i wonder if she knows

I know I've been absent from here for a while. I started this post to write about how I was negotiating the world, but specifically, my marriage as a feminist. Although I no longer have that marriage, I'm still negotiating the world as a feminist, but things feel enormously different. I feel like I've become Feminist 2.0, my new understanding of who I am and how I should enteract with the rest of the world in order to achieve the results I want.

Let's start here. Nearly all of my feminist beliefs, at one point, could be boiled down to this point made by Simone De Beauvoir in The Second Sex.

"To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue none the less to exist to him also; mutually recognizing each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other."

A little more briefly, my main claim to feminism was this. There are men, there are women and there are variations that are in between, both or neither of those things. With little or no need to categorize or define gender or sex, also meaning little or no need to compare them to each other or to create one standard by which the other was judged, then we could all flourish and lead our most productive and happiest non-oppressed lives.

However, at some point a few months ago, I had a revelation. The issue, in my view, wasn't that we were categorizing, defining and comparing men and women, but that we as a society were fixated on trying to draw a line between masculinity, men and the male gender as well as feminity, women and the female gender.

I've discovered that I believe, among all the things I believe about God and the universe and our purpose in the world, that there is a cosmic balance between the masculine and the feminine, not a cosmic balance between men and women. All of us, regardless of sex, gender, orientation or age are composed of some parts feminine, some parts masculine. For many of us, we might find that we are far more one than the other, but I cannot see that one could exist without traits of both. The union of masculine and feminine is the resolution of cosmic unrest. We balance this within ourselves, we balance it with others in our romantic relationships, in our friendships, in our relationships with our family, with our goals and desires, our very being.

Okay, I know this all sounds kind of yin yang-y. But what I'm trying to say was that I found a lot of difficulty in arguing that we should stop worrying about the gender binary. And for the most part, we should. But it's not the gender binary that is the problem, it's the insistence that men are masculine and women are feminine. It's an inability to let people be people without holding them to these defined standards.

...to have independent existence.

Crap. I'm back where I started. I'm not very good at blogging about feminism. Maybe I should get a hobby and blog about that.

I guess the issue isn't so much that I don't believe what I did before, rather that I have a fuller understanding of it. And that I've come to appreciate the masculine and feminine within myself, and the masculine and feminine in others. And I'm learning to love the things about myself that I no longer view as contradictions, but part of a beautiful balance that makes up who I am.

Also. New "about me". (scroll down)

right out of my mouth

I don't need to ever post about name change because it's all right here.

what's in a name?

Over here at one of my closest friend's blog there is some heavy discussion about name changing. It is thoughtful and rational and it looks like everyone is being open and honest.

I am not being honest over there, and for now, I see no need to be honest over here. Because the truth about what I think of name change is not nice. It's not open-minded. It's not feminist. Or rather, it's not feminist to most of them, as the post and the discussion has made clear.

The truth I believe in my head comes from a place rooted deep within my understanding of feminist-theory and the standards to which I hold most of my feminist thought. (hint: it's on the left side of this page) It's something that I think I understand but am not always smart enough or quick enough or knowledgeable enough to defend.

So with that, I've decided that I do not drink enough wine. Tonight I plan to change that while dancing around the house to hip-hop. Is that okay with you?

since the dawn of (wo)man...

I hate generalizing and would normally never make a blanket statement about all women, but it seems to me that women have a way of being petty, malicious and competitive in a way that men are not. No, I'm not talking about America's Next Top Model, I'm talking about women's (and for that matter couples') decision if and when to have children.

More often than not throughout history, women who have chosen paths other than motherhood have been treated like they were avoiding their god-given duty, as if being a mother (or desiring to be a mother) was the natural state of being and those who disagreed were the variation on their natural state. (You know, just like how being hetero is natural and being not hetero is some sort of "alternative lifestyle".)

As more and more women choose to delay or completely put off motherhood, I'm finding that there seems to be a (teeny tiny) backlash towards the women who still do choose to have children. Not by the mainstream, but by the feminist community. "Oh, you're getting married, buying a house and then having a couple kids? You can't possibly be a feminist." In the interest of full disclosure, I do not have children, and while I wouldn't rule it out as a future life-decision, I am not climbing up the walls waiting to get a baby in my arms. Children are pretty gross, and right now I'm totally okay with my life-decision to have beer and a box of mac n' cheese for dinner at least once a week.

