Tag Archives: Worried that ghosts of our feminist foremothers will be disappointed

Dear America… Never mind.

Two teenagers take a photograph with an Abercrombie & Fitch employee inside Westfield San Francisco Centre during Black Friday in San Francisco, California November 29, 2013. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

As a mom to a teenage boy, I’ve yet to step inside any Abercrombie & Fitch. (Let’s leave aside whether I meet the standards for the type of customers the jackassy CEO envisioned wearing his company’s clothes) I find the idea disconcerting to shop at a store that showcases relentlessly half-nekkid virile young men. “Hey, look at me! Do I make you randy? Now come in and bathe in the glory of my bare chest. And while you are at it, remember to pick up some clothes from here so your son can look like me.”

Eh. NO.

The same way I found it disturbing when I overheard a mom say to her preteen/teenage daughter, “Ooo. You look sexy. Do you want to get it?” Really? I understand the concept of treating sex and sex talk as a natural/neutral subject. But we’ve got to draw the line somewhere. Somehow in our eagerness to promote girl empowerment, we’ve found girl empowerment in places where there was none. [Advertisers surely have taken great advantage of our wishful thinking. The branding efforts by many products surrounding Hunger Games – Catching Fire are some of the most brilliant yet infuriating, ok, at least annoying, marketing campaigns. Nerf guns for girls – sized for smaller hands. About time! And they’re pink! Of course…] We’ve pushed the line way way way back. It is so easy to equate sexy = empowered, and call it a day.

Sex does not equal power. Sex became a means to power for women because we were left with few options and recourse.

This is why

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Yesterday I stepped on the soapbox and pontificated on why we need more feminism, now, even while some famous and influential female celebrities refuse to be identified as a feminist when asked point blank “Are you a feminist?” My cerebral writer and thinker friend Christine left a much more eloquent comment highlighting the significance of the confluence between “feminist” and the word “bitch” in popular imagination.

Being identified as a bitch opens a woman up to disrespect, disdain, renunciation, and violence.

“The bitch deserves it.”

Someone on my Twitter stream was exasperated that something called “rapeseed” even exists. I laughed because I’ve always felt the same way about this and would never want to be caught dead with a bottle of “rapeseed oil” in my kitchen. Just because. I decided to find out WHY it has such an unfortunate name. So I searched for “Why is rapeseed named” only that I did not get far before I caught sight of this and had to pause and hyperventilate…

Really? Really?!

By now you must have come across images from the ad campaign for UN Women (dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women) created by Memac Ogilvy & Mather Dubai. It’s infuriating, to say the least.

In the face of “prevalent opinions” as revealed by Google searches, we remember what Arundhati Roy said about the Voiceless:

[T]here’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.

— Arundhati Roy (2004)

I am a feminist. (With a necessary disclaimer)

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Jezebel collected statements from several famous (and influential and therefore powerful, and yes, many are influential simply because they’re famous. We could sit down and ponder on the curious progression from fame -> influence -> power in this Social Media age. Think Kim Whatshername. The fact you know who I am referring to without her last name is proof itself…) women declaring that they are in fact NOT a feminist, and why not, in this post “The Many Misguided Reasons Famous Ladies Say ‘I’m Not a Feminist'”

It’s enough to make Gloria Steinem turn in her … Oh, never mind. I am glad that she’s still around and actually active on Social Media, even providing the last word to end meaningless controversies surrounding Miley Cyrus.

My gut reactions aside, I am torn. I can see why these women are wary of being associated with the label “feminist” for which there is a profusion of entrenched negative connotations: man-hating, belligerent, combative, complain-y, chip on the shoulder, even militant. Marissa Mayer’s statement said it all:

I don’t think that I would consider myself a feminist. I think that I certainly believe in equal rights, I believe that women are just as capable, if not more so in a lot of different dimensions, but I don’t, I think have, sort of, the militant drive and the sort of, the chip on the shoulder that sometimes comes with that. And I think it’s too bad, but I do think that feminism has become in many ways a more negative word.

What we need is not less feminism, but more. Instead of disavowing feminism because a long-standing smear campaign has been waged against it, more of us should claim it, changing the negative connotations so prevalent in pop culture and mainstream consciousness.

