I Am Tired of Fake Women’s Empowerment

Why don’t we treat each other according to what we claim to believe?

I think it’s safe to say that most women and girls in the current day believe in women’s empowerment in one way or the other. Not all of us will outright self-identify as feminists and some of us will be louder and more outspoken in our women’s rights advocacy than others. But mostly, I think we can all agree that empowering women in today’s society is a good thing.

But I can’t help but notice that some of the ladies, a few of them, despite being all #girlpower on the outside, are often not very consistent in their feminism when it comes to how they treat other women around them.

Now granted, being a feminist is fundamentally just believing in the equality of genders. It doesn’t automatically mean that you have to empower or uplift other women, although it usually kind of goes hand in hand. You still have the option to be equally shitty to everyone, I guess.

But personally, I am tired of it.

As a fellow female, I have, and I am far from the only one, been backstabbed, disrespected, crossed, laughed at, insulted, and betrayed by girls that are some of the most vocal social media women’s rights advocates I know, and who also happen to be some of the cattiest, fakest and least tolerant women I know for some reason.

And it makes me wonder, for whom do they really fight?

Here are some of the women I am done dealing with.

• Women who will continuously tear you apart for the clothes you choose to wear. Too provocative? Slut. Too modest? You must be an old virgin with cobwebs between your legs. Too eccentric? Attention seeker. Very simple? Basic bitch.
• Women who get cheated on by a guy, then decide to take the man back and call the other woman a whore.
• Women who are not shy to make moves on their supposed friends’ crushes, partners, or spouses just to prove a point to themselves.
• Women who constantly stick their noses into your dating and sex life, decide your value based on your relationship status or your body count and keep bombarding you with unsolicited questions, advice, and judgment in those areas.
• Women who pretend to be your friend, offer you sympathy, listen to your problems and then talk absolute smack about you behind your back.
• Women who go on and on about believing women and stopping victim-blaming, until it’s time for them to actually show support — and they side with the (typically male) abuser.
• Women who are all about #girlpower, but only as long as the other girls share their opinions to a T. If you have a different point of view, you are excluded from the hashtag — no power to you.
• Women who gatekeep the concept of womanhood and are quick to tell you how “real women” should and shouldn’t act, look, or express their femininity.
• Women who are loud about wanting more women to succeed but what they really mean is that they want themselves to succeed. Oh, what is this, another female is doing better than you? She must have blown someone important to get that far.
• Women with the “holier than thou” mentality. I applaud your decision to not wear makeup or bra and stop shaving your armpits, as long as you don’t go around telling me that I am somehow less of a woman for choosing not to live my life that way.
• Women who claim to be “not like the other girls”, as if being in any way similar to other women was so highly undesirable that they don’t want anything to do with that.

And most importantly, the women who do everything mentioned above, then post a feminist article on their Facebook page to appear woke for the audience and go about their day being terrible and hurtful towards people of the very gender they claim to want to uplift.

We all know someone like that.

They might be our coworkers, classmates, teachers, friends, roommates, mothers, sisters, mothers in law, neighbors, they can be basically anyone in our life who identifies with the gender. But one thing is for sure, they are out there, prepared to make the women around them feel small.

They see women empowerment as a phrase to be said and plastered all over the internet, rather than something to be done in small steps, daily, and in real life.

We are so focused on being respected by men but often the people who hurt us the most, or the people who make our lives hell for no reason, are other women. And our society normalizes and distributes this as a trend.

Take rap music as an example. If you listen to any current female rappers, you will notice that although they recognize that their path to stardom was inherently more difficult because of their gender, they still dedicate many verses in their songs to attacking other women, be it other female rappers in the scene or just any vague “jealous bitches” to assert their superiority and dominance over them.

Guys typically don’t feel the need to do that. If they talk about other men in their raps at all, it is usually just to show love for their homeboys.

Yes, we are programmed from a young age to see other women as threats instead of allies, not only by the media we consume but even by our female role models such as our mothers, teachers, or mentors. It sucks.

But if you are a grown-up woman who identifies with the idea of feminism as much as you signal to the world, you should recognize that this is yet another tool of the patriarchy to keep us in check and occupied by throwing shade at each other when we could be doing something productive and powerful instead.

So, social media feminists, listen up:

Someone else being beautiful doesn’t take away from your beauty. Someone else being successful doesn’t invalidate your success. Someone else being powerful doesn’t mean that you are not.

A woman deciding to live her life differently than yourself doesn’t make your life choices wrong. And different people having different opinions is an opportunity for discussion, not dismissal.

There is enough space for all of us.

And if empowering women really matters to you, why not start with those in your close proximity? The world will be a much better and more equal place if we actually start building each other up instead of constantly trying to tear others down.