By Ellena Sweet | Campus News Editor
Adriano Cirioli comes from a traditional, Italian household. In his grandparents’ home, his grandfather and grandmother fulfill their own, specific roles.
His grandfather takes out the trash, cuts the grass and builds the fires during the winter. His grandmother, a stay-at-home mom, takes care of the cooking and cleaning.
According to Cirioli, his parents have followed suit. As he puts it, this is just the way things have always been in his family, and nobody seems particularly displeased with it.
It wasn’t until Cirioli entered college that he became aware of issues related to feminism, gender and the roles associated with it. “What really got me going was, as a history major, looking into the past, you see the inequality that people had to suffer,” Cirioli said. “Just hearing what happened, it just doesn’t really make sense in my mind why someone would be unequal.”
Today, as a sophomore in history and political science, Cirioli supports the goals of feminism and considers himself a proponent of gender equality. But, don’t call him a feminist.
According to a poll conducted by Huffington Post, Cirioli is not alone. While 82 percent of Americans agree that men and women should be social, political and economic equals, only 20 percent identify as feminists. Though most agree with the efforts of the movement, it seems that many are unwilling to identify with its title.
Dr. Debra Curtis, assistant professor of anthropology and chair of the sociology and anthropology department at Salve Regina University, believes that many people are weary of the word for two reasons.
As she explains, some women fear the term because they are worried that coming out as a feminist will be a mark against their femininity. Others reject the word because they lack a full understanding of its significance. Dr. Curtis says that the state of education, in the United States, is largely to blame for this.
“Our students, men and women, lack a deep understanding of history and economics,” Dr. Curtis says. “Whether it’s the condition of women or the condition of blacks, students come to school so unprepared and, not just that, but uninterested.”
To Dr. Curtis, feminism implies a commitment to social and economic equality, in order to improve mankind. She believes that such a commitment can have countless implications for society, at large. In her own life, Dr. Curtis relates feminism to equal pay, within her workplace. On a larger scale, she connects it to issues of reproductive health, sexual violence and domestic abuse. She hopes that, through the efforts of feminism, these matters will come to be seen as important, public health issues.
Dr. Curtis encourages skeptics to keep an open mind towards feminism. “If someone said to me ‘No, I’m not a feminist,’ I would just tell him or her to try to stay open,” she said. “Just stay open to the possibility.”
Feminist Rosemary West, an undeclared freshman at Salve Regina University, agrees that a lack of information is often to blame for people’s hesitancy towards feminism and that many misunderstand the goals of the movement. She thinks that, if people were equipped with accurate information, they might willingly identify with the term.
According to West, throughout her life, she has struggled to understand why females are treated differently.
As a young girl, she recalls trying to hide her feminine side from her brother and his friends, who she spent most of her time with. Later on, in grade school, she remembers being exposed to the idea of femininity as ‘attention from males.’
“I kind of always had this confusion about girls in society and it was just in high school that I realized what it was, which is just an institutional, systemized inequality in America, in media, in our culture,” West said.
Today, West is part of a movement to start a feminist club at Salve Regina, as she considers feminism to be particularly important on a college campus. “What we’re going to college for is to, not only go out into the workforce but, to better ourselves as people,” she said. “To me, that just goes hand in hand with realizing this truth that we are equal, that there is problem and we should be working towards a solution.”
West is hopeful that the club will appeal to students and succeed in highlighting issues regarding gender equality. She also hopes that more males will come to identify as feminists, as equality benefits society, as a whole.
For Adriano Cirioli, the notion of classifying himself as a feminist is odd. “I find that weird, sort of, because usually women are feminists,” Cirioli said. “Very rarely, in this society, do you hear of a man being a feminist.” Cirioli defines feminism as a movement to create equality between men and women, in all disciplines. But, he worries that some of the movement’s proponents have taken things too far.
According to Cirioli, people might be afraid of associating with the word because they are concerned about being associated with the ‘extremists’ of the movement. Still, he agrees with West, regarding the importance of feminism on a college campus. “College is preparing you for the real world, or for the world ahead at least,” he said. “I think it’s important to make people conscious of it, cause we’re going to be the future leaders of this country.”
