F This (A Followup Post)

We are still talking about the concept of Feminism, and now onto the stage enters this phenomenon known as Anti-Feminism. It is A Thing That Requires Discussion.

This is the text of a recent FB comment I left on an article that references Tina Fey's recounting of Amy Poehler asserting herself in an SNL writer's meeting in her book Bossypants. My comment dealt with navigating to a related article and my resulting emotional despair:

I read the article and then followed one of the "related" links oh so helpfully provided by Facebook to something posted to HuffPo about an "anti-Feminism" Facebook group. I then, in a fit of masochism I can't begin to explain even to myself, read a bunch of posts by primarily very young white women who seem to think that Feminism is about *being forced* to work outside the home and not shaving your armpits. And who really like being objectified, according to many of their posts. I think the problem that is causing the disconnect is that many young women have stopped seeing how their positions of privilege can be applied to those who don't possess the same - it has become "this ideology doesn't apply directly to my life at present, so it is obviously obscure and irrelevant to *everyone else* (or, why should I even care about other people?)."

The "Anti-Feminism" movement isn't new. It has always lingered in the periphery of the Feminist movement, and those that even predate Feminism as a modern, defined thing with a label attached, attempting to subvert and undermine it, stripping it of its legitimacy by coloring it as a fringe movement rife with militant man-haters. But at its heart, the thing that is calling itself Anti-Feminism is really the ideology that negatively impacts men. Look at it this way. Anti-Feminism doesn't give men much credit in the areas of self control when it talks about how women dress and behave, and the repercussions of a culture that reinforces the idea that women are responsible for guarding themselves by hiding themselves. It also reduces women to caricatures of antiquated tropes of the "feminine ideal" based on rose-colored-glasses levels of nostalgia. It serves no purpose other than to reinforce an unequal power structure that some women oddly seem to believe actually empowers and benefits them through this process of dilution and minimization. That they really are delicate, precious beings who need a man's protection or support and that this is in their own best interests. In that way, men have to become the primary caregivers for these helpless women. It gives men authority over women, but that authority is a shackle as well. If men and women are bound to each other in a self-perpetuating cycle of need, a type of co-dependence, neither is truly fully liberated.

Now can someone seriously explain this resurgence in prurient modesty as a feminine virtue and the creation of hope chests? What's next, the dowry system as incentive for future husbands to take our worthless girl children as wives? Great...I'm worth a couple chickens and a broken down old goat. Such a bargain!

Maybe I really should've gone to college, and gotten my MRS degree, huh?

Capital F

Rant:

The fact that I see young women* on the internet using the tag "anti-feminist" and decrying Feminism as a concept or an ideal** and flat out rejecting what women like Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had to fight for, and dismissing an endless list of contemporary individuals who identify themselves as Feminists, is kind of mind-boggling. On top of that I've heard college students actually say "I can't be a Feminist because I want to be a stay at home mom" and "I like dresses too much to be a feminist." I just...those are some strange statements, considering these are women ostensibly allowed to pursue educations that will put them in competition with men in the workforce, if they choose, and it doesn't even occur to them to think about a time when that would have not even been an option. Feminism is a word steeped in misunderstanding, a movement warped in society's view by a history of divisiveness and political undermining. At its heart it generally means someone who supports and advocates for equal representation, opportunity, access, and power. EQUAL. Not more, and not less. Recognition of women as people with inherent rights, which apply to *everyone* (not just women and men, but anyone - including those who are outside of classification with standard binary definitions). Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise probably has an agenda, and you should be smart enough to be able to see that.

*Actress Shailene Woodley, who is sort of the new Jennifer Lawrence, just with a more befuddling worldview.

**Mostly Tumblr. Which, admittedly, is often a cesspool populated by the misguided and Junior Trolls In Training.

***Also, if you Google the word "feminists" the second search result turns up "...are stupid." on auto complete. :growls at people in general as being collectively pig-ignorant:

It's Yours To Keep

This is a roundabout story about a missing puzzle piece, but we get there by talking about the pieces that have already been made to fit.

I have been told by some that I can be quick to cut people out of my life. And, I suppose, this has been the case in a few instances. The reasons would have been varied and personal, but it happened mostly because life is really too short to allow miserable people or those who want to use you as a pawn in any way to take up too much space out of a misplaced sense of obligation. They didn't really want to be a part of my life, or they would have expressed love instead of creating enmity. You sow the seeds, people.

I'm aloof, hard to get to know, unapproachable...yes, all of those things and more. I am not a robot, though. I do have some positive qualities that other people can appreciate. And I have a number of really wonderful relationships with people I care about, and who care about me in return: my parents and siblings and most of my extended family, my husband and *his* siblings and extended family, my son, wonderful neighbors, a good group of friends (both IRL and those I've made online over the years), some co-workers - mostly past but some more present - and former classmates who I've been fortunate enough keep in contact with. My life is rich and full in so many ways, make no mistake.

When I glom onto you, like an especially clingy and tenacious octopus, it's often for keeps, pretty much.

My very best friend and I have known each other for ten years. For all of that time, through a lot of growing up and life changes, we have tried to be there for each other as much as we could. This took...continues to take...effort. It took looking past a decent age gap and making frequent hour-long drives on Florida interstates. We both say we wish we lived closer. I think, though, that the distance, in making us work harder, made our friendship stronger, because we had to put that effort in. It was never a case of, "Oh, they're just down the street, I can stop by anytime." It takes concerted planning on both of our parts to do something as simple as have coffee together. All of this is to say, the relationships you want, the most meaningful ones, thrive on the work you put into them. If you ever find yourself doing the work and not seeing it reciprocated, you should stop and ask yourself if the effort is worth the diminished returns.

