“Equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We NEED it to stand on this earth as men and women.”

Whedon in response to every journalist who has ever spoken to him. (Source: The Wellington Young Feminists Collective)

We NEED equality. That’s an incredible statement. It’s those capital letters which impress me – ignore that it’s a now-rich white guy saying it and look at the passion in those words. He’s saying that equality is not optional. It’s not something for only people with too much luxury and free time to turn their attention to.

And he makes it clear that this belief comes from his parents teaching him that the rights and respect we should give to ‘people’ don’t only apply to straight, white, cis males who behave in approved ways. It certainly doesn’t immediately stop applying to 51% of the human race – all other human beings get those rights as well. Why is this concept so revolutionary after all this time? Why are we having to campaign to stop homosexuality still being illegal in so much of the Commonwealth, for a start?

I certainly feel equality as something we ‘need’. I’m unable to hold my head up as a man while my country treats people in all the bigoted, ingrained ways it still does. It seems blindingly obvious to me, but in my case didn’t come from sentiments in the home growing up, or from the attitudes of my parents (who keep surprising me with how socially conservative they are). Yet the UK is far ahead of many others: I’m visiting Belgrade (the capital of Serbia) right now and the government recently decided not to allow a Gay Pride march because they wouldn’t be able to protect the marchers from massive violence. At least they’re not one of the countries handing out prison sentences, or death sentences.

Making a statement that I feel personally affected by inequality against groups I’m not technically part of is usually the point at which I’m told I’m not allowed to have an opinion – that I just have ‘White Middle-class Guilt’ for example. Well, there’s nothing wrong with that guilt as long as it leads to campaigning and action instead of the typical corresponding middle-class ‘slacktivism’. The idea that those outside of the group in question shouldn’t feel strongly about an issue would mean that straight people can’t be against homophobia – it’s ridiculous. And Whedon says so:

The misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who is confronted with it.

The imbalance affects him, and everyone else. Equality isn’t something to be sorted out after we tackle the other issues of society, it’s not an optional nice-to-have on top of the cake, it’s an urgent and real NEED which affects the whole population.

Whether or not you think Whedon succeeds in promoting gender equality in his movies and TV, that speech is still stunning. Every time I post the link new friends find it for the first time and are awed, and others feel the need to pass it on once again. Five years later and it still needs saying, so (almost exactly a year after that first BadRep post I made on it) I wanted to quickly share it in case we have even one or two of you who will see it fresh and feel inspired.

In less feminist-focused recent Joss news, he’s just filmed a version of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing in 12 days with a lot of his friends, which means people like Amy Acker (Angel‘s Fred) and Alexis Denisof (Wesley) as the lovers Beatrice and Benedick. Nathan Fillion and Fran Kranz are in there too. Oh, and he didn’t tell the press until shooting was finished, when it got ‘casually’ mentioned on Twitter. I’ve been a fanboy of his work for a while now and still can’t watch those two leads in the last season of Angel without blubbing, so the chance to see them in romantic roles is exciting.¹ Also, he’s formed his own studio to make micro-films, and has a supernatural romance called In Your Eyes already planned. And then there’s his horror-comedy “Cabin in the Woods” starring the guy who played Thor and Whedon peeps Fran Kranz, Tom Lenk and Amy Acker again, which was actually completed years ago but will be released by the now-bankrupt MGM in April 2012. But you knew that already.

1. For an extra frisson of excitement there’s the mystery of whether Joss can actually stand for characters to be happy, or whether he’ll just re-write Shakespeare and kill them all. You never know.

We not only have to survive, we have to deserve to survive.
– Joss Whedon

Whedon was talking about how characters make hard decisions in Battlestar Galactica, but the same sentiment is reflected in lines from his “Equality Now” speech:

Equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity, we need it to stand on this earth as men and women – and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who’s confronted with it.