That statement brings me to another point. Depending on your audience, you might have to defend yourself According to the mainstream; (I hate that word) women who choose not to have kids must be selfish and totally unable to grow up and give up their lifestyle for the miraculous gift of parenthood. According to some liberals; women who start families are brainwashed into thinking that that's how they need to live their lives and we need more people going against the grain if we're ever going to change the social structure of this society. Either way, someone will criticize you.

But two wrongs don't make a right, and retaliation is the opposite of progress.

I think that most thoughtful feminists would tell me that they respect whatever choice a woman makes, at whatever point in her life, but I think they would be lying if they didn't at least know what I'm talking about. I can be guilty of this too, like I said, children are pretty gross so it's better for my life if I choose my friends based on the amount of grossness in their lives, but I know it doesn't make it better. Why does it always have to be a comparison? Why can't it just be what it is? How did everything turn full circle from fighting for the right to prevent pregnancy to now fighting to be mothers without judgment? It would be nice if we stopped attacking each other and just became more supportive of each other's life-decisions, because that's what we're asking from everyone else.

Am I alone in this or do people know what I'm talking about?

you've come a long way, baby

I have a dirty  little secret.

Sometimes I wonder about feminism. I mean, I’ve basically dedicated my social life to trying to prove to people that feminism is more than birth control pills and hairy legs, but in reality, is it?

I secretly wonder if we’re just causing more problems for ourselves, and if we just left things alone maybe natural social progression would solve the issues themselves.

To understand what I mean, let’s look at the chronological break down of feminist movements. Feminism has no defined leaders, but generally speaking there are some key leaders within each wave. Each wave is not totally exclusive, but this is super simplified and mostly off the top of my head:

——————First Wave (1890’s-1950’s)

Issues: Suffrage, education reform, right of married women to work outside the home, right to inherit property
Leaders: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Marie Stopes, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

Second Wave (1960’s-late 1980’s)Issues: Sexual harassment and workplace rights, reproductive rights (including “the pill” and abortion legalization), strong rejection of patriarchy and beginnings of gender binary rejection and a partnership/coincidental relationship with the civil rights and anti-war movements. Best known for “radical feminism” and the foundation of NOW (National Organization of Women).
Leaders: Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan, bell hooks, Simone de Beauvoir

Third Wave (early 1990’s-present)Issues: Women’s empowerment & “girl power”, lgbt rights, mother’s rights (breastfeeding, maternal health), complete rejection of gender binary, womanism, postmodernism, continued abortion rights and global women’s issues.
Leaders: Rebecca Walker, Judith Butler
———————
In the big picture, I can see how these are all parts of the overall goal of women’s emancipation.

But I have to wonder if all this feminist stuff was really necessary. I mean, don’t good things come to those who wait?

I mean, maybe if women hadn’t gotten their corsets and petticoats in bunch about voting and going to work, they wouldn’t have to be worried about things like sexual harassment and equal pay. And maybe if women weren’t going out of the house and their virginity was protected, we wouldn’t have to even have abortion. And furthermore, maybe if women hadn’t been going to work in the first place and staying at home with their children where they belonged, we wouldn’t now be fighting for things like maternity leave, breastfeeding rights and childcare. You wanted to work outside the home, but now you need all this special stuff to do it. You wanted to use birth control, but now you’re fussing about rights to motherhood. Make up your mind, woman!

Yes, I’m being crass. But you get my point. Isn’t there the chance that some of this would have worked itself out on its own? And my god, why is it taking so long? How have we been at this for over 100 years and all I have to show for it is this “Sisterhood is Blooming” magnet?

In reality though, we might have all these rights on paper, but we still haven’t even come close to touching women’s emancipation. Violence against women is still rampant across this country, women are still making less than 80 cents for every man’s dollar, and the gender binary in children seems to be getting worse (fuck you, Disney princesses). What is it going to take for true equal rights and for feminism to become obsolete? Because, essentially, that’s the goal, right? Or maybe it’s not. Like I’ve said before, we have no goal.

I know this is all necessary, but sometimes I just want to throw up my hands, because people just don’t get it. And I can’t make them get it. And it makes me wonder if what we’re doing really makes a difference. Is it really better that women can work outside of the home even though they’re still making less? Is it really better that women can control family size if they aren’t even being told about safe sex in school? Is it SERIOUSLY a success that a woman can legally charge her husband for rape if it’s only been prosecuted in cases that coincide with physical violence?  Don’t even get me started on other issues like queer rights, minority rights and children rights. Because it feels like we’ve done nothing. I know I’m kind of ranting, but you can see where my frustration lies.

No, I don’t really think we’d be better off if we hadn’t stood up for ourselves. But I do wonder if we’d really be that far behind where we are now.