...so I can wake up in the middle of the night and still be thankful that not one other person in the world can ease my little one back to sleep as well as I can.
...so I can still expect a man to open a door for me, walk me to my car in a dark parking lot and pay for dinner.
... so I don't have to take out the trash at my house, but can if I want to.
...so I don't have to wear the pants in my relationship to be considered my husband's equal.
...so I can recognize that birth control is actually some man's cruel way of manipulating women to do what they want us to do without any obligation to us the next day, or 10 minutes later, however the course may be.
...so I can exchange my 4 letter last name for someone else's instead of using both to create a "liberating" 8 letter last name
...so that my husband and I can co-exist in perfect complementarity in our home without fighting over who gets to change the oil in the car or unclog the toilets.
I am truly often curious about the "feminist movement" of which I am not, nor ever will be, a part. I have considered the points about feminism made by women such as Hillary Clinton, Rosie O'Donnell and most of Hollywood and I honestly have yet to discover how they are seeking to promote women in society. I consistently see the notions of feminism as they are portrayed in everyday American society as degrading to me and to all women. To be a feminist in the popular sense is to fight against everything that comes natural to me and why? So that I can wear stiff clothes with buttons on the wrong side and expect to be promoted, glorified and recognized simply because I am a woman in a man's cruel world.
It's a world where true competition is eliminated, because a man surely could never receive a promotion over a women without some sort of underhanded sexist interviewer whose wife left him because he was an abusive alcoholic.
It's a world where a woman who achieves success in her field of choice will always hear murmurings about how she got the handout needed for her success, except on Oprah.
It's a world where women often hang their heads low to utter the harshest of phrases "I'm just a stay-at-home mom.
I'll take my feminism over that world any day. My society is where no one is "just" anything. Where my pediatrician and the men who collect my trash each week are valuable because they are working hard to provide for themselves, their families and me. Where I don't actually care what anyone does for a living, but where I do care that they work hard at whatever they do. My feminist society is one where each person is valued because they contribute to my life in some way--albeit often in unknown or unnoticed ways.
My feminism teaches that each person should act with responsibility for themselves and concern for others. My feminism is where I am accountable for my actions, where excuses are a waste of time and solutions are my obligation.
In my world, I am proud to be a feminist.
No comments:
Post a Comment