On Monday, Kim Kardashian posted an essay on her website titled “Why I Don’t Label Myself a Feminist,” in which she explained her reasons for rejecting the label that so many celebrities have embraced in recent years. “I feel that being grouped or labeled can create separation between people who do (or don’t) fall into certain categories,” Kardashian writes. “The fight for equality is about ALL human beings being treated equally.” Marcie Bianco, a writer for Quartz, is convinced that Kardashian is a feminist anyway — and all she needs is a little bit of explaining. “The reality is that practically all political movements that work toward equality encounter pushback from the status quo. The result is that movements from feminism to Black Lives Matter are often interpreted by American culture as divisive and even violent. This perception suggests that equality is not only widely misunderstood, but on some fundamental level undesired,” she writes, calling Kardashian’s stance “a bafflingly contradictory yet all-too-common sentiment.” By not thinking about what equality exactly means and how it “materializes politically, socially, or economically,” Bianco argues, Americans are evading their responsibility and maintaining equality more as myth than reality. By arguing that “ALL humans” matter and should be treated equally, Kardashian is contributing to “the very damaging idea that standing for a cause inherently means standing against someone else,” Bianco writes.
source- nytimes.