Manifesta
I was really moved by Baumgardner and Richards’ Manifesta. It’s one thing for me to think about what America would be like without feminism, but it was another to actually read A Day Without Feminism, so beautifully written and so powerful. The piece put into perspective not only the what living without feminism would be like, but, along with the other articles we had to read, made me appreciate feminism to a greater level, thinking about all the work that women before me have done to achieve equal rights. The excerpt also helped to break down feminism for me. Whereas before I thought about feminists working on broad scale (i.e. equal rights for all women), the article made me think about each individual right women had to fight for—voting, reproductive rights, equal education rights, to name a few. It seems that the role of this movement has been to change the identity of women in our world—in the minds of men and women. I feel that feminist movements have worked to get people to see women not as subordinate “servants,� but as individuals who are an asset to our society, to our economy, who can be self-sufficient and therefore deserve equality. Now that I think about it, feminism today is not too much further from the beginnings of feminism.
The platform is very much the same: to change the identity of women in our culture. It’s amazing to think of how much women have accomplished since the beginnings of feminism. Baumgardner and Richards are right: the world we live in today is so different than the world we were born into. And although we have come such a long way, we must still continue to fight, to change what is not equal so that the children born today will live in an even better world.
Comments
I completely agree with you. I loved this article and it really made me thank the women before us. It definetaly made you think more in depth and really understand how many things women did not have 30 years ago and what a difference it has made today.
Posted by: Abbey | January 29, 2007 5:44 PM