Gather Round
In “Suffragist City”, writer Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner quotes the New York Herald’s commentary of the Woman Suffrage Procession of 1913, “Call it curiosity, call it sympathy, call it opposition; the fact remains that the suffrage parade and pageant here today attracted a greater crowd than any inaugural ever did” (Rowe Finkbeiner 59). In a way the feminist movement can be seen as a metaphorical parade. Participants banded together in procession, screaming their message to a somewhat passive audience...
(Continued...) The New York Herald chose three words in their covering of the parade: curiosity, sympathy and opposition. These are three approaches that seem common to the audience of feminism. There are those who will watch strictly as an inactive audience, letting their curiosity rule. Most never get beyond this boundary line, remaining strictly silent. Some are sympathetic, and will say they “wholeheartedly” support the movement but would never move beyond that approach. In the trailer we watched for I Was A Teenage Feminist a streetwalker said believed that a feminist is someone who believed in woman’s rights, but would never identify herself as one. The third group of spectators are the oppressors. Many in this category are the ignorant stiff upper lip society folk who want our society to stay as it is. They hate change, and they detest those who wish to start it.
I don’t know where I lie. I am very curious about feminism and without a doubt I support it. In Duluth, I rarely saw any motion of feminism; it remained a silent territory in that sense. So in a way I was isolated from feminist theory or thought. The only opinion I had on feminism was based on assumptions. I assumed the idea of feminism was a woman who stood for all women, a woman who didn’t need a relationship to define her or a woman who didn’t need to depend on anyone by herself. But I thought the movement was solely for women.
Many thought it was strange for me to be taking a course that encapsulates the ideas of Gender, Sexuality and specifically Feminism. They say that, because I am male. But I reply with, "Why not?" I don't need to have the parts of a woman in order to learn about a different ideal. That is ludicrous. Must we stereotype even still by the classes we choose to take? I look forward to be infused with a new approach to thinking. I am a person open to all things and I will never say no to learning about something unfamiliar.
I am learning now that feminism crosses beyond the female gender border, and can mean more than just male vs. female rights. Feminist theory can be applied to any body of thought. It’s about politics, power, relationships, sex, nature, soul, pop culture and society. It can literally be anything, and that’s why it’s beautiful. There is not one clear way to define it because it is different for everybody. Feminism is united by an idea, but defined individually by choice.