Lo and behold, it is Wednesday again. Just like that.
A lot has happened this week: my dad came back from a trip to Ecuador with my grandfather, who is now living with us again; daylight savings time ended; International Women's Day came and went.
My friend Marina is from Russia, and while she thinks Valentine's flowers are a waste she expected a lot of pomp and circumstance on Friday for International Women's Day. In Russia, apparently, International Women's Day is a big deal. It's like Valentine's Day and Mother's Day combined; on this day the entire country celebrates mothers, sisters, wives and girlfriends, aunts, nieces, grandparents, cousins... Women.
This year, International Women's Day also coincided roughly with the release of Sheryl Sandberg's highly controversial, self-proclaimed "feminist manifesto" Lean In. I heard about the book first in the pool locker room at the Y on Monday morning, when I told a fellow swimmer that "I do social media" for a living and she told me about 60 Minutes' interview with "the COO of Facebook," and then connected the dots when I heard a review of the book on NPR last night.
The online world in general celebrated women on Friday in some interesting ways. My Facebook news feed was full of general shoutouts from my female friends to "all the wonderful women in my life." These women, and their shoutouts, are dynamic, beautiful, acutely intelligent, and tend to carry a little bit of self-protective anger.
Twitter apparently celebrated women on Friday with the hashtag #SayThankYouToAFeminist. I didn't see it, or the inevitable ensuing anti-feminist fallout and then the next round of retaliation, until a friend sent me an article about it, with the subheading The Word "Feminist" Is Done.
I can't say I agree 100% with this article, but the general sentiment is something I'm glad to see poking its head up into public conversation. I have spoken to too many young, educated, empowered women lately who cringe at the label, but feel that it would be disloyal to eschew it completely; and so we remain silent on the subject. Even more disheartening is the scathing judgment of previous generations of women who feel that we are ungrateful for their sexual revolution and the blood, sweat, and tears they have shed chipping away at the glass ceiling -- for us, for their daughters.
So a disclaimer for these women-warriors: I'm not denying that the glass ceiling is still intact to some extent; I'm not saying that the sexual revolution is over and its objectives achieved. There still exists imbalance to an appalling degree in both the professional and the sexual realm, to mention a few. And I respect and in some odd way envy their battle scars. I am grateful for the writing and activist-ing they have done, because without them I wouldn't have the liberty or even the foundation to think and act and live the way I do.
I will admit I had a hard time choosing the word imbalance to fill the space in that sentence. Was I talking about discrimination? Inequity? These words feel too strong, and perhaps this is my feminine instinct telling me to back down so as not to offend anyone -- the same feminine instinct that will put me at a disadvantage in my career and make me vulnerable if I go out alone in certain areas or at certain times.
In the aforementioned article, Liz Spikol claims that "men and women should be equal" is a no-brainer, a commonly believed truth. I disagree. I don't think that this is the general feeling in our society or in the world in general. And to be honest I myself hem and haw a bit at this statement.
I suppose it's partially because I feel that it's unrealistic. But I also resent the inherent devaluing of femininity that has come as fallout of the feminist movement. For men and women to be equal, to be treated equally, women have given up a lot. We have striven to adopt masculine qualities. We have adopted their dress, their stance and body language, their habits, their communication style. Because men are powerful, we have striven to emulate them in hopes of also adopting the source of their power.
There have been positive outcomes to this approach. I think the traditional gender gap shortsells everyone by limiting us to select only the traits and actions designated for our sex. So we, women, have gained some good tools throughout this process. But there are certain areas in which we could all benefit from a little feminine influence. And the perspective of people who have experienced being downtrodden that is at least enlightening, if not invaluable.
I was walking through a school recently which had posted a display of "academic new year's resolutions." My inner anthropologist ran a quick, unscientific correlation and found that the boys' resolutions consisted mostly of personal academic goals and behavioral challenges; the girls, on the other hand, almost exclusively listed interpersonal challenges. I could, of course, write an entire ethnography on the value systems expressed by this simple activity; but for now I'll give it to you straight: We can't have a functional society with only one approach or the other.
Here's the part I kind of really liked about Spikol's argument -- this, and the part about "feminist" becoming almost a dirty word, tainted by negative public perception. That definitely doesn't help at all. But this is where she gets close to what I see as the major fallibility of the feminist movement:
As far as how to actually do this, I don't have any answers. I also realized this week that action without leadership takes a lot of energy (but that's a story for another week). And unfortunately, the ones who realize there is a problem are the ones who have been traditionally repressed and oppressed. So all the self-help books on male-female communication are written for women who feel that their relationships are emotionally distant. It would take a special kind of man to buy into that. Now that men are allegedly starting to feel emasculated by women wearing pant suits and working outside the home, maybe we can have a real revolution.