I fell head over heels in love with Caitlin Moran when I read this passage in her How to be a Woman and laughed out loud with my fist pumping [only one fist because the other one was holding my Kindle. In case you wonder…]:

We need to reclaim the word ‘feminism’. We need the word ‘feminism’ back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist – and only 42% of British women – I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? ‘Vogue’ by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY? ― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman

We need more Caitlin Morans amongst us.

We need more feminism even though right now we need to claim the label for ourselves with a caveat,

I am a feminist if by being a feminist you mean someone who believes in equal rights for women.

Quite often feminism is explained by what it is not, and the litany often begins with this disclaimer:

Yes, I am a feminist. No, I don’t hate men.

So here we are, having to first appease men, to prove that nothing reverse-sexist is going on here, while speaking out against inequality. Although it is factually correct – feminist <> men hating, am I the only one who finds this ironic?

We need more feminism exactly because most of us need the caveat in order to feel comfortable identifying ourselves as feminists. We need to somehow “temper” feminism so we could function and interact with the others peacefully in the society by providing a more socially acceptable, less threatening definition for the label.

We need more feminism because, well, we are still renouncing it for fear that we may appear aggressive, demanding and complain-y. In short, a bitch.

Just ask ourselves, “What do we call a man who asks for his fair share, who asks to be treated with courtesy, who asks to be dealt as he deserves, who stands up for himself?”

A real man.

Exactly.

WTF Wednesday: Must We Show So Much Boobage as We Empower Ourselves?

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Behold, m’ladies. The latest ironic, gender-stereotype-busting, geek-affirming musical video designed to empower us, by showing the world: Fuck Yeah, We Are Women, We Are Bad Ass, We Like the Same Things that Men Like and We Are Good At Them, Too. Plus, We Have Boobs.

This video and this tweet from Nathan Fillon (yes, of Firefly fame) is why I should not be allowed to roam the Interwebs…

I find offense everywhere I turn and then burn a hole in my head because I agonize over things that, to most people, don’t matter. Look at me, here I am, trying to find fault with a musical video featuring female (supposedly) geeks named TEAM UNICORN. Come on, what’s the matter with me, shouldn’t we all love geek girls and Everything Unicorn?

I can never decide whether to rejoice and feel empowered or to throw up my hands and resign because of what is now considered to be “female empowerment”… by those who are on our side, men who are supposed to be more enlightened than most of their counterparts.

The top comment for the video is from a proud dad whose daughters watched JLA before Dora the Explorer. I am very happy for him and proud of his girls too for smashing gender stereotypes, crossing the boundaries. I loved ThunderCats & Transformers etc. when growing up. So people are liking and sharing this video NOT because of the gratuitous boobage?…

It is getting harder and harder to be a modern woman.

In her seminal essay “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All“, Anne-Marie Slaughter, perhaps facetiously, wrote, “… women feel that they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot).”

At the turning point when high heels are no longer tortured devices invented by men to force us to all sway our hips unsteadily in order to exhibit the fantastical, imagined femininity but rather a figurative pair of Samurai swords that we wear to demonstrate our resolve, and to dare men to face our sexuality and general badassness with respect, I became extremely confused and simply gave up.

Show your sexuality. BUT demand respect and autonomy. What the lady giveth, the lady may taketh away.

Be a diva if you’d like. Be girly and feminine if that’s your style. Accumulate wealth. Climb the ladders. Emulate men in all their power, glory and vice. Be all that you can be.

That’s exactly the problem, isn’t it? When everything counts in theory, nothing makes impact in reality.

We are not being allowed to be all that we can be. For starters, we are NOT free to be un-sexy, un-pretty, un-thin. Have you noticed the myriad of female empowerment icons all looking pretty darn hot? If they don’t look hot now, no worries, they will as soon as they take off their geek glasses and their hair pins. We are being (re)trained to (continue to) be the object of desire. Do your progress thing. Be a Super Woman. Better yet, handle everything. You’ve got the power. But make sure you look hot while you are doing it. The male gaze lingers on. Probably even more perniciously because now we are in on it.

