A Long Musing on Being a Feminist

I wandered off my blogroll, and I’ve been reading some feminist blogs this morning, though some have rejected the label. I’m not linking to them because I don’t want to take part in the conversation that they’re having (and the name-calling that has seemed to develop from it), and I’m not really responding to it, so much as it has prompted me to think about being a feminist. And I don’t want any of those bloggers to follow their stats over hear and feel judged. I don’t mean to judge. I mean to think. So no linkage, despite the fact that not linking is terribly rude.

Being a feminist is hard, and I sometimes want to give up—to give in and just accept things the way they appear to be. It would be so much easier. For me, feminism is so much about critical thinking and learning how patriarchy works and how you are a part of it. All of that is very depressing. It certainly makes me want to change things, but in an overwhelming, defeatist way. Now, I belong to feminist organizations, support with time and money feminist causes, do feminist research, and generally make a point of pointing out patriarchy at work. It is an ongoing labor. I would much rather just slide through my day with a smile than constantly recognize all of the little, insidious ways that I’m being told that I matter less or that my future is limited, particularly when the patriarchal message comes in a pro-girl package.

People define feminism differently. I personally like the definition that being a feminist means that you believe that woman are people. But I run across the idea of choice a lot too—that feminism is about accepting the choices that women make and trusting them to make those choices. I agree with the choice idea and certainly claim that position in regards to reproductive issues—trust women to choose what’s best for themselves. But I’ve found that a large part of feminism, for me, is realizing that many of the choices that I make support patriarchy. There is illusion of choice, yes, but as long as I’m choosing the options presented to me, I’m still achieving the same final outcome.

This is a trick that anyone who has dealt with children knows. When it’s time to do a task a child resists, like cleaning up the toys, you can’t approach the situation directly and get the kid to do what you want (kids that don’t resist don’t require this illusion). You can make the task fun (sing a song, make it a game) or you can give the kid a choice (there are other methods, of course). So you ask the child, do you want to pick up the blocks or the Little People? So the kid decides to clean up one, you pick up the other, and the room is clean. The kid doesn’t resist because the kid feels like she had some power, even though she still did exactly what you wanted. No mess, no fuss, you get what you want. Now, this isn’t the best analogy as it is simplistic and could imply that I’m infantilizing women (I’m not). But it at least lets me translate the frustration I feel into easily communicatible terms.

I am a feminist, and I make choices all of the time that support patriarchy. My marriage supports patriarchy. I can give all kinds of reasons for why this is the best choice for me, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is a patriarchy-approved choice. I took my husband’s name when I got married, and I can give you several rationalizations for why I did it. None of them negates the fact that it is a choice that supports patriarchy. It was the best choice for me at the time, but it was not and is not a feminist choice.

The problem that I see in many discussions of feminism (not just the one that prompted my thinking) is that many younger feminists—those who grew up in the wake of second-wave feminism (a group I’m a part of as I’m certainly too young to have been a part of the second-wave) believe that feminism exists outside of patriarchy. I’m sure lots of feminists older than me believe this too, but I hear and read it more often in comments from my friends, students, bloggers, randomly overheard strangers in the my-age-and-younger age group. This is the same group of people that I often hear reject the feminist label because they don’t like the backlash that feminists face or because they see a monolithic feminism that doesn’t welcome them (both reasonable objections).

Feminism is a part of patriarchy. It relies on and utilizes patriarchal defined ideas of gender. The very language of feminism is patriarchy derived. This is a classic critique of feminism (thank you, Judith Butler) that is important to understand. There are limits as to how far you can go when working within a system. There are merits to working within a system too. But the problem with reclaiming anything is that the dominant use will always be a part of the reclaimed. It may fade over time, but it’s still there.

In this conversation I was reading, there was name-calling. There was a lot of you’re-not-really-a-feminist finger pointing. There was a lot of trying to define “real” feminism. Ironic since these accusations of “not feminist” (from all sides) coincided with critiques of monolithic feminism. This isn’t unique to this conversation, and I’m not trying to talk about people here but rhetoric. And I don’t get it.

I think the people who resort to name-calling do so when they recognize that they do make choices that support patriarchy. And have a hard time accepting it. It may be your choice, and I may trust you to make it and accept your choice without seeing you as less of a person or less of a feminist, but that doesn’t make it a feminist choice. I think it also happens when people see choices that feminists make and can’t, no matter how hard they try, see that choice as being feminist. It’s easy to attack the person who makes the choice or the person who makes the critique. It’s easy to say “anti-feminist” rather than evaluate your own assumptions about feminism. It’s much harder to accept that feminism isn’t a set persona, and that people can’t make 100% feminist choices all of the time. Being feminist doesn’t mean that you behave in a set way. Most feminists accept that there are degrees and types of feminism, and self-label accordingly. We all can agree that women are people, but see that manifested in different ways.

All feminists have to make non-feminist choices to live in a patriarchy. It happens, and it sucks, but it’s true. Why do we need to pin down what feminism is? I would much rather look at how feminism and feminist rhetoric is being used to maintain patriarchy. And that means recognizing that your definition of feminism and your characterization of yourself as a feminist may involve choices and actions that reinforce patriarchal ideology. Feminism is about resisting and questioning patriarchy. It is not about degrading other women because they see it differently.

But people who claim to be feminists but won’t recognize that by living in a patriarchy they are bound to make decisions that support patriarchy and that patriarchy profits by selling “approved feminists actions” to young women who have always lived in a world where “women are equal” are missing out on the what I think is the most useful aspect of feminism—understanding how patriarchy works. Ideologies like this survive by complicity, by convincing the people who rebel that the choices that they make that happen to fall into approved categories are really theirs.