Am I a Feminist? That Depends on What “Feminism” Means
December 29, 2007
Most of the women profiled in Elinor Burkett’s The Right Women are the product of a post-feminist age. They argue that feminism is no longer necessary because women have already achieved legal parity with men. Now, they say, is the time for feminists to stop (a) perpetuating the victimhood of women and (b) purporting to speak for all women.
In short, they argue that feminism is no longer necessary because all the advances that women need to make, we have made. They’re right. There is very little that can be done at the government level to further women’s needs. But I think too often, we confuse government with society. And there is still a lot that a feminist perspective can do for women in our society today.
To me, feminism is the idea that:
- Women are complex, flawed human beings who can contribute to society in a number of ways.
- Women deserve to be paid commensurate with our expertise, experience and talent on a scale equal to that of our male peers.
- Women have an inalienable right to control our reproductivity and we deserve society’s trust and support in making decisions related to it.
This last point is especially important, because it’s the right most directly under attack. Many conservatives argue that to free a woman’s sexuality from the inevitability of childbirth is to divorce a woman from the profound contribution she can make by becoming a mother.
The fundamental problem with this attitude is that it does not trust women to make those decisions for themselves.
Perhaps we can make our own choices and walk our own tightropes without the feminists or the conservatives getting in the middle.
Because it’s the one through which women are most easily controlled. The quintessential extortion: You don’t want to be called a whore, do you?
Which leads me to the next part:
Oh I wish it were as simple as that. No, they muddy the waters even more by tying a great deal of human morality to the act of procreation, both in sex and in the woman’s involvement in the conception of children. As I said before, it is the avenue by which control is most easily attained. It is one of THE main ways religious control can be asserted at all: tell someone they’re morally bankrupt from the start (original sin) and must live a ‘moral’ life as they define it, and you can con people into doing pretty much anything.
Personally, I’m with you. True social equality would give you absolute control over your own body. I could make an argument that “social equality” is something of a mis-placed and ill-defined standard (we’re different, and thus there will always be differences) but I don’t think reproductive control is one of those things - there’s a huge double standard where men who sleep around are high fived, and women who sleep around are called whores.