So, in my morning perusal of tumblr I came across
this,
which made me say this:
(Read it and you’ll understand why. Don’t worry. I’ll still
be here when you get back. I’m just that kind of dependable.)
I, of course, just had to respond. The post has been excerpted
for your benefit. I don’t who this girl/woman is, or how much traffic her page gets (not that it matters), but I do know that sentiments such as those highlighted
below pervade our society. As a budding feminist, this both saddens and
frustrates me.
“[…]the quickest way
to set me on the warpath is to tell me you want to be a stay at home mom for
the rest of your life and not get an education and mooch off your
husband/partner completely by choice (ie: You have the ability/funds/everything
else required to attend school and better yourself) BUT THAT’S NOT BECAUSE IT’S
AN OPPRESSIVE FEMALE ROLE, it’s because it’s a waste of a brain[…]”
Going to college and having a career is indeed a wonderful opportunity
that countless men and women should be proud/thankful to have. But, what you
seem to be missing is the fact that white men have *always* had that
opportunity. What you’re failing to consider, or are just blatantly ignoring –
I’m not sure which – is that people of color and women as a whole were
historically denied the choice of getting a decent education and following that
up with a career. But, for now, I’ll shelve the class/race element for the sake
of brevity and focus solely on women.
Feminists fought for a woman’s right to attend college, graduate school,
etc and eventually pursue careers because women did not previously have the
option to do so. Our role was to grow
up, go to finishing school if our culture dictated, find a husband, have babies,
cook, clean and shut up and look pretty. We could not choose to operate outside
of this role. (Again, shelving the class debate, because Black women were
definitely working and raising families before white feminists began fighting
for a woman’s right to have a life outside of the home. This, of course,
informed a large portion of the debate between early feminists of color and
early white feminists.)
What we have now, in the 21st century, is the
ability to choose what we want to do. A
woman that chooses to stay at home and take care of her husband, wife,
significant other, [insert term of choice here] is no less intelligent than a
woman that chooses to pursue a career. And they are no different than women who
choose to pursue careers and take care of their families. There is no
difference between telling a woman that she has to go outside of the home to be
considered worthy and telling a woman that she must stay at home, barefoot and
pregnant in the kitchen, to be considered worthy. Why? Because both claims deny
her the right to make the choice for herself. They strip her of her choice. And
that’s what feminism is truly about – giving the women the authority to govern
their own damned lives. Got it?
Now, if you think
that being a stay at home wife/mother would be a waste of your personal brain
space, then that’s fine, but do not seek
to extend that belief to all other women in the country, or on the planet. Such
a job (and please believe it is a job,
an often thankless one at that) is a waste of brain FOR YOU.
Don’t get me wrong. The last thing on earth I want to be is
a stay at home anything, least of all a stay at home parent. But I would never
look down my nose and tell a woman (or man) that chooses to do that that s/he is
somehow inferior and stupid.
“You want equality?
You want to be respected? Well
then, the best solution is clearly to just lay on the floor and whine about how
disrespected you are. You wonder why women are seen as weak? Do I really need
to explain why? It’s because your response is to whine and complain rather
than getting out there and eating stereotypes for breakfast. Go out there, get
an education, and take over the freaking world..”
I agree that people simply whining about being disrespected
and marginalized does nothing to implement change. However, you seem to think
that “eating stereotypes for breakfast” is going to somehow show men that women
are equal to them. I see two problems
with this assessment. First of all, stereotypes persist because they make the privileged
majority (in this case bigoted men) seem superior. In fact, they are a set of inaccurate,
simplistic generalizations about a group that allows others to categorize them
and treat them accordingly (thank you
www.dictionary.com).
Stereotypes
continuously marginalize othered groups, making claims such as “women are the
weaker sex because they lack testosterone” and “women earn less because they
are less aggressive” seem normal and therefore acceptable. Secondly, you either forget or simply do not
know that a stereotype persists regardless of the evidence mounted against it.
Women don’t have the drive, don’t have what it takes to be scientists/engineers/politicians/pilots/[insert
career of choice here]. And yet, there are countless women who are scientists,
engineers, politicians, pilots and so on. And there are just as many stories by
women in those professions that detail how much sexism they’ve had to deal with
on their way to the top. Having a career and being educated does not
automatically mean that sexist men will no longer be sexist. “Herpderp, she has
a career now. I guess I have to stop thinking she’s a lesser being.” No. That’s
not how it works.
Suffice it to say – negating the stereotype does not destroy
the stereotype. So, the onus isn’t upon women to prove to men that they are
equal, the onus is upon bigoted men to stop thinking they are superior just
because they were born with a penis.
“The harsh reality is
that if you want respect you’re going to have to show men you deserve it. Yes,
just like any other human being.
Oh, you thought men just walked into a business environment and everyone
respected them?”
So, all of those women who are groped or on the receiving
end of disgusting sexual invitations when walking down the street (including
myself) need to show those men that they “deserve” respect? Or perhaps all of those
women who are CEOs, COOs and CFOs of companies both big and small and are still
treated like they are “just” women? Or maybe you mean those women who are legal
partners in major law firms, top surgeons in their medical field, or those
women who stay at home and raise the children that will become our future. What
you fail to understand is that imploring women to show men that they deserve
respect places them squarely in a man’s world and thereby at the mercy of what
men think a women should be or do. And it makes the fact that they aren’t
respected their fault. That’s like telling a black man that someone hurled the ‘N’
word at him because he had the audacity to have black skin. Let’s not play this
“blame the victim” game. It’s tired and
oh so boring.
I do not think men just walk into business environments and
immediately garner respect, but I do think women sometimes walk into business
environments and immediately get even less respect – from both sexes. Think
about what women who like to wear high heels and have their nails done often
have to face in the work place – in other words women who are conventionally
pretty. The stereotypes persist even then – you’re pretty so you must be dumb as a
rock. You assume that success (both academic and professional) somehow
affords women respect. It does not. When a person believes himself to be
superior to another human being, he will find a way to prove his point. Period.
It does not matter if I stay at home or if I go out and join the work force. I’ll
still be a woman dealing with real woman problems at the end of the day.
So get off your high horse and make decisions about your own
life and encourage other women to do the same. But do not tell them that your
way is the right way and that their’s is wrong. I mean this in the best way
possible - before you go on a rant about a topic such as this – perhaps pick up
a book and educate yourself. If you choose not to, that’s fine. But that’s
counterproductive and, dare I say it, lazy.