Or maybe it will just turn into a bloodbath. Maybe we'll just have to wait until all the birth control in the water completely eliminates men from the gene pool entirely.
Here's hoping (...the revolution/conversation thing, not the bloodbath or the birth control thing). All I know how to do is write.
***
Post-script: The aftermath of this post fell pretty hard on me. I was frustrated to get back a lot of feedback from readers who understood from this post that I think the battle has been won, that I think the feminist cause is obsolete, that we have found equality/balance/justice between women and men in our society and in our world. That's not what I'm saying at all. In fact, I found this to be the greatest weakness in Spikol's article: she took it for granted that gender equality is now a standard mindframe in our society. Even I, for all my privilege, can say with conviction that this is not true.
I deeply appreciated several comments on this post that enriched my understanding of the complexity of the feminist movement and of the issues at hand. I obviously see things only through my eyes, and this is one of the great limitations of being human: we know enough to grasp at many monumental concepts and issues, and yet our vision is narrow and we cannot grasp any of them in their entirety. I had hoped, by writing this post, to open up conversation on a different part of the movement. I know for a fact that I am not the only one who feels frustrated at the limitations of the term "feminism" and the feminist movement at this point in history, but it's not something that I've seen often expressed. (I am seeing this change, though. I saw an article making the rounds on Facebook today that expressed the underlying feelings of this post better and more broadly, I think, than this one did. I highly recommend you read it.) I hope that others, with different perspectives, can eventually find the basic feminist cause enriched by the questions I'm bringing up as my understandings have been enriched by theirs.
A lot has happened this week: my dad came back from a trip to Ecuador with my grandfather, who is now living with us again; daylight savings time ended; International Women's Day came and went.
My friend Marina is from Russia, and while she thinks Valentine's flowers are a waste she expected a lot of pomp and circumstance on Friday for International Women's Day. In Russia, apparently, International Women's Day is a big deal. It's like Valentine's Day and Mother's Day combined; on this day the entire country celebrates mothers, sisters, wives and girlfriends, aunts, nieces, grandparents, cousins... Women.
This year, International Women's Day also coincided roughly with the release of Sheryl Sandberg's highly controversial, self-proclaimed "feminist manifesto" Lean In. I heard about the book first in the pool locker room at the Y on Monday morning, when I told a fellow swimmer that "I do social media" for a living and she told me about 60 Minutes' interview with "the COO of Facebook," and then connected the dots when I heard a review of the book on NPR last night.
The online world in general celebrated women on Friday in some interesting ways. My Facebook news feed was full of general shoutouts from my female friends to "all the wonderful women in my life." These women, and their shoutouts, are dynamic, beautiful, acutely intelligent, and tend to carry a little bit of self-protective anger.
Twitter apparently celebrated women on Friday with the hashtag #SayThankYouToAFeminist. I didn't see it, or the inevitable ensuing anti-feminist fallout and then the next round of retaliation, until a friend sent me an article about it, with the subheading The Word "Feminist" Is Done.
I can't say I agree 100% with this article, but the general sentiment is something I'm glad to see poking its head up into public conversation. I have spoken to too many young, educated, empowered women lately who cringe at the label, but feel that it would be disloyal to eschew it completely; and so we remain silent on the subject. Even more disheartening is the scathing judgment of previous generations of women who feel that we are ungrateful for their sexual revolution and the blood, sweat, and tears they have shed chipping away at the glass ceiling -- for us, for their daughters.
So a disclaimer for these women-warriors: I'm not denying that the glass ceiling is still intact to some extent; I'm not saying that the sexual revolution is over and its objectives achieved. There still exists imbalance to an appalling degree in both the professional and the sexual realm, to mention a few. And I respect and in some odd way envy their battle scars. I am grateful for the writing and activist-ing they have done, because without them I wouldn't have the liberty or even the foundation to think and act and live the way I do.
I will admit I had a hard time choosing the word imbalance to fill the space in that sentence. Was I talking about discrimination? Inequity? These words feel too strong, and perhaps this is my feminine instinct telling me to back down so as not to offend anyone -- the same feminine instinct that will put me at a disadvantage in my career and make me vulnerable if I go out alone in certain areas or at certain times.
In the aforementioned article, Liz Spikol claims that "men and women should be equal" is a no-brainer, a commonly believed truth. I disagree. I don't think that this is the general feeling in our society or in the world in general. And to be honest I myself hem and haw a bit at this statement.
I suppose it's partially because I feel that it's unrealistic. But I also resent the inherent devaluing of femininity that has come as fallout of the feminist movement. For men and women to be equal, to be treated equally, women have given up a lot. We have striven to adopt masculine qualities. We have adopted their dress, their stance and body language, their habits, their communication style. Because men are powerful, we have striven to emulate them in hopes of also adopting the source of their power.