This all leads me to the main point of this meandering post. I am one of those people with a certain chunk of their personal history veiled in the murk of mythology. There's a story I've written for that missing identity narrative, but I have no idea how much is truth and how much is fiction. I wrote a free-form poem about it. I had other things I needed to do, but sometimes when you have to say a thing, it will find its way to being said, no matter what you do to try and stop it...

For more years than I can remember or count
I have carried a phone number written down on a scrap of paper;
drafted letters to someone I haven't seen or spoken to since childhood;
used the internet to fill in the blanks
on the a bare branches of a virtual stranger's family tree.
How do you reach out to someone who shares your blood,
has echoes of your face in theirs,
but wouldn't know you if they passed you on the street?
Seeing your other daughter's smile in her profile picture,
wondering if she is even aware that I exist
in the same small universe,
separated by a gulf of ten years
and my insurmountable stubbornness.
If I can find you, at the touch of a few keys,
something as simple as a Google search of your mother's name,
can you ever understand why I never dialed that number,
never sent those letters,
will not push the button on that slim chance to connect?
Because knowing that if I can find you,
you could just as easily find me,
is one of the hardest truths I've ever had to finally face.

Once Upon A Time...

There was a girl. This girl did not suffer from some dark enchantment of the soul. She was a girl who did not think she was a princess disguised as a pauper. A girl who was not waiting for some white-knight to come to her defense and then lock her up in an ivory tower to keep the world from her...or to keep her from the world.

This was a girl who knew there were wolves in the twilight forest. That the world was full of sharp spindles, of curses, poisoned apples, cruel step-mothers and petty step-sisters, of fathers who were so remote and removed that they were never even part of the story. The whole world made up of stories of heroines as victims, helpless in the face of predestined fates, seemingly dependent on the power of romantic love, generations of other girls, breathless - literally - as they await transformation. Cautionary tales, all.

This is a girl who, if she will kiss a frog, does so for the sake of love of a frog, not for the promise of an erstwhile prince. Who will not easily fall prey to the false charm of wolves but will wield the axe to save the woodsman, if necessary. Who treads lightly over bridges, because a bigger billy-goat cannot always be depended on to show up when needed.

The girl lived an unremarkable life full of comfort and relative contentment, because Happily Ever Afters are for distressed damsels who meet with unfortunate incidents or exchange their freedom for dubious security and invariably sleep their lives away.

The End

A Matter of Time

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A Story in the Style of Jane Austen  

 

Elizabeth was quietly reading at the feet of her sister Jane, who was working on a dainty piece of embroidery. The sisters had been retired to the drawing room in companionable silence for most of the morning, each deep in thought, reflecting on the events of the previous evening at the ball in Meryton. Jane was fondly thinking on the charming Mr. Bingley, while Elizabeth’s thoughts weren’t quite so charitably inclined towards Mr. Darcy’s detestable behavior towards her. Their twin reverie was broken by the excited shouts of younger sisters Lydia and Kitty, who bounded into the room accompanied by chants of “A visitor! We have a visitor!”

Kitty beamed and twirled her skirts while Lydia concentrated on fixing the satin ribbons in her hair. Jane, thinking that perhaps Mr. Bingley had come to call, quickly settled herself back on her settee in what she hoped was a beguiling pose. Mr. Bennet, roused from his study by his boisterous daughters, stalked into the room, trailed by his wife. Mrs. Bennet fussed at her younger daughters, prattling on unheeded about a Big Blue Box, and a ridiculous cravat. “Really. I’ve never…so inelegant. And to come to call on a family of our society, dressed in such…untidy attire! What will the neighbors say!”

Elizabeth inquired after the whereabouts of their mysterious visitor, caught up in her sisters’ infectious excitement. Mr. Bennet, having seated himself by the window, and in the midst of lighting his pipe, gestured expansively. “Says he’s a doctor…” At which point, he was interrupted by his wife going on once again about blue boxes in the lane and nattily dressed gentlemen masquerading as country physicians, to which her daughters paid no mind. Lydia clapped her hands in childish excitement, exclaiming “La! A doctor!”

At that precise moment, the drawing room door opened, silencing all of the assembled Bennets. The man standing in the doorway adjusted his bow tie and cleared his throat. “Ah. Yes. I do apologize, but I’ve only just realized I’ve come at a bad time, and…” to which the girls politely demurred that it was, in fact, a perfectly reasonable time and, as social obligations dictated, bade him to sit with them. Mrs. Bennett quickly sent a crestfallen Kitty to arrange tea for their impromptu gathering.

The stranger, looking quizzically at an instrument resembling a flameless candle, explained, “Well, you see, I seem to have arrived a bit early. I should be here later in the narrative. Right about the time Miss Elizabeth Bennet realizes the nature of her true feelings for Mr. Darcy.” Elizabeth issued a shocked declaration of her intention of never having any kind of positive feelings toward such as man as Mr. Darcy. Mrs. Bennet took up her daughter’s discarded book and proceeded to fan herself quite vigorously, having worked herself up to an almost apoplectic state at such an idea as her dear Lizzie and the arrogant and aloof …and very wealthy Mr. Darcy.

Having made another unintended social faux pas, the stranger retreated from the room into the hall, where Mr. Bennet, who was also intent on making his escape, joined him. At that moment they were passed by Mary Bennet, so intently reading aloud from a well-used copy of Fordyce’s Sermons that she did not seem to even see the oddly attired stranger and quite passed him by without even an acknowledgement. Apologizing for his daughter’s lack of manners, Mr. Bennet took his guest by the elbow. “Young man, now that you have sufficiently shocked and scandalized the women of my household, let us retire to the study so that you may tell me all about that marvelous contraption of yours.  You say it has something to do with time…“