Sometimes I just want to stand up and scream, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house!”

Then I reprimand myself for possibly (mis)appropriating Audre Lorde’s famous words and for being a defeatist. I also feel guilty for not being a feminist AND a sexpot AND a fierce warrior Ninja AND a genius mathematician all at the same time.

Sitting down now. But not before I post this:

Keep on Fighting

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Motherhood in the beginning is sickeningly isolating, especially if La Leche League gets their hold on your conscience. Your partner may be super duper awesome and really do the concept of 50/50 co-parenting justice. BUT. When you are up at night alone (because someone has to get up to go to work so you can pay for the diapers and shit) with a crying baby that simply will not go to sleep without putting up a fierce fight, yeah, it really sucks. You (ok, I) feel so helpless, abandoned even. Day after day. Night after night. Waiting for that tyrant who took over your existence to relent and show you some mercy.

I don’t think I’ve ever properly recovered from that trauma of isolation and abandonment. And I believe this psychological scar greatly contributes to my loss of faith in the myth of motherhood and my subsequent cynicism. Paying lip service to what a great sacrifice it is to be a mother is the society’s way of keeping our mouths shut: Yes you are all awesome superwomen. Without you, the civilization will end. Now STFU and make me a sandwich. Nobody in power (yes, balding white male I am talking about you) gives a shit about making it easier for women who maybe want to be mothers and something more.

By now you probably have heard of /read the article on The Atlantic penned by Anne Marie Slaughter, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All: The Myth of Work-Life Balance”. Dr. Slaughter is a professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. She served as Director of Policy Planning under Hilary Clinton from 2009 to 2011. Eventually she did quit the high-demanding job that frequently kept her away from her children, a fact that spurred the authoring of this article.

The premise of this article that has been shared and re-shared, lauded, debated, and of course, critiqued, thousands of times could be summed up in this:

Women of my generation have clung to the feminist credo we were raised with, even as our ranks have been steadily thinned by unresolvable tensions between family and career, because we are determined not to drop the flag for the next generation. But when many members of the younger generation have stopped listening, on the grounds that glibly repeating “you can have it all” is simply airbrushing reality, it is time to talk.

I still strongly believe that women can “have it all” (and that men can too). I believe that we can “have it all at the same time.” But not today, not with the way America’s economy and society are currently structured. My experiences over the past three years have forced me to confront a number of uncomfortable facts that need to be widely acknowledged—and quickly changed.

Although the article does not end in a despairing note, the hope it provides, the solutions suggested — necessary changes in policies, laws, representations, and cultures, simply seems too far to be within imaginable reach. Nevertheless, I actually felt relieved after I read this, that I have not simply been a whiner, or been less fortunate in terms of my choice of a spouse, or timed having children incorrectly, or not been committed enough. It is also good to know that “wanting to have it all” has been grossly exaggerated into “becoming a super human”

I’d been the one telling young women at my lectures that you can have it all and do it all, regardless of what field you are in. Which means I’d been part, albeit unwittingly, of making millions of women feel that they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot).

When in fact all we are asking for is to NOT to have to make compromises that our male counterparts in marriage/relationship (i.e. fathers of our children) are less likely to be asked to make, and when they do make those compromises, are less likely to be judged or criticized for it.

I have no wisdom to part with nor intelligent comments on the debate that has been raging on somewhere out there.

One minute I am all Let’s take over the world mother-f-ers. The next minute I wish I had never got into my head to be somebody when I grew up. [Please don’t leave angry comments about how being a mother IS somebody. You know that’s not what I meant. Take your mommy war and agenda somewhere else please.]

Why do we tell our girls to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, mathematicians, that they can be all that they want to be, if in the end, should they get married, they are expected to bear children, and should they become mothers, they are expected to become perfect mothers?

There are regrets that I would never dare to have, What-if questions that I would never dare to ask. If I get to stand at the crossroads of life, which would I choose, hypothetically? And which hypothetical answers will hurt whom and how much?

Hostage

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As soon as I stepped into the house from a business trip, I heard a moan from a heap at the corner of our sink-and-swim sofa. Shit. I thought to myself.

