People have often asked me how I could possibly consider myself to be ‘against’ feminism, asking how I could possibly be against ‘equality of the sexes’. This view usually results in a scoff or a scorn from whoever I have ‘come out of the equality closet’ to, and you can gradually see their faces shift towards a look of utter contempt.

Equality of the sexes, however, is a firm belief of mine. I too dream of a world where men and women can all hold hands and dance merrily around the meeting table of their CEO office spaces. I too dream of a world where pressures and expectations are a thing of the past of which we can only laugh at as together we drink gender neutral drinks and wallow in the sunlight of a harmonic future.

For me, the decision to turn away from feminism is because I believe it no longer works towards this beautiful dream of mine. It no longer works towards ‘equality of the sexes’, instead it leans towards ‘equality of the sexes… for women and girls’. This has sort of become its slogan in the past decade or so: equality of the sexes ‘for women and girls’. So what does that really mean?

It seems sort of ironic doesn’t it; equality for all, for women and girls? The more I think about it, and deconstruct it, the more it reminds me of Orwell’s Animal Farm saying ‘all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’. And it pops up at every feminist party there is, that illusive ‘for women and girls’.

I remember for example hearing Emma Watson’s infamous HeforShe Speech, and I thought to myself, ‘finally a woman who really gets it’; who understands that women and men both have problems, and that only in working together can equality be achievable. But then upon the HeForShe Website you read: I am one of billions of men who believe equality for women is a basic human right that benefits us all.

Perhaps Animal Farm wasn’t on the curriculum at Hogwarts? … ‘All wizards are equal… but some wizards are more equal than others’.

In this ironic statement on the HeForShe website, Watson’s views change entirely, in this she does not say that men and women need to work together to fight for equality (which I think everyone can agree with), instead she suggests that men need to work FOR women to improve ‘their’ way of life. Despite outlining in her speech the countless problems that face men, she suggests that those issues are only as important as their benefit towards women. There now is no care for the progress of men. This statement, I think you’ll agree, puts forward a HeFORshe movement rather than a HeANDsh… oh wait, I guess I should have saw that coming!

Sadly though it is reflective of all feminist movements, the concern is solely with women’s issues, and of a complete disregard for mens. It is reasons like this why I have begun to write this blog, to expose the issues surrounding men that feminism so often turns its back on. My belief is that only in looking at mens issues alongside women’s issues can we begin to understand how they correlate, how they work off one another and how in combating pressure for one group of people we might relieve pressure for the other.

My hope is that the pigs and the hens of Orwell’s equality farm might unite to combat each others farmyard issues. Whilst gender driven movements seem to fail here, we can’t prioritise one farm yard animal in our quest for equality because all the farmyard animals have issues. To earn equality it must be inclusive of them all… for them all!