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1 Text B
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2 New Words
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Text B
What does feminism really mean?
1 Imagine a world where skirts, makeup, and high heels are prohibited, where men are forbidden from giving gifts to women, where mothers ignore their children, and where marriage and dating are obscene. It sounds night marish, but this is the dogma many people have in mind when they hear the word "feminism". Feminists, we're told, hate men and want them dead. Or feminists want to switch places with men, so women can work all day and men can all stay home and keep house. Or maybe feminists want to be like men: dress identically, use the same toilets, compete in the same sports leagues. lf this definition is true, it seems feminists would be the provocation for insurgencies across the whole of society, breaking routines，eradicating traditions and ruining everyone's lives in the process!
2 Fortunately, that's not feminism! Feminists don't believe that women are better than men or that women need to become or displace men. True, some feminists enjoy masculine pursuits like boxing, but they don't want to eject men from society. Feminists have fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons. Their lives are just as coiled up with those they love as anyone else's.
3 So, what do feminists believe? Distilled to its essence, feminism is the idea that men and women should have equal opportunities. A woman should be able to be a man's boss if she is as capable as any other manager, or a man should be allowed to look after children if he has the interest and ability. Nobody should find the situation strange or call it "queer". In other words, feminists believe in a world where no one feels colonized or oppressed because of the roles they fill.
4 In some countries, gender equality remains far away. There are places where women aren't allowed to participate in government or public life, where women are denied education and remain illiterate, and places where women have to keep their hair and faces hidden, or they will risk terrible lashes, detention, or even execution. There are places where young, virgin girls, with no judicial process to protect them, are forced to marry old men and bear children against their will. There are places where women are not allowed to drive a car or sit in the same section as men when using public transit.
5 In comparison, in some other parts of the world, the rights of women have grown tremendously. In the United States, modern women live downright luxurious lives compared to the Pilgrims in colonial times. And in the British Isles, modern womenare essentially equal to men compared to the time when the early kings sat upon their mighty thrones. Feminists, men as well as women, have fought hard to overthrow outdated discriminatory practices and win rights we now take for granted, such as girls attending school, women gaining the voting ballot and running in electoral racesfor the Senate, women owning property, women in sales earning equal commissions as men, and women choosing whether or not to marry or have children. These rights have given women control over their own lives while increasing vastly the number of people in the workforce who discover new ideas and patent new inventions. Can you imagine life without female scientists, inventors, doctors, teachers, and writers?
6 With all the progress of the last decades, it can be hard to see that there is still work to be done, or to remember what was so difficult before. Modern women may raise a chorus of complaints that there are no confident men left, and blame feminism. A modern man may long for the days when a wife would stay home with a spatula and a sponge, cooking kidney beans and steak for dinner, fascinated by his work stories. However, he would be forgetting the need to make enough money to support his household alone.
7 Truthfully, most of us are feminists to some degree. A man who believes that women should stick to working as transcribing secretaries or midwives and leave the“good"jobs to men with families is more feminist than a man who believes in strict segregation of the genders or who insists that a woman shouldn't leave the house or speak to strangers. A "trophy wife" who does nothing but apply eye liner and lipstick and go to parties is still feminist enough to believe she shouldn't be hostage to her husband, unable to go to the police if he attacks her for telling him "no". Many of us are feminist indeed; we work in blended groups of men and women, dividing tasks according to ability and interest, read books without caring about the gender of the author, and listen to female teachers as well as male ones with equal attention and respect.
8 Yet even the most feminist environments have barriers we need to tunnel through. For example, we might criticize successful female solicitors for not devoting enough time to their families, or look down on those women who stay home with children for not being ambitious enough to take up a career. We might look down on men who disobey female bosses for not being team players, or look down on other men who obey the same bosses for acting insufficiently masculine.
9 These seem like small problems,the lingering ghosts of greater issues, but they're significant when they're happening to you. Culture isn't easy to change; even if you think a woman has every right to speak loudly and swear like pirates, you might have trouble imagining that any man would date her. Or you might have trouble relaxing around a man who is comfortable making less money than his female friends. Clearly, our thirst for equality must never be fully quenched. But feminism cannot become an appendix at the end of a history book, or an artifact of a bygone epoch. We must remain vigilant if we hope for a continuance of the rights of women.
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