There have been positive outcomes to this approach. I think the traditional gender gap shortsells everyone by limiting us to select only the traits and actions designated for our sex. So we, women, have gained some good tools throughout this process. But there are certain areas in which we could all benefit from a little feminine influence. And the perspective of people who have experienced being downtrodden that is at least enlightening, if not invaluable.
I was walking through a school recently which had posted a display of "academic new year's resolutions." My inner anthropologist ran a quick, unscientific correlation and found that the boys' resolutions consisted mostly of personal academic goals and behavioral challenges; the girls, on the other hand, almost exclusively listed interpersonal challenges. I could, of course, write an entire ethnography on the value systems expressed by this simple activity; but for now I'll give it to you straight: We can't have a functional society with only one approach or the other.
Here's the part I kind of really liked about Spikol's argument -- this, and the part about "feminist" becoming almost a dirty word, tainted by negative public perception. That definitely doesn't help at all. But this is where she gets close to what I see as the major fallibility of the feminist movement:
If I were going to SayThankYouToAFeminist on Twitter, I’d choose someone who has a lot of the stereotypical features of The Feminist: unshaven armpits, no makeup, an overly serious mien. His name is Barack Obama and he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and legislation that will make health-care costs equal for men and women. But I wouldn’t call him a “feminist.” I’d just call him a sensible human being. So what if he’s a man? It’s time to get away from gendered political movements anyway. Binary gender is so 20th century.While I don't think we're quite ready as a society to ditch gender politics and binary gender and all that, we should at least be making progress toward learning, as a society, how to care about each other regardless of the color of our skin or what kind of "equipment" we were born with or how we use that equipment. We have to learn how to care about each other as people. For our own good.
As far as how to actually do this, I don't have any answers. I also realized this week that action without leadership takes a lot of energy (but that's a story for another week). And unfortunately, the ones who realize there is a problem are the ones who have been traditionally repressed and oppressed. So all the self-help books on male-female communication are written for women who feel that their relationships are emotionally distant. It would take a special kind of man to buy into that. Now that men are allegedly starting to feel emasculated by women wearing pant suits and working outside the home, maybe we can have a real revolution.
Or maybe it will just turn into a bloodbath. Maybe we'll just have to wait until all the birth control in the water completely eliminates men from the gene pool entirely.
Here's hoping (...the revolution/conversation thing, not the bloodbath or the birth control thing). All I know how to do is write.
***
Post-script: The aftermath of this post fell pretty hard on me. I was frustrated to get back a lot of feedback from readers who understood from this post that I think the battle has been won, that I think the feminist cause is obsolete, that we have found equality/balance/justice between women and men in our society and in our world. That's not what I'm saying at all. In fact, I found this to be the greatest weakness in Spikol's article: she took it for granted that gender equality is now a standard mindframe in our society. Even I, for all my privilege, can say with conviction that this is not true.
I deeply appreciated several comments on this post that enriched my understanding of the complexity of the feminist movement and of the issues at hand. I obviously see things only through my eyes, and this is one of the great limitations of being human: we know enough to grasp at many monumental concepts and issues, and yet our vision is narrow and we cannot grasp any of them in their entirety. I had hoped, by writing this post, to open up conversation on a different part of the movement. I know for a fact that I am not the only one who feels frustrated at the limitations of the term "feminism" and the feminist movement at this point in history, but it's not something that I've seen often expressed. (I am seeing this change, though. I saw an article making the rounds on Facebook today that expressed the underlying feelings of this post better and more broadly, I think, than this one did. I highly recommend you read it.) I hope that others, with different perspectives, can eventually find the basic feminist cause enriched by the questions I'm bringing up as my understandings have been enriched by theirs.
Clara, I think the point you make about women becoming "equal" as giving in to patriarchal norms (ie dress, communication style, etc) is very valid and important, and I agree with your statement about needing to care for one another simply as people. I think, however, that Spikol's article and attitudes/opinions like hers simplify feminism to an offensive degree. A cursory sweep of Urban Dictionary not only is rather lazy, but ignores all of the writing and actions by feminist/womanist/mujerista activists in the US and across the world that express feminism in terms of what it is. bell hooks writes in her book 'feminism is for everyone' that the "feminist movement is advanced whenever any male or female of any age works on behalf of ending sexism...By emphasizing an ethics of mutuality and interdependency feminist thinking offers us a way to end domination while simultaneously changing the impact of inequality." (hooks published the book in 2000, and while she is a long time activist, she is certainly not someone stuck in a mindset from of the 1970s). While this quotation's meaning is certainly echoed in Spikol's comment about Obama, by highlighting the perceived stereotypes of "feminists" as being dirty, hostile, lesbian, etc, she plays into the very system that continues to prevent women from being equal. What's more, in presenting the gains of feminism simply as something that has helped women get ahead/become equal in terms of patriarchal society's norms of dominating others, she misses the very point of feminism. Finally, I think she misses the whole fact that "feminism", however you might define it, means something very different for her, a white upper middle class woman, than it does for women of color/of different class backgrounds, and even of different ages.
