- Women ought to be able to own property, instead of having a man (husband, father, brother, son) own and dispose of all property.
- Women can decently write books and be paid for it.
- Girls should go to school, not just to learn to sew but also to think and reason.
- Girls should be allowed some modest exercise to keep their bodies healthy.
- A grown woman is responsible for her own moral behavior.
How about comparing to a time less than 50 years ago, then. In 1963, the Kennedy administration published the findings of a moderate commission on the status of women, and in 1964 came the Civil Rights Act which covered sex as well as race discrimination. Do you agree that:
- It's unfair discrimination if a qualified woman is turned down for a job, and a less-qualified man hired instead, particularly in government and government-funded jobs.
- Women should be allowed to use contraceptives.
What turned "feminist" into a nasty epithet? Was it the introduction of issues around sexual promiscuity and pornography? Was it the opposition of domesticity to feminist belief, making a woman who enjoyed cooking, sewing or having a clean house feel like she couldn't be a legitimate feminist? Was it fictional portrayals of feminists?
I can't decide if it's a good thing that we don't have as deep a need to be feminists any more, or a bad thing that the word is still so tarred after 30 years. I'd be interested in hearing opinions on that and whether you, male or female, consider yourself a feminist.
3 comments:
Well, it's still legal to discriminate against female job candidates for being married or having children and women still earn less than men for comparable work. A woman is far more likely to get the death penalty for killing a spouse, not that it's a trivial crime, but that the justice system is still sexist enough to be more forgiving of a man killing his wife. Rape remains a crime wherein a victim of a physical assault can be accused of wanting to be attacked, which is like arguing that if you're known in your town as a generous gift giver and charity supporter that you're just asking to be stolen from. Women remain a segment of society whose rights to reproductive and physical autonomy constantly have to be fought for.
The better sort of job a person has, the more time they spend around cultured and well educated people, the easier it is to lose sight of these things. When a person lives in a very liberal area with lots of amenities and an enlightened humanism pervades the local sense of public etiquette, even people of modest means can forget that these problems are still with us.
However, even a state like CA now has a governor who's known to be abusive and disrespectful towards women. Even the chancellor of Germany can be casually groped by another western world leader because of her gender and have it shrugged off as high spirits. We still live in a society that sends women a hail of contradictory and insulting messages about sexual behavior while encouraging men to be callous and disconnected from women as people.
I used to think feminism was an artifact, but then the more I started reading, the more I saw that there was still work to do. The people who think that women are only good for filling traditional roles, which roles get a lot of lip service but no real respect from these proponents*, are still fighting to return American society to something the Taliban might not find quite so offensive. The more people think this fight is finished, the more ground they gain.
Anyway, I'd point you to Alas, A Blog. The authors there spend a lot of time talking about gender issues as well as finding studies, blogs and other online resources that provide a high quality of debate or analysis. There's also plenty of entertaining debate on the topic from more of a pop culture slant at Pandagon. Both of these sites seem to me to challenge the idea that feminism has been taken over in any sense by a radical fringe. That's a sentiment that's seeped into popular culture from the Limbaughs of the world, but mainstream feminism is sex-positive, family-positive and has a lot to say about the ways in which current social dynamics tie men into artificially stilted and restricted behaviors.
And from Ampersand at Alas, the male privilege checklist.
* When was the last time you heard a radical anti-feminist suggest real help for mothers, like daycare support for working moms (who might be single!) or a pension system for people who spend most of their lives caring for children without pay? When have any of them ever suggested restructuring a society premised on a (male) wage earner with a life-long, full-time, unpaid care provider at home to make life and work easier for the typical modern family? Not holding my breath.
note: spotted an oversight in the first run of this comment, sorry about that
I call myself a feminist too and I think anyone who doesn't feel they have as deep a need to be feminist anymore is being remiss. In the U.S. one in four women are raped. Some states would like to criminalize abortion even in cases of rape and incest. In Canada fifty percent of women are physically or sexually abused in their lifetime. Ireland, which had no recorded gang rape until 1996 now has a big problem with teenage gang rape. Examples of physical violence are just the most obvious infringement of human rights but then there are wage discrepancies between the sexes, under-representation in politics, sexual harassment in the workplace. And so far I’m just talking about the western world. The powerlessness of women in Africa has led to a huge AIDS epidemic, rooted in physical violence and lack of choice.
A stopover at the Human Rights Watch women's rights section documents the utter lack of equality women face worldwide.
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