Ah, yes. This old chestnut rears its ugly head once more. Many MRAs and antifeminists in general have this idea in their head that feminism is a movement that is concerned with establishing the supremacy of women. After all, the prefix 'fem' calls to mind a group that is concerned only with women. Even when you point out the many ways in which feminism has helped men, they still can't seem to move past that bullshit semantic argument. "If it were really about equality," they scream, "Wouldn't it be called egalitarianism?"
Well, no. That's dumb. Here's why.
Before we begin, I would like to make it known that I am completely in favor of egalitarianism of the philosophical sort. Everyone deserves equal opportunity. That's something we can all agree on.
The problem arises when you try to put egalitarianism into practice as a movement. See, philosophical egalitarianism, the belief that everyone deserves to be equal, is necessary to achieve equality, but it is not sufficient. In fact, I would argue that practical egalitarianism is a diversion created to maintain the status quo.
As a case study, let's look at the Black Lives Matter Movement and it's corresponding All Lives Matter response. The All Lives Matter movement is problematic for the same reason that gender egalitarianism is problematic. To illustrate my point, I've included a thought experiment below.
Imagine that you are sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don't get any. Naturally, you protest, saying, "I should have my fair share."
As a direct response to this, your father corrects you, saying, "Everyone should get their fair share."
Now, that's a wonderful sentiment. Indeed, everyone should get their fair share. In fact, that was kind of your point in the first place. You should be a part of everyone. You should get your fair share also. However, Dad's smart-ass comment just dismissed you and didn't solve the problem that you still haven't gotten any food.
The problem is that the statement "I should get my fair share," has an implicit 'too' at the end. "I should get my fair share too, just like everyone else. But your father's response treated your statement as though it meant, "Only I should get my fair share." That's something of a straw man argument, don't you think? After all, that clearly was not your intention.
The end result is that the egalitarian statement that "everyone should get their fair share" only serves to ignore the problem that you were trying to draw attention to.
The exact same problem occurs when you dismiss feminism's focus on issues that affect women, and insist that the egalitarian approach, which focuses on no one in particular, is the appropriate one. The result that comes from this kind of thinking is that issues that do, in reality, uniquely affect women get dismissed since you reject any focus on one particular group.
That is the mechanism by which the assertion of egalitarianism in an environment of preexisting inequality upholds that inequality. That's why egalitarianism is little more than a diversion that seeks to prevent real change from being made. It upholds inequality to the benefit of the privileged group, in this case men.
That's why egalitarianism is a diversion, and that's why feminism is still necessary.
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