Five Things Feminism Has Done For Me

[velvetpage]

This is in response to Canada's Minister for the Status of Women Canada, Bev Oda, who has just presided over a 40% cut to her own budget and doesn't seem to realize what it is she's supposed to defend. Canadian women (or for that matter, women anywhere) feel free to take the challenge: name five things feminism has done for you.

1) I'm more than just a mom. I can be a mom, and be a good one; I can take time away from my other roles in order to raise my children; and then I can go back, without any stigma or loss of prestige. I don't have to hide my parenthood to have success.

2) My husband is my full partner. He doesn't "help out" around the house, because that implies that I am ultimately responsible. Instead, he does what needs doing. He participates fully in his daughters' lives, he takes care of household chores, and he does it with no condescension about how he's helping me with my tasks. They're his tasks too. We both accept responsibility for out home and family.

3) I can choose what happens to my body. I chose a midwife. I chose the books that informed me about my pregnancy. I had appointments with three different ob/gyns, two of them female, before my second daughter was born. The anesthetist was male but his resident was female. I choose doctors and medical practitioners who respect my intelligence and know that I'm going to inform myself about my and my children's health. If I come across a paternalistic, "Don't worry your pretty head about that," kind of doctor, I'll ask for a referral to someone else, because I won't let anyone patronize me in that way.

4) I got an education and I use it. I grew up with the assumption that my brother, my two sisters and myself would all go to university. That was what smart kids did, and we all grew up with the assumption of our own intelligence. Our parents, both of them, were feminist enough to believe in that equality and want us to have the choices that a liberal education would give us. I use my education daily in my job, where I serve as an example to the next generation of smart girls that they, too, can get an education and use it.

5) I don't need a nom de plume to be taken seriously when I write. There is no assumption that women to do not write serious things. There is no longer a need to write as a man to be taken seriously, as there once was. I have opinions, I know how to inform them and express them, and I can do so as myself.

The fact is, many people, even in our relatively enlightened society, still cannot take these things for granted. The Motherhood Manifesto, about the situation of mothers in relation to the rest of the workforce in the United States, bears witness to that sad state of affairs. Women in Canada who did not grow up with parents as enlightened and egalitarian as mine still do not embrace their own destinies. Women in the States question several of the points I just made, fearing constantly that these realities, already shaky, are being eroded. The elimination of funding for the Ministry of the Status of Women Canada reminds us that we in Canada are not without risk to the rights we have won or those for which we still fight. We cannot afford to rest on our laurels and assume the fight is won.

When you write your list, go to this site and post a link to it in comments: http://www.pogge.ca/archives/001283.shtml

EDIT: post it here, too: http://www.progressivebloggers.ca/blog/diary.php?cmd=view&id=1287

Comments

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Feminism has also done a lot for me as a guy. Since Michelle is my full partner, we as a couple, have a lot more freedom in how we live our lives. She's not my dependent in any sense. Ultimately this means we're far richer we otherwise would be and neither partner feels put upon because we both take responsibility for what needs doing. There's the usual spats about whether fabric softner actually does anything or its laundry snake oil, but that's pretty petty in the scheme of things.

The situtation with feminism in the US seems bound up in the image over substance approach to everything we do in the country. I think a lot of working class people see feminism as a hollow intellectual platitude that doesn't actually deliver anything. The other problem is that the media here loves to go with the most flamboyantly extreme representatives of any movement, totally skewing perceptions. Feminists still get painted a bra burning militant vegan lesbians. And then there's some hypocrisy going on as well. Several of our friends declare themselves to be rabid feminists. When they married, they refused to take their husbands names upon marriage. Why should they? Michelle opted to go with my surname and that was her decision. These women were aghast that she should do such a thing as sacrifcing her identity and become an appendage of me. Well, I moved with Michelle to further her career and Michelle also contributes her energy and income to the marriage as much as do. Meanwhile, our so called feminist friends are totally dependent on their husbands for income and even emotional stability. There's alot of women who embrace the style, but fail to understand the substance and people generally see through that. Unfortunately with many progressive movements in the US, people tend to go with the style as way to feel good about themselves but fail to make the deep changes in their lives.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I took my husband's name upon marriage because I wanted to create a family identity, and because I was about to start my career and wouldn't have anything significant to change. I'm enough of a traditionalist to want to do it that way, too.

A feminist is anyone who sees women as independent and fully human in their own right, regardless of their relationships with men. A feminist couple may decide to be financially dependent on one partner so the other can pursue interests of value, such as staying at home with the kids. I don't see that as fundamentally anti-feminist; however if the women go along with their husband's expectations, when it's not what they want for themselves, THEN the move is anti-feminist.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Well, staying at home with the kids is definitely contributing at least an equal measure. No, the women I was thinking of specifically seem to view their husbands more as parents and seem to have a deep seated need to be taken care of. Unfortunately, I've personally run into the attitude a lot and it's made me lose respect for women who declare themselves Feminists as opposed to feminists. The lower case ones are actually putting the ideas into practice instead of worrying about whether it's women or wimmin... I'll stop my rant about pseudo left wing jargon now because it'll be ugly. Guess I've spent so much of life in universities that I'm kind of jaded and cynical about this kind of thing.

Maybe there's a deeper problem, though. So many adults, of any gender, in the US seem to be more overgrown teenagers than adults. I dunno sometimes my country just drives me nuts at any point in the political spectrum. I think it might be better to talk about Hip, Disconnected, and Authoritarian rather than Left, Centrist, and Right.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The leftist jargon drives me crazy, too. For example - whoever coined the word "herstory" has a lot to answer for. That's a crime against linguistics and history both.

I think you're right about the perpetual kid syndrome in North America, though. I've seen it a lot, too - not surprisingly, in parent-teacher interviews where the reason for the interview was that the student wasn't doing some aspect of their job. Like parent, like child. . .

[ghostwes.livejournal.com]

I have a friend in the US who took his wife's name after marriage.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Very cool.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

It's funny because my wife essentially chose my surname simply because it sounded cooler. I probably would have done the same myself if her surname was something more interesting than my own. I'm really not attached to my family name because my identity is based around the familiar name.

[(Anonymous)]

erin, that is an important list. The people who are trying to demonize the word "feminist" like to pretend that none of us is a wife or a mother, that none of us cares about men and children and everyone else in our world, which is a wicked lie. I really value your testimony to the truth of a real feminist's real life.

Make sure that Scott Tribe at progressive bloggers has the URL for this entry.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

A very good post!

Thanks (from Scott)

[(Anonymous)]

I've added this to the main blogpost at Prog Blog.