The other day, I was walking into school and a guy was walking in front of me. We got to a door, and he opened it for me, and I walked through. Then I wanted to return the favor. So the next door, I opened for him. But he would not go through. Why? Forced chivalry because I am a women.

I am personally a very avid feminist. Feminism, is by definition, equality of all genders and sexes. I feel like the term “Feminism” has been stigmatized by radical sects of the movement who parade shirtless and hold bra burnings, or the less dramatic phonotype of a world where women are preferred and superior to men. While both of these examples, as well as countless others, all steam from the same idea, (feminism,) they do not represent feminism at its purest.

In order to understand feminism, you must first understand the patriarchy. A patriarchy is a male dominated society. (Specifically, in the US, a white male dominated society). Although matriarchies, (female dominated societies) have existed, they are not nearly as common, particularly in the new western world. Speaking as a resident of the United States, we do live in a patriarchy. Although, yes, progress has obviously been made sense the days of the “cult of domesticity,” but men still clearly have the upper hand. The belief that all is equal between genders is ignorance that only enshrouds the true nature of our society. The Patriarchal Structure can be seen both physically and mentally, and affects all, not just women.

The clearest place the difference can be seen, is in the political world. We have never had a female president of the United States, (although next election has potential.) Where currently only 20 women serve out of the 100 in the Senate. 80 out of the 435 total people in the House of Representatives.

The next place the difference becomes apparent, is in the ever present wage gap. Currently, women are paid about 78 cents the man’s dollar. This isn’t because, like some right wings would have you think, that “Women are draw to less paying jobs like social working and teaching,” (cough cough, sexist). The gap isn’t caused by different fields, or even different companies in the field. The difference is distinguishable even within companies, a recent study from a Harvard Economist concluding that in high paying jobs such as business and law, the gap is even wider. The bitter truth, is women are just paid and promoted at a lesser rate.

Those are all more physical effects, easily determined by numbers and charts, so let take a moment to examine to more ideological side. Traditional gender roles. Because it seems to be a subconscious necessity to group being female with being feminine, (passive, submissive, delicate) and male with being masculine, (strong, bread winner, can’t shed a tear). As if a single chromosome determines everything about you. This pairs, again, with traditional gender roles. Women stay home, have children, cook, clear, etc. Men work. Yes, this is definitely not the case in every household, but it is “traditional American family.” Evidence of this can be seen, subtly, everywhere. For example, “little mommy” toys, such ands dolls and plastic food. Even if girls want that, (which there is nothing wrong with) do we commonly see “little daddy” toys like that? Or in the “boys section” is there toy swords, building sets, and more like that. To be clear, even if the sex of a child does affect what toys they like, toys themselves shouldn’t be sexed. Or, another example, where I work right now we currently have a “Mom eats free” coupon. The bottom caption reading, “give mom the night off cooking.” That type of propaganda only entrenches the ideological gender roles more. There are so many more examples, but for time’s sake, I’ll move on.

Another ideological entrenchment is the image of the female body. School dress codes require females to “cover up” to provide a distraction free environment. For who….? Men. (Mostly). In those instances, the female body is vilified, and the responsibility for keeping a man’s thoughts, and actions, at bay rest on how the women dresses. This is what schools are teaching us. Or look at advertisements. Ads for beer, cars, and other “masculine” products often use the female body as a prop to show male superiority. Cars ads, (for a specific example) show the man driving with a beautiful women in his car, or portray women draped over the car like rag dolls. Those same tactics are not used for ads targeted towards “feminine” products. (Those are usually just a nearly impossible standard of beauty, because that’s all traditional roles tell us women are good for, attracting a man to marry.) With the ever entrenching thought that a women’s only responsibility is to attract a man, is it any wonderer women suffer higher rates of low self-extreme, eating disorders, and other mental impairments?  “Like a girl” means weak, and when people were insulting Justine Bieber, they called him “a girl.” Even in movies, there are so many more strong male leads than females. My favorite movie is “The Dark Knight” but there’s only one female character among an array of males. True, she is a strong character, but the movie focuses more on her relationship to the men than her actual ability as an individual, and she ends up being killed off as a way to strengthen the male characters.

The last way the patriarchy is strongly shown, is through our very discourse. Women often times take a man’s last name. They are defined by their relationship to men, (Ms. Miss. Mrs.) where as men are always Mr. We live in a world of MANkind, congressMEN, MANpower. The term “Man” supposedly encompasses everything. Women are included in the category of “you guys” but men generally wouldn’t feel included in the phrase, “you girls.” In other languages, such as Spanish, girls are ELLAS and boys are ELLOS. A group of 100 girls would be called ELLAS, but add one boy and suddenly the group is ELLOS.

Another group of people that cannot be ignored, (probably because they suffer the most) is the LBGTQ* community. Heteronormativity and traditional gender roles ring loud in the ears of those who are nonconforming and don’t fit under the framework of a patriarchy. No wonder people in this group suffer more from suicidal attempts than any other community, (4 to 6 times as much as anyone else).

The patriarchy hurts everyone, even men suffer from the expectations to be “masculine” and have no weakness. This is why we need feminism! We need to spread the word that the way the world remains is a problem, and we cannot stop the reformation! We still need to push for equality for all genders and all sexes. This is the true goal of feminism. To allow people to just be people, without having to have any preconceived notions of they can and cannot be because the patriarchy says so. Put aside ideas of old fashioned ideas of “chivalry” and be polite to everyone no matter their sex. Just respect everyone. If you open a door for me, it doesn’t matter who you are, I will open a door for you. And you better go through it.