A Rantlet
Escape while you still have the chance.
Few things can disturb my hard-won tranquillity online these days (extreme good and bad fic -- and canon yes, that means you, JKR -- aside). Having indulged myself in various fandom dramas in the past, my current state of nirvana is maintained by a sophisticated combination of shrugging and back-button-clicking.
However, my dormant inner raging bull always roars back to life for the Woman Who Isn't A Feminist.
I see this declaration occasionally on lj coming from women and it always, always enrages me. I saw it regurgitated again yesterday with the 16th anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique shootings in Montreal.
What is to be gained by any woman's saying this? Is it to prove some point? That you're unassertive? That you do what you're told? That you're a Good Girl?
Quite frankly, I have to assume that half the Not Feminists don't know they're alive. Do you really want to go back to the days when women were first their fathers' then their husbands' property? When the vote was something only men had? When women weren't allowed to do any of the things we now take for granted? The women who worked and in some cases died to win these rights for you didn't do it so you could sit back complacently and proclaim that you don't actually think you believe that women and men should have the same rights and opportunities in life. It's time you realised what we all now enjoy, and what we don't have to put up with any longer. These freedoms you enjoy so blithely weren't got for you by women who did what society approved of.
The other half of the Not Feminists, I assume, are so lacking in self-esteem that they think it's right that people should discriminate against them for being women -- in which case they may be more to be pitied than damned. Society's ambient misogyny can be tricky to spot, not to mention so unrelenting that it's bloody tiring to struggle against sometimes.
But because it's hard, doesn't mean that you can exempt yourself, because there's one nasty drawback to the 'Not a Feminist' stance. Deciding not to play the game doesn't actually allow you to drop out. Not being a feminist doesn't buy you favour with guys, or anyone; it doesn't get you into the Anti-Feminist Club. It can't, simply *because* you have internal genitalia. All it gets you is treated just the way other people feel like treating you. It just makes it easier for men, and other women, to step on you.
Even the good guys (and there are plenty of them, thankfully) have assumptions about themselves and about you and about society, that because of your experiences, you won't share. As for the not-so-good ones -- what you do or don't do or think is of no concern to them. Their own agenda is all that counts.
And if you want to play into that, to spend your life facilitating prejudice against yourself simply because it's easier -- what the hell are you thinking? Don't you believe in human rights? They're your rights, too. Why should those rights apply less to you than people in other 'minorities'?
Maybe some of the Montreal murderer's victims weren't feminists, either; but that didn't save them. He didn't stop to ask. He just shot them because they were women.
There's a message in that, but evidently not everyone is able or willing to work it out.
I'm off now for a therapy session with my Little Book of Calm. Maybe I'll do a Manny from Black Books, and swallow the damn thing whole.
Few things can disturb my hard-won tranquillity online these days (extreme good and bad fic -- and canon yes, that means you, JKR -- aside). Having indulged myself in various fandom dramas in the past, my current state of nirvana is maintained by a sophisticated combination of shrugging and back-button-clicking.
However, my dormant inner raging bull always roars back to life for the Woman Who Isn't A Feminist.
I see this declaration occasionally on lj coming from women and it always, always enrages me. I saw it regurgitated again yesterday with the 16th anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique shootings in Montreal.
What is to be gained by any woman's saying this? Is it to prove some point? That you're unassertive? That you do what you're told? That you're a Good Girl?
Quite frankly, I have to assume that half the Not Feminists don't know they're alive. Do you really want to go back to the days when women were first their fathers' then their husbands' property? When the vote was something only men had? When women weren't allowed to do any of the things we now take for granted? The women who worked and in some cases died to win these rights for you didn't do it so you could sit back complacently and proclaim that you don't actually think you believe that women and men should have the same rights and opportunities in life. It's time you realised what we all now enjoy, and what we don't have to put up with any longer. These freedoms you enjoy so blithely weren't got for you by women who did what society approved of.
The other half of the Not Feminists, I assume, are so lacking in self-esteem that they think it's right that people should discriminate against them for being women -- in which case they may be more to be pitied than damned. Society's ambient misogyny can be tricky to spot, not to mention so unrelenting that it's bloody tiring to struggle against sometimes.
But because it's hard, doesn't mean that you can exempt yourself, because there's one nasty drawback to the 'Not a Feminist' stance. Deciding not to play the game doesn't actually allow you to drop out. Not being a feminist doesn't buy you favour with guys, or anyone; it doesn't get you into the Anti-Feminist Club. It can't, simply *because* you have internal genitalia. All it gets you is treated just the way other people feel like treating you. It just makes it easier for men, and other women, to step on you.
Even the good guys (and there are plenty of them, thankfully) have assumptions about themselves and about you and about society, that because of your experiences, you won't share. As for the not-so-good ones -- what you do or don't do or think is of no concern to them. Their own agenda is all that counts.
And if you want to play into that, to spend your life facilitating prejudice against yourself simply because it's easier -- what the hell are you thinking? Don't you believe in human rights? They're your rights, too. Why should those rights apply less to you than people in other 'minorities'?
Maybe some of the Montreal murderer's victims weren't feminists, either; but that didn't save them. He didn't stop to ask. He just shot them because they were women.
There's a message in that, but evidently not everyone is able or willing to work it out.
I'm off now for a therapy session with my Little Book of Calm. Maybe I'll do a Manny from Black Books, and swallow the damn thing whole.