’t as bad as I think they are. That’s no “wider definition of beauty.” 

And I definitely don’t need men to lead me out of my insecurities. And I don’t need other women’s approval to feel OK either.

Because the reality is that if I based my judgment of myself on other people’s opinions, the majority of them would be negative. For every positive Dove ad, there are 1,000 others that prey on my insecurities — that’s why this one is appealing at all; it’s the counterargument.

I just need to be enough for me, not the best, not “beautiful” on anyone’s scale, not humbly schooled by a soap company, not “natural” or made-up,  not perfect or enlightened — just enough. That’s enough for me.

Contact Sarah Burns at sburns@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @_SBurns.

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Commentators sometimes nostalgically lament the supposed collapse of courtship among young people. But as of late, feminists have generally been more sanguine about the culture of casual sex on campus. Hanna Rosin articulated the argument best when she wrote last year that “feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hookup culture,” because “an overly serious suitor fills the same role an accidental pregnancy did in the 19th century: a danger to be avoided at all costs, lest it get in the way of a promising future.”

Broadsides against promiscuity, on the other hand, are typically associated with puritanical social conservatism. They frequently rely on the idea that too much sex is inherently sinful or that it damages our integrity as human beings. New York Times columnist David Brooks, for example, once proclaimed that “anyone who has several sexual partners in one year is committing spiritual suicide.”

But today’s elite college students couldn’t care less about religious, spiritual or moral arguments against casual sex. And it’s not just that we are less religious than older generations. Educated Millennials have a distinctively libertarian social outlook. As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote, “there’s something about the process of becoming comparatively well-off and educated that seems to shrink the moral domain down to its bare minimum — I won’t hurt you, you don’t hurt me, and beyond that, to each her own.”

Freitas’ book could prove to be more influential than past treatises on hookup culture because she recognizes the socially libertarian ethos that pervades college campuses. Though Freitas has a background in theology, she eschews rhetoric about abstract moral concepts like sanctity or degradation, opting instead to make a detailed case that casual sex does real, tangible harm. She appeals to socially progressive priorities, like rape and gender inequities, rather than conservative concerns about debauchery and moral collapse. In other words, she argues that casual sex violates even Haidt’s minimalist definition of morality.

Her commentary on the complex relationship between hookup culture and sexual assault is especially lucid. She describes the experience of one young woman who “was so out of it that not only was she unable to consent, she was too drunk to move away when someone was ‘masturbating into her mouth.’ That this sexual assault went unreported by her is a given — a big part of what hookup culture teaches both women and men on campus is that ‘sex just happens,’ especially when you’re drunk.” She suggests that sexual assault is inextricably linked to the culture of casual sex and that the two must be addressed together.

Gender inequalities also feature prominently in Freitas’ indictment. She enumerates a number of themes for campus parties she observed during her research: “CEOs and their Secretary Hos,” “Superheroes and Supersluts,” “Bussinessmen and Office Sluts” — you get the idea. Women are expected to show up drunk and half-naked to these events, where many hookups take place. According to Freitas’ surveys, women believed participating in these parties was “the only way to get the male attention they craved — male attention that has become extremely fraught and hard to win in any other way within the context of hookup culture.”

Resistance to the hookup culture has emerged on some elite college campuses. Students at Harvard, Stanford and Princeton founded “Anscombe Societies,” socially conservative groups dedicated to “a proper understanding for the role of sex and sexuality,” as Princeton’s puts it. But these groups use an outdated moral lexicon that relies on stigma and taboos that have been largely dismantled in the decades since the sexual revolution. It’s no wonder that, even though Freitas’ surveys indicate that many students are uncomfortable with the hookup culture, the Anscombe societies have failed to attract a serious following.

