Feminism: A Movement against Femininity and Masculinity

Mohammed Djemoui Saber,

Department of Letters and English Language, Faculty of Letters and Languages, University of Mohamed Boudiaf, Algeria

Feminism appeared as early as late fourth and early fifth century Greece, when, Aristophanes wrote his play Lysistrata in 411 bce, and Plato wrote the Republic in 380 bce. In both of these works, women assumed roles in equality with men, and saw themselves included in important political decisions and strategies. Today the movement is active and powerful and still believes in change. It is now waging war against its own gender: Femininity. It seems that feminists are suffering from self-denial problem. The present paper attempts to shed light on many wrongs and lies feminists believe in, and convincingly stresses the idea that women are neither inferior nor superior to men in the so-called ‘patriarchal society’. On the contrary, men and women are no more than two sides of the same coin. Each side exhibits its own characteristics that are different from those of the other side. Similarly, men and women have different roles to play in the society. The roles they tend to play are supposedly different but basically determined by the criteria of the society they live in. These criteria are deeply rooted in culture, religion, and gender. So, any attempt to deny them will result in self-denial.

Keywords: Feminism, self-denial, culture, gender, society

The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Seventh International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature (WWW.LLLD.IR), 11-12 June 2022, Ahwaz.