Feminism is...
I learned early on in High School about feminism. I knew that there was a history and that somehow I was allowed the right to vote and have “equal� work, pay and reproductive rights etcetera. However, the meaning of “feminism� has always been hard for me to explain, and a label has been the farthest thing that I have ever wanted to understand. While reading the different articles this week I found the “Suffragist City� article to be historically interesting. I now understand more clearly the suffering that women had to endure and the time it took to fight for the right to vote. I assumed that jail was a negative experience; the force feeding through a tube that went through the noses of these women was visually too much for me. What I found to be the most profound part of this article was in the end when Maude Younger says, ‘“I don’t want to do anything more; I don’t want to be on any board or any committee or have anything more to do, because I think we have done all this for women and we have sacrificed everything we possessed for them,�’ (Rowe-Finkbeiner page 6). These women work so hard, unbelievably hard. I can’t imagine something like this because I take it for granted. I wonder what it feels like to sacrifice everything that you possess and what it would take for me to do that.
“A Day Without Feminism� helped me understand more clearly what I take for granted. There were many things within the article that struck me. I think that feminism isn’t clearly defined, that no one is able to come up with a definition. I always thought of feminism as being stagnant and label specific; the stereotypes always floated in the back of my mind. Now I see that feminism is recreated continuously. I know that reproductive rights are being taken away, but what is the focus of feminism now and is there going to be another wave or is the Third Wave still coming to shore?