I’ve not been very active lately since I’ve been preoccupied
with moving to Scotland for grad school, starting grad school, and finishing up
a very time and energy consuming scholarship application. But I’m officially settled
in and back at the blog! And today, I’d like to discuss three things that the
outlandish realm of feminism has inspired some of my fellow womenfolk to do
against their feminine nature.
1) Not shaving
As absurd as it sounds, there are women walking among us
more civilized creatures who do not shave. Not the armpit hair, not the leg
hair....not even those moderately noticeable hairs that can sometimes crop up
around the naval. Feminism has these women believing that appreciation for a
hairless female body reflects an arbitrary and even unfair standard which our modern
society holds for us. And to that I ask: why would we have finally decided to
start doing it if it weren’t in our nature this whole time?
2) Casual Sex
Everyone knows that men are the more sexually veracious of
the two genders. It’s only natural that men would be too physical to control
their own thoughts and desires while women long only to attach themselves to
one man. A man making a lewd joke at, following, or otherwise harassing a women
who is scantily clad? What else could you expect from him? Men are so sexual
they cannot control themselves, while women desire monogamy so direly they are
willing to bear with men and their weaknesses. How could such an arrangement possibly
result from the cultural conditioning of a male-dominated society as the
feminazis claim?
And now the aftershock of the “sexual revolution” has women
of all kinds engaging in hook-ups and swiping right on Tinder. The only
explanation: feminism makes women think they want things they don’t really
want.
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| So unlady-like... |
Feminism even has women believing they want to engage in
dangerous contact sports. Instead of preserving the beautiful delicate features
that all of us of the fairer sex are of course born with, they rebel against their nature in favor
of sweat, concussions, and grass stains. I don’t really need to explain why
this is unnatural...it’s all too obvious. Seriously, when have you ever heard
of women tackling each other outside of sexy, panty-clad pillow fights? Nothing
else is natural.
Okay, okay, let’s get serious for a minute. Obviously I’m being
a bit snarky here. But unfortunately, each of the sarcastic points above was
inspired by something I’ve read, heard, or seen in the real world.
And let’s face it...whichever side of the fence you’re on,
you have to concede a substantial amount of power to culture and ideas. If the
feminist movement could make women chase after casual sex when that isn’t what
we are wired to want-that is powerful. But if the long ideological history of a
misogynistic society can influence women to suppress and be blind to their own
sexual desires-that is powerful as well!
The stone I’m hoping to put in your shoe is this: what is
more likely? That a movement which basically says “Hey, you should just go
ahead and do what you want no matter what others think” would make human beings
go haywire doing things they don’t actually have any natural desire to do? Or that
the pressures of fitting into society and adhering to its interwoven worldview could indeed give human beings a distorted view of their own nature?
Feel free to comment-but keep it civil, please!
For me, "feminism" is about self-determination and equal opportunity. Freedom for a woman to choose how to dress her body in clothing; modify her body; is a SAHM or not; has a child or not; is a soldier in combat or not; whatever ... that is feminism to me. It's the power and freedom for a woman to go wherever she wants without threat of assault. It's the power and freedom to choose her own sexual or marital partners (if any), to vote or not, to drive or not. ... Why women shy away from identification as a feminist is beyond me. Perhaps some women today suffer from a temporal provincialism, forgetting or being unaware of the physical and emotional violence experienced by women in previous generations who fought for such basic rights as voting, managing their own money, getting an education, controlling their decision to become pregnant or not, and having legal recourse against domestic violence. Perhaps some of us think that girls and women in other lands who still don't have access to such rights are irrelevant to us. On the other hand, there are women in this world who fight tooth and nail to defend the moral rightness of genital mutilation. I guess the women in the US who state loftily that "I'm not a feminist" are just at a different point along that continuum.
ReplyDeleteI have also been amazed and disappointed at how women in the US shy away from feminism! I've even had conversations with other young women in which they recognize and rant about an injustice or double standard they have noticed....but then when I drop the line, "I completely agree, and that's why I'm a feminist" they practically back away from the point they had been so ardently making.
DeleteI think a lot of it is related to how poorly feminism is represented to them by older generations. I know that as a teenager-and even a long way into my career as a university student-I steered clear of the movement because of the extreme stories I heard about "hippies" and "bra burners."
It's an interesting point of view that "extreme stories" about "hippies" and "bra burners" would be considered a poor representation of feminism. Generally, meaningful change in a culture does not occur without radical proposals, radical acts, harsh and unrelenting spotlights on injustice, and people being annoyingly and discomforting "rabble rousers." Today's Pussy Riot in Russia is yesterday's bra burners. The women in Saudi Arabia who take the wheel of the car today are yesterday's bra burners. The women of Liberia who came out in force against the war (See Pray the Devil Back to Hell) were radical. The women in the Local 890 mining strike in New Mexico stood up for their families in the face of physical and psychological violence from local, state, and national authorities - they were radical, too.
ReplyDelete