All entries for Saturday 30 April 2005

Some thougts on Feminism

I’m not a ball breaker, not a bra burner, not a lesbian or tragic and desperate. I don’t want to be unfeminine. I don’t want to be a man, I just…
I don’t want to be judged on my breasts first, or my face or my arse. I don’t want to have to look a certain way just to get anywhere. I want to be taken seriously when I try to do something serious, and if I do it well enough, earn the same respect and pay that an man in my position would earn.

I don’t want to be unfeminine, or de-sexed, but I don’t want to have to flirt and look pretty in order to get anywhere. I don’t want to have to be weak and girly to get some help. If I need help, I want to be able to ask for it without being judged. I don’t want to have to be strong all the time, proving with my every breath that I have a right to exist, a right to be doing what I do. I want to be allowed to be fallible occasionally – because everyone is, even men.

I want to have the opportunity to have it all without censure. To have a family and have a career. If I want to choose only one, I don’t want to be criticised for it, and I don’t want to be criticised for wanting both either. Men have always had both – it is so normal that people wouldn’t even think to comment, but for the disparity, but it seems whichever way a woman chooses people will find fault. I don’t want to be forced to make an either/or choice. I don’t want to be forced to have both, but I want the option of both.

I don’t want to be seen as an object. I don’t want to wear high heels that hurt my feet to make my calves look better to watching men. I don’t want to feel I have to paint my face and wear clothes that expose myself in order to be noticed. I don’t want to be forced into a concept of beauty. I want to be me, seen as beautiful in that I am a person, with a mind and personality and feelings and ideas. No woman who conforms to patriarchal definitions of beauty is asking for it. Not every woman who doesn’t is a lesbian or a troll.

No woman wants to be raped or beaten.

I don’t want to feel incomplete without a man. I don’t want to feel a failure without a husband, as if all of life revolves around marriage and children. I don’t want to be afraid of ending up alone, and as a result be pushed into marriage with a man who thinks it is alright to have an affair because it is glamorised in the media, or because he can’t be bothered to try and make the marriage work. I don’t want to feel I am anyone’s property. I want to be left alone by society to find a man I care for and who truly cares for me. I hate this culture that makes men feel that they have to be promiscuous, and women have to be virgins or whores. I hate this culture of casual sex that means loving relationships are passé, and marriages without divorce are few and far between. I want to celebrate my golden wedding some day.

I do not want to be dismissed out of hand as a “feminist”. I do not want to be above men, just their equals. I do not want to be ostracised, victimised or made out to be a monster or a villain, because I do not want to conform to what a male dominated society expects of women. I do not want this to be about ‘us’ and ‘them’. All I want is equality.

Questions

Why is it supposed that women are intrinsically inferior to men? Why, if we want to be treated as equals, do we have to emulate them? I do not want to be accepted as a man, or “as good as a man” as if maleness was the benchmark against which I should be measured. Why can’t men and women be different, but equal, both measured against a gender neutral standard of achievement? Why does one sex have to strive to be superior? To be the standard? Why is it strange to suggest that men are failures if they do not emulate women, and define their success by making a home, and being nurturing and compassionate in that way? A virtue is a virtue, whether it be seen as typically male or female. Why must a woman be criticised if she only excels in one? If only feminine, she is ‘un-ambitious’ if only masculine, she is ‘unfeminine’. We must be both, or we are nothing. Men can only excel in masculine. If feminine, they are almost ridiculed, but still they are only expected to live up to one standard, not both. Why cannot the sexes choose by which standard they wish to be measured? Why is there no parity?

: 30 Apr 2005 19:13 |  Tags: Rants And Reviews |  Comments (10) |  Close comments |  Report a problem