Too many times over the past month, I’ve heard female friends, coworkers and acquaintances say, “I’m not a feminist, but…”
or
“I don’t consider myself a feminist, but…”
or
“Not to be too much of a feminist about this, but…”
And then these lovely young women, most of them liberal Democrats, have registered wholly legitimate complaints over the treatment of women in the workplace, mass media, and society as a whole.
Whenever a certain dear friend of mine hears someone start a conversation with those words, she observes, dryly, “I’m pretty sure what she meant was, ‘I am a feminist, only I don’t know what that word means.’”
What part of ‘feminism’ are you on board or not on board with? What, specifically, causes you to withhold your verbal support, to deny the title? I’m curious. Please enlighten me. It’s a big word to define, so how are you defining “feminist” to include or exclude yourself and your interests?
I am a feminist and I am for – among a great many other things – universal single-payer health care (for everybody! so many of the demands on my list are for everybody, not only women), reproductive rights, equal pay, protections against domestic and sexual violence, defense against sexual harassment, paid family leave (for men and women), subsidized quality child care, greater representation of women as justices, legislators and executives (though the mere presence of two X chromosones will never buy my vote), access to education and reproductive services for women around the globe as a proven path out of poverty and poor health, and realizing socialism, which means at the most basic level reasserting human beings and the environment over the market and rejecting the creep of economic language into all arenas of public conversation and political discourse. Economic language is a poison, but that's another post.
I do think the energy expended over replacing “postman” and “chairman” with gender-neutral nouns could be better spent elsewhere (I just can’t make myself care when I read “he” and “his” and “him” instead of the clumsy “he or she,” “his or hers,” and “him or her”) but otherwise I’m on board. I am also for dividing chores equally at home, but I’m still fighting that battle on my own…!
I recognize some of those words up there as my own *embarrassed smirk*, and in fact I did have another friend point out to me the oddity of my phrasing. My response to him was:
ReplyDelete"I wasn't trying to place a negative connotation with the word. I consider myself a feminist. I just usually don't like voicing my opinion on things. I'm not usually the most vocal about my stance on issues (political, social, religious, whatever), and I usually fear not being able to explain myself eloquently. So I guess I was just trying to say "I don't usually speak out, but in this case, I am going to.""
Anyway, one thing that DOES bother me about the word feminism, is that it actually is a very exclusive and limiting word. It empowers women...but what about everyone else? Like you said in your post, most demands are for the rights of EVERYBODY, not just women. So instead of feminism, maybe we should just focus on "equalism".
I didn't see that you'd done it, too, actually! I said that once in conversation and immediately stopped and said, wait, why would I say I'm not a feminist? What about being a feminist don't I support? It's such a loaded word here and means so many different things. I'd be curious to see a "here's my definition of what feminism means" compilation. The trigger for this post was a woman the other day saying, "I'm not a feminist. I don't think women are better than men. I just think women bring something else to the table, a valuable perspective." And I had to laugh and wanted to say, okay, please tell me what you think a feminist is, then, because this doesn't sound at all incompatible with feminism to me!
ReplyDeleteAnd YES to much of feminism being equalism. Many of the widely shared goals of feminism here and around the world produce better opportunities and outcomes for everybody: men, children, families, and society as a whole. When women have access to education, health care and the ability to space their pregnancies, they raise children who are healthier and more likely to thrive. Strong social welfare states benefit girls, women, mothers--and everybody else who is then insulated from the devastating effects of unemployment, illness, and poverty.
And you express your good heart and good brain very eloquently, so speak out when you've got something to speak out about :-) I am trying to be better at this myself and it's surprisingly tough. Is this a Wisconsin-nice thing?
And I’m feeling a bit daft, or at least hasty. I was defining “feminist” for myself as an inherently inclusive category (“Here are some of the things feminists, broadly, have fought for and why I count myself a feminist…”) but self-described feminists often draw a fence around feminism that excludes (“This is what feminism is, and if this doesn’t capture your beliefs and stances, you’re not a feminist…”).
ReplyDeleteYes to every single bit of this.
ReplyDelete