The best way for a large group of people to attack you on the Internet is to state an opinion publicly then sit back and wait. Well, Shailene Woodley didn’t have to wait long after her interview with Time where she stated she doesn’t consider herself a feminist. Lots of people on the Internet right now with toxic shock syndrome.
TIME: You’ve talked about before—with Divergent specifically, too—about being conscious of the kind of messages that you’re sending to young female fans when you’re taking on roles. Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Shailene Woodley: No because I love men, and I think the idea of ‘raise women to power, take the men away from the power’ is never going to work out because you need balance. With myself, I’m very in touch with my masculine side. And I’m 50 percent feminine and 50 percent masculine, same as I think a lot of us are. And I think that is important to note. And also I think that if men went down and women rose to power, that wouldn’t work either.. We have to have a fine balance. My biggest thing is really sisterhood more than feminism. I don’t know how we as women expect men to respect us because we don’t even seem to respect each other. There’s so much jealousy, so much comparison and envy. And “This girl did this to me and that girl did that to me.” And it’s just so silly and heartbreaking in a way. It’s really neat to see: there’s that new Judd Apatow [sic] movie coming out, The Other Woman, and that looks really good because I think it’s really neat that it shows women coming together and supporting each other and creating a sisterhood of support for one another versus hating each other for something that somebody else created.
TIME: So even though what they’re coming together for is to bring down a man…
SW: Yeah, but they create a sisterhood. And he did something wrong, and they’re, you know. They’re going to go after him for it. I think it’s great.
*clears throat* I’m not going to get into the myth of the “sisterhood”, but let me preface this by saying that I was raised by a single mother because my father was a raging cokehead who was too busy being Johnny Semenseed all over the contiguous United States and Germany (lots of German women supported our troops) to ever be an actual father. In fact, almost every strong, influence in my life has been a woman, and I lived in fear of my grandmother even after I graduated high school, because as it turns out, 4’11” Native American women who have been working on a farm since they were 6 have no time for your bullshit. And if you look through history and even today, when you remove women from the equation, whether it be religion, the Boy Scouts, fraternities, our your life in general, things eventually go horribly wrong and the only thing that’s needed to course correct the inevitable sad, freakshow is for a woman to come in and say, “Look, go have a seat while I figure this shit out”. The world needs women just as much as men, and if you want to add in the biological and nurturing aspect, women are even more important. That being said, if feminists could suck dick the way they suck the fun out of everything, then maybe their message would be better received. Attacking a woman who doesn’t agree with feminism is, uh, a bit off message, don’t you think? Not everybody with a vagina is down for the cause, and whatever circumstances in your life brought you to embrace and accept feminism might not have happened to the woman next to you. So chill. We can talk the patriarchy all you want, but I’m pretty sure Oprah or Beyonce don’t spend a lot of their time thinking about it. They realized their own self-worth and power at an early age, and now they got shit handle. If an image in a magazine or an insecure comment by a fool with a dick can make you question your value on this planet, then you’re fighting two enemies, so slay the one in the mirror first. Most of the people complaning about Woodley seem to be focused on, “OMG SHE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT FEMINISM MEANS!” And maybe that’s true, because the word you’ve adopted and the actual definition mean two completely different things. The definition of “feminism” is basically “humanism”, but you’ve made it female-centric, so it confuses everybody who has more one thing to think about during their day. I love women, everybody should love women (another thing gay dudes get right), but as man, I’ll never get a diamond as a prize for answering “yes” to a question. I’m never going to get into a club free before 10pm. And I’ll never be able to marry a French billionaire when the patriarchy says I’m too old to effectively perform my job. So if you want to be mad at some 22-year old chick who is too young to realize that she’ll never have life figured out and who probably doesn’t even know a single Tori Amos song, feel free. But take a step back and understand why you’re mad in the first place. Since you’re a woman, I’m sure you’ll let me know three months from now.