These two quotes sum up why I’m a feminist. Equality is not optional. I’m intelligent enough, and live in a society educated enough, that there is no excuse for me not to aim for it. Without equality, we fail as human beings.

From Planet of the Apes, 1968. (Stop complaining about spoilers, you've had 40 years.)

This type of “equality” is not some iron-clad regulation of behaviour, but an equal chance to live as you choose to: not to be disadvantaged because assumptions are made about one of two categories (which don’t match the multiple physical or mental possibilities anyway). Not pressured to act a certain way, or locked out from having power over your life. And it’s not some unimportant dream of abstract perfection but the most fundamental part of the lives of millions.

Reaching this fabled Equality won’t solve many problems. Those people lucky enough to escape poverty will still need to work every day, death is still inevitable, resources are still finite. If we had a much-reduced need for feminism, we’d only be starting on the struggle for a better society – but we wouldn’t be dooming over half our population to lesser chances and consideration because they don’t have man-parts.

Of course, aiming for true equality and overcoming the prejudices which are deeply ingrained in our (somewhat twisted) upbringings is difficult even for feminists. I wonder whether giving up my seat on the train for a woman is deeply offensive and sexist, because it’s based on the idea that women are weak creatures to be treasured and looked after by big strong men. I start to examine every single decision I make that is based on the line “because she’s a woman”. In a society where equality was real, that reason would virtually never apply.

For most roles, if gender is the only difference between two people then they should be interchangeable. A decision should immediately be about the positives and negatives of the individual instead. By having true equality, you would be free to see the person for who they are – at the very least, THEY would be free to choose who they are without having it dictated because of what society thinks “women” are/deserve this year.

But instead girls still get pink dolls and boys get blue trucks.

It’s not unrealistic to have true equality as the eventual aim. In fact, it makes identifying the current inequality all the easier: endless shelves of women’s magazines full of airbrushed anorexics, and also full shelves of men’s mags featuring topless women all with identical body shapes… if we were surrounded by constant images of perfectly-toned half naked men with impossible airbrushed bodies on every second billboard and magazine cover instead, you have to wonder how long this shit would last.

Mark Thomas (the political comedian) released a “People’s Manifesto” earlier this year. It was made by his audiences volunteering their ideas for new British laws. My favourite reads:“Models to be selected at random from the electoral register”.

Male, female, young, old. Large, small. All races, all shoes sizes, glasses-wearing NORMAL PEOPLE modelling clothes for normal people.

Of course, his show is supposed to be a comedy.

Going this far into the idea of a culture where we truly don’t dictate gender roles is not Joss Whedon’s point at all, and not really my main one either. We’re not there. We’re not even 10% of the way there. We’re in a world where we still have to campaign to stop female genital mutilation in England. Where large parts of the planet treat over 50% of human beings as property, or as unclean, dangerous sexual objects.

A feminist, yesterday. (Photo of Bill Bailey from http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk)

The term ‘Feminism’ has a bad rep with a lot of men. When I linked to this site from my blog, one of the commenters said they found the idea of male feminists “somewhat absurd”. That’s light compared to the reception they receive in some places online.

Bad Rep believes that we’re not going to make much change by refusing to engage with 49% of the population on principle, so this last bit is aimed at male readers:

Men! Do not be afraid! Not only are you welcome here, but you probably already agree with everything feminism stands for:

A feminist is a person who answers “yes” to the question, “Are women human?” Feminism is not about whether women are better than, worse than or identical with men. … It’s about women having intrinsic value as persons rather than contingent value as a means to an end for others: fetuses, children, the “family,” men.
– Katha Pollitt

Or more succinctly:

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
– Cheris Kramarae, Paula A. Treichler, Ann Russo: A Feminist Dictionary.

Equality is not optional. It is the only way we can get to the very first step of the ladder that creates a society to be proud of, and leave a record of the human race which doesn’t mark us as worse than the apes we came from. It’s not ‘absurd’ to have everyone involved – men need female equality to be in place before we can truthfully call ourselves men.