Freitas’ book isn’t perfect. Her tone might at times seem retrograde to some college students, who do not object to a level of laxity toward sex even if they are uncomfortable with the hookup culture as it currently exists. And she fails to put forward any solutions that could plausibly have a noticeable impact on the problem she so vividly describes. The best she can come up with is having parents and professors educate students more about the emotional harm wrought by the hookup culture.

But maybe she doesn’t need to explicitly offer solutions. “The End of Sex,” with a bevy of data and anecdotes, builds a powerful practical case against excessive casual sex — one that will speak to Millennials’ libertarian social and ethical outlook. Maybe that’s enough.

Jason Willick is the assistant opinion page editor. Contact him at jwillick@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter: @jawillick.

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A 16-year-old high school girl from Steubenville, Ohio, drinks at a party. She starts to feel sick and passes out. Two football players use this as an opportunity to drag her unconscious body from one party to another. They rape her, urinate on her and live-tweet the whole thing while their friends watch and laugh. Please tell me, was that girl asking for it?

A former Steubenville NAACP leader thinks she was, calling the victim “drunk and willing.” Women are constantly scrutinized and blamed for violent crimes that are committed against them because of their clothing, their personal choices and their alcohol consumption. Society teaches us: Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal, don’t murder. But when it comes to rape, the message is clear: Don’t get raped. Rape is an act whose responsibility, time after time, falls on its victims, not on its perpetrators.

We have to wonder why. Is it the media, which unfortunately uses the female form as an object? Turn on the TV, and look at how many half-naked, writhing women you find in commercials for cars, for beer, for food. The media tells us we can have the woman just as easily as we can the new bacon double cheeseburger. It’s all there for the taking.

Women can’t win in this world. There seem to be only two positions open to us. The first is the role media creates, in which women exist only for the pleasure of men, to be walking, talking sex dolls who never say “no.” If we reject this objectified role and demand to be treated as people, with freedom to choose what we wear and sleep with whom we like, we get labeled as cockteases and whores. Female liberation exists only within the confines of patriarchy.

All of our choices, then, become tied to sex. What we wear, what we drink, whom we smile at are all just open invitations for men to exercise their physical dominance over us. I wish I didn’t have to say “men” and “women.” It saddens me that rape is also a gender issue. Yes, female rapists and male rape victims exist, but the majority of rapes involve a male aggressor and a female victim. It is disempowering for us all that women are portrayed as wanting to be maimed sexually and that men are portrayed as insatiable beasts, incapable of rational thinking and unable to control their sexual desire.

I’m sorry to the man outside of BART who tried to start a conversation with me. It was late, and what I gave you in return was no eye contact, no “hello” back. My fingers tightened around the pepper spray in my pocket. I’m sorry to the men who have good intentions but are treated like criminals simply because they’re male. That’s not fair.

But it will continue to happen. I will keep ignoring any man who talks to me late at night. I can’t be the nice person who I am when one in four women will be a victim of rape or attempted rape by the time she leaves college. I can’t help but be on guard when I know that 50 percent of rape victims who come forward are accused of lying. I will not feel safe in a country in which the media mourns the damaged football careers of two rapists and not the poor 16-year-old girl whose life they ruined. I can’t sit back and relax when only 3 percent of all rapists end up in jail. I am a woman, and let me be honest: I am terrified.

My fear grew when I found a website called avoiceformen.com, a self-proclaimed anti-feminist website that runs articles whose topics include why women are the only ones who can stop rape and how women actually enjoy being raped. Part of their sick, twisted logic is that women often like rough sex and that some have rape fantasies, so rape is OK and should be encouraged.

Let me make myself very clear. Enjoying rough sex is not asking to be raped. Even having rape fantasies is not asking to be raped. There is a monumental difference between playing out a fantasy with a sexual partner you trust and feel safe with and being forced to have sex against your will. Making excuses for rape does nothing but perpetuate rape culture and encourage rapists.

For those of you who think women are “asking for it,” you’re right. We are asking for something. We are begging, pleading, demanding a world in which we feel safe and respected. We’re asking to be treated like decent human beings. We’re asking for an end to rape and rape culture. When will you finally listen?

