on feminism, today's feminists, and why I'm not one of them.
Posted on 3:24 AM, under amazing people, feminism, whiny people
Once upon a time, there were awesome women. These awesome women had power and control over themselves at a time where arranged marriage was the norm and a life of housekeeping and child-bearing was the most they could aspire to.
They realised, however, that it was time to extend her awesomeness to every woman. And so, the suffragettes fought to give women the right to vote, a right previously exercised only by men. Slowly but surely, in most countries, women began to have political rights.
During the World Wars, while men were away fighting, daughters of these awesome women began to replace them in various workplaces. They were empowered. But it wasn't enough - men came back, and they were shunted aside again, discriminated, viewed as not really necessary unless dinner needed to be prepared and the laundry folded away.
So the grand-daughters of these awesome women, the suffragettes, realised that the roots of the problem needed to be addressed. If a real change was to be made regarding laboural and political inequalities, the cultural inequalities needed to be solved.
If you fancy yourself a social-justiceist/feminist? You know how the story unfolds: miniskirt, Women's Liberation, Gloria Steinem, NWPC, Cheryl Frank and Jaqueline Flenner - to name very few organisations and women and events that helped shape the second wave of feminism.
However, the descendants of the suffragettes ... well, most of them can be described in this (amazing) quote:
You damn right I'm no feminist, cos all feminists give a monkey's for these days is how to claim breast pumps as tax exempt and where to find the best au pairs.
Belle de Jour (taken from Feminisnt)
I have spent some time browsing feminist blogs - most notably, Shakesville. My feelings of 'Amen, sister!' were always muddled with deep-down feelings of - why is she going on about feminism, when she lives in an industrialised country, and has the privileges and access to all those things the Foremothers of Feminism didn't?
The straw that broke the camel's back? This post.
I am Shakespeare's Sister.
I am the heir of Shakespeare's Sisters before me, who carved out rooms of their own, tiny pieces of space and time, in which they formed the habit of freedom and mustered the courage to write exactly what they thought. I heard their whispers, their haunting encouragement, telling me to put on their bodies laid down and become born. And on October 5, 2004, I was born Shakespeare's Sister.
Melissa McEwan
Let's skip the fact that this just reeks of self-importance. Seriously, just cover your nose for a bit while I end this. It'll be quick - like the death from the stench of delusions of grandeur coming from this feminist.
If you are familiar with A Room of One's Own you'll know that Shakespeare's Sister was a woman that had the same talents and gifts Shakespeare had but none of the recognition, because of the social, cultural, and political conditions of women during the time.
Check your calendars - you're in for a surprise - the 1600s? Over and done for more than 400 years, bro. In most industrialised countries, a woman generally holds the same rights men do. They can go to university, have a career and not give it up if they decide to become mothers, get paid the same as men in the same jobs, be in control of their sexuality and reproduction.
But when you take a movement that has given us women so much, and turn it into a stance from where you can argue the use of certain words because they are 'patriarchal' or 'sexist', or how some types of advertising hurts women's feelings/self-esteem and promotes eating disorders/sexism/rape, it's just ... ridiculous. Not only that: it's not feminist.
The kick-ass women that gave me the rights and privileges I have today, I am sure, would sigh and face-palm at the so-called "third wave" of feminism.
In my mind, if Mary Wollstonecraft could see what feminism has become, she would be sorely disappointed. And so would every feminist of old. That is why I don't hold myself as a feminist any longer.
Because I, woman, have privilege thanks to them. I, woman, thank the feminists from the earlier centuries, to the end of the second wave. Without them, and the change they accomplished, I wouldn't be here. Suffragettes and bra-burners: I tip my hat to you.
So-called feminists of today: fuck you, for tarnishing the name of this movement. Fuck you, because while you're bitching about how we should all say 'humankind' instead of 'mankind' because it sounds less sexist to you, women in Saudi Arabia still are not able to vote. Women in Latin America still have no right over their bodies, while you moan about how the portrayal of women in film and media is misogynistic. Fuck you. You are no feminists, and you are not doing feminism any good.