I've been blogging a lot about the
things that feminism does wrong. But I don't want to give the
impression that I'm an anti-feminist, either, because that would be
pretty far from the truth. So here are some reasons we need feminism:
- Birth control and abortion rights. These are the two most legitimate issues on the feminist agenda in my mind, because they are two issues that must have showed up in a time machine from the 19th century because who the heck thinks that women shouldn't have a right to decide what to do with their own bodies? Granted, I could write a much more coherent political post specifically about these issues, especially since I know not all of my readers agree with me, but it's been done many times before far better than I could do. There are many reasons for which I consider these issues no-brainers, but the biggest one is that women are sentient human beings and can decide what to do with their own bodies without the rest of the world chiming in. If you are a woman and are against abortion, great. Don't get one. (Similarly if you are against gay marriage, great, don't get one. Ditto for contraception.) But leave the rest of us alone to make our own decisions. My body belongs to me and me alone.
- Read this article: How ‘Slut Shaming’ Has Been Written Into School Dress Codes Across The Country. This is a weird issue because it combines sexism and ageism, a concept I'm going to write about... soon. Whenever I get the time. (Note that my list of topics to write about is getting longer faster than I can cross them off the list.) I am aware that this does happen in adult work environments, but is much less common and much more shocking. We consider it perfectly normal if a kid says “At my school, we aren't allowed to wear spaghetti straps because it shows too much skin.” But if an adult says the same thing it sounds really weird. “Isn't that a little sexist and overly controlling?” you might respond. Perhaps the worst is the reason given, that it's “distracting.” To whom is it distracting? Example #4 from the article is: 'A kindergarten student in Georgia was forced to change her “short” skirt because it was a “distraction to other students.”' In kindergarten I really don't think the boys are going to be distracted by a little girl's ballet outfit. In kindergarten I'm pretty sure my brother still wanted to wear dresses to school so the two of us could be matching. (And my mom let him, because she's awesome.) Kindergarteners don't give a rat's! So really what this is about is trying to teach girls from a very young age to cover themselves up because their bodies are sinful. In an exercise in charitable thinking, it's trying to teach girls that there is a respectable way to dress that follows certain societal rules and expectations. It's for their own good so that they don't dress like sluts later on in their professional life. It's just when you think about what the gesture actually means that you realize we're installing the belief in girls' heads that their bodies are shameful, they have to cover up or other people will be distracted, and eventually that if they get raped or sexually assaulted, it will be their fault for dressing provocatively. It is fortunate that these sorts of rules are much less common after high school, but the damage has been done.
- Read this Cracked article: 5 Ways Modern Men are Trained to Hate Women. I don't agree with all of these points, especially not the end that makes it sound like men think only with their dicks. I don't know, I'm not a guy, but I was not under the impression that that's how it works. Anyway, points 5 and 4 I especially agree with. It's not anyone's fault, but it's true that all the romance stories we've ever seen since we were born tell us that the average-looking main character guy deserves a hot girl in the end when he deals with his problems, defeats his childhood bullies, and becomes successful. And since everyone sees themselves as the protagonist of their own Hollywood film, they often feel like the world (or the girl) has been unjust when their advances are refused. Again, I don't think this was an intentional move by the misogynistic media or the patriarchy or something like that. It was just sort of an unintentional thing that happened from our historically sexist society. So blame is dumb and that's where I think a lot of feminists are getting it wrong, but we should realize the message here. In general heroines don't vanquish their enemies to be awarded with the muscled man-toy of their choice.4) The other point I liked the best was “We're trained from birth to see you as decoration.” Truth. And it's not just the men who are trained this way. Read this article on How to Talk to Little Girls. Even very young girls are told every day that they're pretty or well-dressed, while young boys are told that they're getting big and strong. The problem with this is that we're socializing these kids to believe that looks are very important, especially girls being pretty.
The other day I met a 5-year-old French girl who immediately upon meeting me explained her wardrobe choices for the day (I chose the gray pants because the blue pants didn't go with my top and the black leggings are getting too small!) and told me that I had a weird face and told my host sister that she was beautiful. (I was very tempted to answer her question “Why is your face like that?” with a very blunt “Some people are just ugly, but they tend to take it badly so you should learn not to say it. Some day you might even be ugly! You never know.” Fortunately I restrained myself and her mom sat her down and explained the concept of acne.) Anyway, my gut reaction to her thoughts about her wardrobe was that there was something wrong with her, that she had already at such a young age been conditioned by her parents and society to care about things she shouldn't care about. I certainly didn't care about being pretty when I was her age, and adults didn't tell me I was pretty – probably because I made insulted faces at them if they did, cause looking back at my baby pictures I was pretty adorable. But then I was forced to admit that she is probably like many of my friends – actually genuinely interested in fashion. Fashion, after all, is like an art, so why should an interest in fashion not be legitimate? Just because I've never liked fashion and have always felt pressured to try to like it doesn't mean that a large percentage of girls aren't genuinely interested in it. So this topic is difficult for me to write about, because I'm not sure how much we're socializing girls to like fashion, and how much fashion is an art form created by girls that many girls happen to be interested in, just like how math was invented by nerds and nerds continue to like math. (There's nothing oppressive about math, even though nerds are often considered to be the bottom of the high school totem pole.) But even if young girls have a perfectly legitimate interest in fashion, I do think we emphasize the idea that they are decoration too much, since standard adult conversation to little girls consists of little more than “What a lovely dress!”