Contact Elisabeth Bahadori at sex@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @lisabaha.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this column incorrectly stated that one in four women will be raped by the time she leaves college. In fact, one in four women will be a victim of rape or attempted rape by the time she leaves college.

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Rosin sees evidence of this on American university campuses, where women earn about three in five bachelor’s and master’s degrees, a majority of doctorates and about half of all law and medical degrees. This emerging power reversal in higher education is easily observable right here at UC Berkeley, where a majority of entering freshmen have been female for the past 15 years.

Rosin even offers an interesting alternative to the traditional feminist critique of the college hookup culture, which essentially asserts that young women are being exploited by predatory, testosterone-driven frat boys. In fact, Rosin argues, young women take advantage of the hookup culture so they can have fun without holding back their careers. “To put it crudely, now feminist progress is largely dependent on hook-up culture,” she writes.

Rosin sees evidence of a “matriarchy” emerging in the economy at large. Young women outearn young men in virtually all metropolitan areas in the United States, according to a 2010 study Rosin cites. Three-quarters of jobs lost in the Great Recession were held by men, and male participation in the labor force is at an all-time low. And it’s not looking any better for men in the future: 12 of the 15 job categories projected to grow most over the next decade are dominated by women.

The striking cultural and economic transformations Rosin exhaustively and persuasively documents in “The End of Men” get at an important question for feminists: How will feminism retain its credibility in a 21st century where so many elements of the West’s patriarchal legacy have broken down?

Unfortunately, instead of using the book as an opportunity to begin grappling with this question, many feminists chose to scoff at Rosin’s thesis.

Writing in the The Guardian, Cambridge University professor Mary Beard expressed skepticism of Rosin’s statistics (without saying why) and calls Rosin’s narrative “mythical.” In The New York Times, Stephanie Coontz, another feminist scholar, implausibly writes off all the trends outlined in the book as the natural products of the end of formal gender discrimination.

Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, even suggested that the ascent of women and the decline of men represents another form of patriarchal manipulation. Using language that a misogynist man might have used to complain about women a half-century ago, Boushey says women are “letting men off the hook” and that men “sit on their butts while women do it all.” Christina Patterson, a columnist for The Independent, took a similarly aggressive tone, disdainfully rejecting Rosin’s thesis in its entirety and proclaiming that it’s time for women to “stop being nice, stop being modest, stop being victims and fight.”

The feminist response to Rosin’s book suggests that feminism is in trouble. Successful social movements adapt to changing circumstances. But reviewers’ knee-jerk, categorical rejection of Rosin’s argument suggests that feminists cannot shake the old conception of feminism, which posits that women are being systematically exploited by an oppressive patriarchy. If the trends described in “The End of Men” continue — and women come to truly dominate higher education and the professional class — this expansive definition of feminism will become irrelevant.

Feminists still have important work to do. This should be clear to anyone who has paid attention to the Republican Party’s position on reproductive rights. Furthermore, women are still underrepresented at the highest levels of business and government, and a surprising new study showed that women still face subconscious discrimination in science at major universities.

But if feminism cannot redefine itself, its ability to resolve the enduring inequities that affect women will be jeopardized. As men continue their economic decline while women flourish, the old, strident, combative style of feminism will lose its political credibility and its capacity to be a force for positive change.

Feminists should instead embrace the findings of Rosin’s book. They should acknowledge systemic disadvantages faced by men as well as women. While they fight to end bias against women in science, they must also look for ways to stop the precipitous decline in male academic performance. While they try to increase female representation in corporate boardrooms and in Congress, they must find a coherent way to address the forces that are leading record numbers of men to drop out of the workforce.

If feminism is to survive, it must adapt to the changing gender dynamics of the 21st century, not deny them.

Contact Jason Willick at jwillick@dailycal.org or on Twitter: @jawillick.

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