Woman-ness

Remember when I realized I was a feminist? What I was really realizing at that time was the subtle ways that western society is built to subjugate women. The full weight of that hit me hard, and I had to sit around reflecting on it for a long time.

Now that I have, I am having a hard time getting on the feminist bandwagon, because there are 47,000 definitions of the word along with 47,000 different feminist camps. Some of them, frankly, are pretty absurd. For example, the president of the New York chapter of NOW recently made a statement that seems ridiculous. The gist? Vote for Hillary or you are a gang-rape supporter (not the position of the national chapter, btw). Actually, I think that Ms. Pappas is simply suffering from poor writing skills, and a bad, over-extended analogy. I think I can tell what she is trying to say, and if I’m right, I can relate to it. However, the argument she used makes feminists look bad in the same way that Bush pronouncing nuclear as “nuke-you-lur” makes him sound like an idiot. It makes feminists an easy target for people like Ryan Haeker*.

For my part, I respect Hillary by considering her positions on the issues I care about and comparing them to other candidates equally, not by voting for her based on her possession of a vagina. Is there a feminist camp for me? We shall see.

That being said, there are certainly issues in life that are unique for women. Olderwoman’s post on one such issue over at Scatterplot got a lot of attention a while back. Namely, she posted about balancing her children, her family, and a successful career. I thought it was very interesting, but I couldn’t relate. I don’t want kids at all. It’s not that I want a career more than I want family. It’s that I don’t want kids whether I have a career or not. This is of course an issue in and of itself. I did some preliminary research on women like me last semester and found that, for some women**, not wanting kids is no longer a stigmatized identity that it once was. Instead, it’s a source of pride rooted in the knowledge that they’ve made a well-considered decision and stuck with it despite external pressures to conform. This issue came up in my mind today because I read another eloquent take on the subject by ProfGrrrrl, who is reacting to one of her grad students assuming that she’d chosen career over family when in fact she hasn’t.  Please read this post even if you don’t care about family, kids, or women.  ProfGrrrrl rocks.  She has an impressive level of personal strength and seems like a very grounded individual.

Thus concludes my ramblings on womanhood for today.  For some one who’s not blogging, I sure blog a lot, eh?

*My husband tells me poor Ryan was “genuinely surprised” that his op-ed caused such a stir.  Also, he made his way to my blog and commented on my middle finger post pointing me toward his “six page essay on feminism”.  The testicles.  They overwhelm me.  Please some one with more patience than me go read it and report back for the amusement of all.  I’m looking at you, Heebie.  You always make me laugh!

** “Some” women because a) my sample size was miniscule, b) it was qualitative research and, c) the applicable sociological theory surrounding efficacy-based self-esteem refers only to people who feel empowered, as the women in my sample did.