do titles bore anyone else?
To be honest, I never really “knew� what feminism was—I knew what it wasn’t.
I grew up with fairly conservative parents, but ones who weren’t always very vocal about their opinions. My dad has a photograph of President Bush on his hearth and I still don’t know why. My mom and stepfather have never, ever told me for whom they voted, no matter how “small� the election. In high school, I read the chapter of Rush Limbaugh’s The Way Things Ought To Be in which he introduces and embellishes the term “feminazi.� I was enraged at the sheer, cruel absurdity of what I’d read, and I railed at it that night at home. My stepdad stopped me cold by saying, “You know, he’s not entirely wrong.� I realized, at that moment, exactly how pervasive that kind of stereotype might be.
Like I said, I quickly garnered an idea of what the world’s many feminisms were not, but my initial ideas of feminism stemmed from various indignations that stuck with me. I knew that being harassed by the boys in my elementary-schoolyard was not right, and that feeling guilty about it was unfair. I hated to see that my mom raised three of us on her own while going to school, with an unhealthy little monthly stipend forced out of my father’s increasingly hearty bachelor’s salary.
I’ve read and learned a lot more since then (not just in this class), and have discovered that feminism is all of those things and a lot more. It probably depends on whom one talks to, and when. bell hooks, for instance, focuses quite a bit on the class- and race-based struggles of feminism, but what caught me most was her idea of the way patriarchy hurts family. She writes that, as patriarchy is a system of dominance, “ours is a culture that does not love children, that continues to see children as the property of parents to do with as they will� (73). I watch this happening to my heedless little sister, whose parents attempt to focus her scattered attentions by becoming ever more strident, and I know that it is true. When Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards hypothesize that, without feminism, there would be “no Take Back The Night marches to protest women’s lack of safety after dark…,� I think of a conversation I had with a friend a while ago (6). There was a look of inexplicable pity on his face as he said, “You walk around alone all the time with a fear that I’m never going to have, even if you don’t think about it much…. Just because somebody got the idea, one day, to rape and attack…� Women have a fear of their physical and sexual safety in a way that very, very few men do. The authors of Manifesta draw attention to this fear, and although I don’t fully understand where it came from (Historically, why are women dominated? Why are men the ones to dominate?), I know that it’s real.
I could go on and cite the truth in almost every author’s description of feminism or multiple feminisms, but I’ve gone over the word count and it’s more succinct to write that, perhaps, any individual’s definition of feminism can be applicable to that individual’s cares and experiences, and is therefore viable.
Comments
I like that your definition deals with a general feeling/belief, as opposed to a straightup Bell Hooks 'equality of gender roles' etc. It's very hard to grasp the sterile definitions, but much easier to identify simply with the feeling that, (for example),women shouldn't feel unsafe at night, that it's unfair, something to be 'pitied'. That feminism is more about what it's NOT than perhaps what it is- maybe this is why the movement is so hard to pin down now.
Posted by: Annie | January 28, 2007 11:09 PM