5) Girls can't do leader-stuff: Remember the thing in that Cracked article about how we judge Elena Kagan by her looks even though that has nothing to do with the job she's supposed to do? Same goes for Hilary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, two of my favorite female politicians. (I've never heard anyone insult Elizabeth Warren's looks but that might be because she's less well-known and so the only people who know about her are more sophisticated thinkers.) Criticizing Hilary Clinton's looks is such a non-sequitor, such a breach of logic that I really don't how you ended up there. We weren't talking about her looks, we were talking about her ability to run a country and make rational decisions that represent the will of the people... Speaking of Clinton, the word “bitch” has been used to describe (probably; this is just my best guess) the fact that she's a woman in a position of power. Since this is a minority opinion, I'm not going to address that issue. But what I am going to address is the underlying psychology that spawned it, in my humble, completely uneducated-in-psychology opinion.
Guys
who are leaders are often seen as powerful, intelligent, arrogant,
horny, charismatic, ambitious, etc. The negative qualities (arrogant,
horny) often just contribute to the general picture. They can be
excused by the man's greatness. Steve Jobs was allowed to be an
asshole because he was inspirational and a Leader. I guess I can't
claim that men are allowed to have sex scandals, considering what
that did to Bill Clinton's career, but it's not shocking. Many,
including myself, just sort of shrug and say “Oh well, I guess all
politicians are horny.” I have no idea how we would react to a
female politician with a sex scandal. (Update: Apparently,
either we don't really care or it doesn't happen to really prominent
female politicians because it happens less often in general.
But if
female leaders exhibit some of the same qualities – let's go with
the ambition/arrogance/confidence cluster because it's easier to deal
with and analyze – they tend to be called bitchy. Like Hilary
Clinton. In my estimation, Clinton is no more ambitious or confident
or arrogant than any other politician during the 2008 elections, but
she was the only one to be called names for it. It's sort of our gut
response to females trying to take power. We question it, because it
doesn't feel right. Personally, I tend to get along very poorly with
female coaches or teachers. A female English teacher is the most
likely to get on my bad side, because I often disagree with English
teacher's comments, provoking sentiments like “Who does she think
she is, anyway” and “Who is she to tell me what to do.” I've
never had a male teacher in English, but I've always gotten along
wonderfully with my male history teachers. I respect them for their
history knowledge and let them tell me what to do in my essays
because I feel they have the right to. In sports, I have a terrible
time accepting orders from females, and tend to doubt their
qualifications. If a female senior marching band member told me what
to do, I might well have thought to myself “It's not like she knows
how to march well anyway! And she should treat her fellow marchers
with more respect.” But a male coach can scream at me and humiliate
me and I'll generally feel terrible, but accepting of this
discipline. I'm assuming that this is not just me. It could be
something to do with wolf pack psychology, that as a somewhat
dominant female I do not like other alpha females, but am fine with
(and even tend to like) alpha males. Or it could be something to do
with the fact that all of us have trouble accepting female leaders.
This
really sucks. I'm not sure what to do about it, because I really do
believe it's a natural phenomenon that has a lot to do with wolf
packs and testosterone and having “being a leader” engraved in
our brains as “muscle-y and virile and able to fight off enemies”
and nothing to do with a conscious and deliberate hatred and
oppression of women. So is feminism useful? Who knows. I'm sure there
are some things we can do to fight against our brains, but I don't
know what they are. But that's one of the biggest reasons I don't
like being a woman, because I'm aware that being arrogant and
ambitious and self-centered are all things that are more acceptable
and attractive on a man than a woman, and it's way harder for us
bossy females to look leaderly than it is for men.
I
guess what would be more accurate to say is that these are 5 reasons
it sucks to be born a woman. I do not feel that all of them are
causes for feminism. Abortion rights, birth control rights, and the
one about school dress codes definitely qualify: Go kill school dress
codes, feminists, with my blessing! These are all issues for which I
am a fire-breathing feminist. But the others are more deep-rooted
psychological issues. It sucks for me that I will never look as
leaderly as a tall, imposing man, but it's no one's fault and I don't
know what, if anything, we can do to fight against it. I think my
primary objection against a lot of things that radical feminists do
and say is the hatred and blame that they use. I find the term the
“Patriarchy” confusing and blameful. I find they are too
negative, seeing sexism and rape culture and other terms I don't
really understand when I never would have thought of that, and have
to squint my eyes and smoke a little concentrated feminism to even
start to see what they're getting at. (See my last week's post on the
negativity
of radical feminism.) But I am aware that I've been pretty lucky
and have never felt discriminated against for my gender in ways that
are institutionalized and not psychological. When other feminists go
on rants about things that I found perfectly normal, they are
probably reacting that way because they have a different history than
I do, have been more abused by our sexist society, and have learned
to have a trigger response that looks a little crazy to me. Anyway,
so I managed to end on yet another negative note, but this was
supposed to be my post explaining why I do
consider myself a feminist among all the other posts I write
criticizing the movement. I'm not trying to be a horrible
anti-feminist person! It's just that I actually am a feminist, and I
started reading a lot of feminist blogs and feel the urge to pick on
all the things in their logic that I don't like! My apologies,
feminists. I am on your side. Now let's go convince people that
abortion rights and birth control rights would be great things to
have.
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