“Dad was not like this a second ago. He was ok before you came home.” Mr. Monk, my 9-year-old, informed me with mischievous glee.

“So he’s like a little kid? Now that his mommy’s home and all of a sudden he’s feeling a lot sicker because he wants his mommy’s attention?” I babytalked (which I seldom did to my kids even when they were real babies).

I wish I had kept my mouth shut. To this, The Husband launched into an indignant speech about how

1. He’s so sick the whole time I was gone. READ: It’s my fault.

2. There is no medicine in the house. READ: It’s my fault.

3. His throat really hurts. READ: It’s my fault.

4. There is no lemon. READ: It’s my fault.

5. His co-workers said, “Oh, your wife is going to take care of you.” To which he replied, “She doesn’t care. She never takes care of me.” READ: The Passive Aggressive meter was shot so I could not read the score on it.

Sometimes I am convinced that if I were one of those submissive wives, everybody involved including myself would have been a lot happier. So maybe those crazy people do have a point? My natural, confrontation-averse inclination would have led me to simply ignore his tirade. Let’s move on. But my years of immersion in women’s lib made it hard to not stand my ground and make some sort of comment. Eventually I bit my tongue. I bit my tongue because Mr. Monk was watching our interaction like a hawk with bated breath, and I simply could not do that to him. So I swallowed the sharp comebacks that were swarming inside my head.

What do I have to do to take care of a grown man who’s suffering from symptoms of a common cold?

I am genuinely sorry that The Husband is sick. But I am stumped. “What do you want me to do to take care of you so I won’t be accused of not caring?” Ok. In hind sight, that’s really not the best way of making a conciliatory move… You can take the sharp words out of a bitch’s mouth, but you can’t change a bitch’s tone of voice.

“Forget about it!” He ended our conversation abruptly like a petulant child sans door slamming. I had to stifle a laugh (and made a mental note to watch The Man Cold on YouTube again and also to, of course, blog about this)

Why is it that when he is sick, he commits the error that men (e.g. he) like to accuse women (e.g. me) of: I am not going to tell you what I want because it would devalue the things you do for me if I have to ask for them.

Seriously?

This has been how it feels like this past week: I am held hostage by “care police”. At every cough and every moan, I made sure to remember to ask, with exaggerated worry in my voice so my good intention is obvious, “Are you ok?”

When the kids are sick, I give them cold medicine, and tell them to stay in bed. I offer ice cream or some other treat. That is it. Sometimes the kids get mad at me when the medicine is not working. “Make it go away!” “Why won’t you give me something that works?” “It does not work. I am still feeling ______!” At that point, I figure they are either hungry or tired so I either feed them or tell them to go to bed, or both.

Now that I think of it, “You don’t care!” seems to be a common accusation. I have only myself to blame since I never do these things that TV/movie parents do – Sitting by the bed and singing them a lullaby. Putting my hand on their foreheads and looking into their faces with concern. Bringing them breakfast in bed on a tray with a red rose in a vase. Maybe I should watch politicians’ campaign videos: most of them got that “I care so much about you RIGHT AT THIS SECOND because the camera is rolling” look down, and practice in front of the bathroom mirror my “I do care” face. Apparently the “I do care” face speaks more volumes than the calm “I just cleaned up your puke without a complaint for the Nth time” face.

By the 4th day of violent coughing, the frequent complaint of “It’s not getting better!”, and the occasional hint at “I am so sick and you are not doing anything about it!”, I suggested that The Husband seek out professional help (instead of waiting for me to perform a medical miracle).

I called him from work on Monday. “Did you call a doctor yet?”

“No.”

Face palm.

Today I prodded again. “You should call a doctor.” No response.

Seriously? WWFRGS? (What would Feminist Ryan Gosling say?)

In the holy name of keeping a stable home for my children, because it is *MY* job to maintain a happy family environment, I extended an olive branch. “Would you like me to call the doctor? If I call the doctor and make an appointment for you, would you go?”

He nodded.

And he was happy(ier).

I want a wife.

The Absence of Alternatives

My therapy sessions…