Monday, October 20, 2014

My Failures as a Feminist

Yesterday, after reading my piece on Gerard Way, a dear friend of mine congratulated me on it and told me he tried to live his life by those guidelines ever since he met me. Since his equality-minded nature is one of the reasons we became friends, I asked him why not before. He said that he's always been a feminist, but not always gone about it the right way.

Who among us has?

Ever since I knew the basic definition I've considered myself a feminist. Ask my father's permission to date/marry/whatever me? Fuck off. Equal pay? Damn right I want it. Try to tell me when and how I'll become a mother? Them's fighting words.

Yet, I haven't always been a "good" feminist. I've made mistakes and I believe that anyone who's part of any movement has unknowingly worked against it at some point. So here are the most unfeminist things I've ever done or said, in hopes that I can learn from my mistakes, and perhaps so can others.

1. I mocked the girly girls
Somehow I got it into my head that women who enjoyed that which was pink, sparkly, or flowery were "stupid" and "fueling the fire of the enemy" (I went through a dramatic stage. It isn't over yet).
That somehow being themselves while simultaneously not being like me, those women were somehow undervaluing our whole gender because they liked "girly" things like romance novels and unicorns. I credited myself with (undue) depth and substance because I was above such tired tropes of femininity. I was important and they were stupid.

2. I undervalued the housewifely arts
Along with criticizing pink, I also felt that, due in no small part to an overconsumption of pop culture and mainstream Hollywood tripe, a truly successful woman cannot cook, clean up after herself, or mend her clothing. After all, the patriarchy had pigeonholed women into the housewifely role, and its abandonment was our salvation. Somehow I failed to take into consideration that the ability to feed myself, clean up after myself, and maintain a respectable appearance--especially when I realized that only 1% of the world gets to disavow such niceties because they have staff to take care of it for them--were essential to success.

3. I placed greater value on the feminist issues that affected me
Feminism can be deeply personal, and the passion that feminists bring to their activism comes from their own experiences, but at its core the movement is about everyone, especially those that are marginalized by the patriarchy. We should have a solidarity about us--what happens to my sister happens to me, even if she's trans and I'm cis, even if she's queer and I'm straight, even when her skin color brought her a different experience than mine did me, even if the she in question is my brother, a man who's been just as marginalized by the way things work as I have.

4. I've been guilty of slut-shaming
I've never judged a woman for how much sex she's had, but I've definitely been guilty of judging a woman for how much sex she looks like she's having. If you were showing what I deemed to be too much skin, talking too much about blow jobs, or just advocating a sexual more that I didn't agree with, I judged you for it, and I'm sorry. And while I'm at it, I prude-shamed too, allowing myself to think that women who chose abstinence or advocated prudence were enemies of sexual freedom that has been so hard won, when in truth they were expressing themselves within that freedom.

5. I conflated "men" with "patriarchy"
The patriarchal construct has rigid views of masculinity, femininity, sexuality, race, and nearly every other intrinsic part of personhood that makes each of our experiences unique. Only those who are at the top in this system will stay at the top, and at the cost to those beneath them. Only straight, white, cisgender men get to be fully represented and even they must adhere to the structure laid out for them, to the detriment of their health and happiness. Despite the gendered nouns that the movements have, patriarchy is not for men, nor feminism for women. Patriarchy is simply a way to maintain the status quo, while feminism is a way to lift us up.

The ultimate point is, the only real mistake I made as a young feminist is that I turned feminism into a competition. Everything that I did was done under the guise that I was in competition with those around me, but feminism is a means to an end, and the end is equality--not sameness, not homogeny, but the basic idea that everyone has the right to be themselves without suffering a loss of opportunity or safety. In equality, there is no competition, and the belief that there is is just a myth perpetuated to sidetrack us from what's really important--slowly, surely, confidently changing the world.

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