ReplyDeleteVerde B.
I appreciate this article especially from the standpoint that you are a young capable woman in 2013. I do believe there must be some hesitation to undermine or downgrade the word "feminism" because so many good fights have been won through that movement. The work that has been done by women meeting in clandestine locations to launch campaigns that would overturn laws and shift paradigms has largely been accomplished in this country and the torch passes to each new generation with easily defined and obtainable goals. Most feminist that I know are not comfortable (or likely to) compare themselves with women that find their balance with men by emulating stereotypical masculine qualities. The tendency for some women to take that approach has always been seen as a pitfall along the path. Many powerful women that identified as "feminist" have influenced change becoming architects for a new design in a world that qualifies individuals by gender and ranks one over the other. Throughout more than half of this countries history women were not allowed to vote. It was not until the 70's that women were seriously considered for credit cards or bank loans. That is not a long time. Peel back the decades and you find women losing freedoms fast. One of the toughest opponents for a woman that seeks equality is another woman in the sisterhood that is firmly against that goal. Women remain the minority in too many ways in a male dominated society. Just look at the rape trial that is going on in Ohio. It is not important to me that women consider themselves "feminist" in their quest to bring equality for women further into focus; however, the word easily defines the process. One of my favorite feminists is Gloria Steinem. Her book "Revolution From Within: A Book of Self Esteem" gave me an understanding of a prejudice that often exists within ourselves against ourselves for our own human qualities, like being a woman or a "feminist."
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments! I am humbled and enriched by the perspectives you both bring to bear. Since writing this post I have been made far more aware of the particular lens through which I, and many of my peers, are experiencing "feminism" and everything that comes with it -- and how that affects the way I and others approach the conversation. I have been very privileged in the family and communities I have grown up with, in the opportunities I have had more or less placed in front of me, and even just by being born when I was, into a time where forces and movements have been hard at work for decades to make communities like mine exist and function.
ReplyDeleteBut I recognize that it is naive for me, or someone like Liz Spikol, or anyone really to think that we as a society are at a point where we can take equality and privilege for granted, and that we can take for granted that equality is a common goal for everyone. I can't argue with these points. I think the core of this post comes from this more than anything: I have always struggled with labels and I personally have a hard time boiling something I feel so complexly about into a single word... and having the necessary conversation cut off because of the oversimplified preconceptions associated with the label I battle to accept in the first place. But such are the limitations of language, I suppose.
Verde B, thank you for sharing the bell hooks quote. This is something I can really get behind. Both of you have given me a lot to think about, and a deeper appreciation and understanding of feminism in all its complexity.
Ok I'm a little hesitant to comment because I think i am not nearly learned enough in this subject to be able to make a strongly supported argument one way or the other, so this is pure opinion (probably slightly ignorant in some ways), but thanks Clara for this view! I really like your use of the word "IMBALANCE" or rather balance, because maybe equality isn't exactly the right term for what women and men should strive for. I think balance is a better interpretation, since we are not the same. We are different sexes-or even genders. I think there is a lot to say for females who take on a more masculine identity as well as men who take on a more feminine identity. I like this word because I feel like there are certain qualities of each sex/gender that just fit well with its respective gender role. Not to say these are rules or we are restricted from crossing the boundary (which is the issue I see with the glass ceiling where females can't necessarily get past is), but just as men are portrayed to have [certain] powers "over" women, I also think that we got stuff that they don't (excuse my Delaware speech coming out there...). So no, I don't think women should be oppressed/suppressed/enslaved/whatever else, but I think "equality" may be a strong term for a comparison between the sexes- a 'measurement' i view to be on two different scales. ... >:)
ReplyDeletealso, isn't it kind of weird how sexism is sexist? in some ways, it really depends on WHO (female vs. male?) is saying it... same with racism and the other "-isms"
DeleteI think about that all the time, not necessarily with feminism-- but when we think in negatives (i.e. "ending discrimination against women") we swing the pendulum in the opposite direction, but fail to change the focal point. In other words, whatever we do to change the framework inherently validates the very framework we are trying to erase or move beyond. In oversimplified terms, if you are going through a rough breakup and are trying to move on with your life, as long as you are doing things to spite your recent ex, your life still revolves around [him]. If you go out with someone who looks nothing like him, or wear something he hated, your actions still honor his influence in your life.
DeleteTo be fair, I know we can't always just go in with a totally new and unrelated idea, and inherent in changing a mindframe or a culture (or getting over someone) is responding and adapting to the positive and negative influences of the past... But after a certain point we start running in circles by continuing to respond to the Old instead of shaking a shackle or two and moving forward into the New.