emerging feminist

[silentq]

It's a loaded word, I've usually said that I'm for equal treatment of
everyone, but lately I've had "feminist" echoing in my head after I
notice, do or say something.

This past weekend, attending a Catholic wedding ceremony, I was having
a hard time keeping my mouth shut. cris had warned me that I

Comments

[flexagon]

If I had to use that word or any variant thereof, I think I'd call myself a post-feminist. Even though I'm for all the things the original first-wave feminists were for (equal pay, equal rights), the word's been taken over by pests in the meantime... it's sad, but there you go.

I'm glad that I can do as I please, and even if I don't use that word I hope I'm an example of female power/freedom.

[silentq]

I was hesitant to use the term post-feminist as I haven't quite figured out what it (generally) means yet. :)
I think you're a great example of female power and freedom! You've inspired me to break out of my ruts, at least. :)

[flexagon]

Oh... *blush* really?

I had meant I hoped I was an example to young women or something like that, not necessarily to awesome grownup bike-riding parkour-doing women like you! But I'll take the compliment because it made my day. :D

In the meantime my ruts keep keeping me away from your parkour days. My goal is to make it out in response to your emails at least once this summer, though.

I'm not sure quite what post-feminist means either. Sigh. I want it to mean "I've thought about these issues, but don't find myself falling into either/any of the old-school camps."

[silentq]

Yup, really. :) Even though it may be slightly selfish/self reassuring that there are women out there who are dedicated to physical pursuits but who can also do creative stuff, and be introspective. :)
I'll keep sending out the emails, no worries. I think I managed to give couplingchaos a decent intro lesson today, though I'm still sucking horribly at anything that might result in a face plant... I'd like to get back into the gym again and see if I can break through this if I have some soft surfaces on which to land.

[silentq]

I'm glad that you were lucky, sad that you had to be, if that makes sense. :)
I try to go by "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything", so now I just need to figure out nice ways to say the things that are important to be said, and find people willing to listen. :)

[dali_muse]

My doctor didn't want to perform a hysterectomy until the ultrasound results came back and there were over two dozen fibroids, two the size of grapefruits and one of those leaking fluid into my body cavity. Usually, a utereus is the size of a fist, mine was the size of my my pelvic girdle. Oh, and the fibriods caused an umbilical hernia. Since there was a very big possibility that the fibroids would come back, she took everything out. I was 33.

I love the actress Ashley Judd because she is often photographed wearing a T-shirt that reads: "This Is What A Feminist Looks Like".

I give mad love to Cockroach because he spends Saturday mornings escorting women through protest picket lines to get into one of the women's clinics.

[silentq]

Yikes! You must have been in so much pain! :/
Lots of respect to Cockroach, I don't think I'd be able to keep my cool if someone was yelling hateful things at me.

[jin_aili]

Enjoy hearing your thoughts/ experiences on this. I've mostly unapologetically considered myself a feminist since high school, and said as much to others. It started pretty much as an intellectual and political stance, having not really suffered any sort of discrimination or even much harassment for being a woman. I was lucky to grow up in families and schools where this was not an issue. But spending time in China and understanding the gendered contours of that society really started to make me emotionally more invested in feminism. And now, having a child, I have yet another new perspective on it. For the first time in my life I feel that being female is disadvantaging me. At the same time, I have come to accept that our biology points us in certain directions that have much more real effects on our social life and roles than I expected. We are trying very hard to present pretty non-traditional gender roles, but there are some things that are hard to get around. It's really interesting to me how the upper middle class culture of

[silentq]

It seems like the systems currently in place for work and academia don't quite gel with what women need in terms of support during pregnancy and after birth. I was happily surprised to hear that a friend in Canada had a year long maternity leave, and depressed to read about how short a break a lot of US friends were afforded. :/
Heh, my decision to not have children was made as a child, it's firmly rooted in my introversion and general misanthropy. :)

[heresiarch]

what's wrong with being a feminist, again? when did we allow it to become a bad word? i think the point of feminism, in most of its incarnations at least, has been about drawing attention to women's inequality and working to change it.

Hopefully I can find the balance between speaking up and letiting it go withouth annoying everyone around me, but it does seem like it's time to pay back the equal treatment of which I've been a recipient. :)

or sometimes, you might end up annoying people to make an important point. :P i don't think anyone, of whatever gender, should keep silent about inequality or discrimination just to spare others' feelings, especially since it's often people in positions of privilege who take offense.

[silentq]

When people started using the term femi-nazi, I stopped wanting to use feminist. I understand that was a way to denigrate the movement (and partially inspired by the radicals within the movement), but it's still echoing.
I was thinking specifically about not annoying my friends by constantly commenting on movies that we're watching, picking apart the female roles when they can see the stupidities as clearly as I do. :) I'm perfectly willing to annoy co-workers and strangers! :)