Feminine vs Feminist
I consider myself feminine, not a feminist. I think there is a distinct difference. To start with, I don’t believe men and women are equal. (Bare with me, I will explain what I mean by that.)
Being feminine to me, is to embrace my intellectual and sexual powers as a woman, without holding them as bait or superiority above anyone, male or female. It is about being comfortable about where I am in life. Being “at the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing”, so to say.
I feel, once upon a time, being a feminist was about this. It was about achieving equality in certain things; pay in the workplace; voting rights; protection from domestic violence and harassment; a right to purchase birth control; etc, but still recognizing the distinct differences between man and woman. Now feminism seems more about putting men “in their place” and asserting dominance over them. For example:
Awhile ago I was talking to a woman who asked me if I intended to be at a stay-at-home mother. I do, as I feel it will be more beneficial to them then being place into a nanny’s arms or daycare at three months old, besides I also have a home business. The woman then proceeded to unleash a tirade about how I was a disgrace to the “feminist movement” for only aspiring to be a lowly housewife rather then asserting myself into the workplace being “The Dominant Sex”.
I might have dismissed her argument as a fluke in the feminist community but I have found such statements to be so reoccurring as to completely turn me off to the concept of modern feminism.
But I said I don’t think men and women are equal, didn’t I? Isn’t that imply one is “The Dominant Sex” and “The Submissive Sex”? Not quite.
Starting from a purely physical standpoint, women bear children, men do not. However the children would not be possible without the man’s seed. Neither can be superior as the process is mutually symbiotic.
Psychologically, women, in general, tend to be nurturers and men, in general, tend to be protectors. Some seem to feel this turns women into victims, but I don’t feel they realize the power of a nurturer. Protectors need love and care, they need nurturers. In turn nurturers need the feelings of stability and safety that a protector can provide. Now I am not saying that every relationship has to have a man and woman to be functional, I am a supporter of gay rights, and believe those relationships can be just as functional. However many of the gay relationships I have seen have someone in the role of nurturer and someone as protector as well.
So in conclusion, I think I am more of an advocate of balance, instead of the constant power struggle between the sexes. In my opinion relationships, including platonic ones, need a yin and yang balance to promote healing and growth.
December 30th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Very nicely spoken. If I could do it financially I would be a stay at home mom myself. I don’t want to do the babysitter thing (except on special occasions) or daycare. Not to mention the fact that no daycare will accept Abby from me because I’m planning on selectively vaccinating her.
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December 30th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
I feel blessed being financially able to stay at home, though a lot of it comes down to Michael and I work hard at maintaining a strike budget so that it can be this way. I wish it was easier for at least one parent to stay at home with their kids.
I also want to selectively vaccinate, which will cause a problem come school age but in all likelihood my children will be homeschooled, probably in some kind of co-op system with other homeschoolers.
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December 31st, 2007 at 11:09 am
The homeschooling idea sounds wonderful. Maybe something will happen so that I can be an at home mom. Way too many bad things are happening to kids nowadays because they are never with a parent.
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December 30th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Yes, I have to agree with just about everything you said. I’ve also had no problem with females that assert their equality, most of my female friends are like that, actually.
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December 30th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
I don’t mind women who assert their equality as long as they do not feel the need to force me to believe as they do. I don’t react well when forced :-).
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December 30th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Absolutely agree 100%. I wholly support the ideals of the early feminist movement. It was about establishing fundamental rights previously restricted to women for no rational reason. The aggressive elements of the modern feminist movement want to establish power over men–to put them in their place for thousands of years of male-dominance. This is wrong. I absolutely agree, likewise, with your comment regarding the inequality of the sexes. I remember taking a Myers Briggs test, recently (posted on my LJ). I received the results, and then, out of curiousity, I examined the populations for each of the 16 personality types. “Thinkers”, like myself, tended towards being male (not exclusively, of course). “Feelers” tended towards women. A world of all thinkers would be full of emotional turbulence with no salve but the satiation of primal, creative and destructive urges. A world of all feelers would be less structured and productive, full of wishy-washy sentimentality but fewer driving goals or vision. It takes both. Yin and Yang. Masculine and feminine energies. The ability to seek what you love, and to love what you already have.
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December 31st, 2007 at 2:39 am
I completely agree with everything you said here! Very well stated!
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December 31st, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Culturally, I think we need a big refresher course in ‘tolerance’. Doesn’t sem to matter what the issue is, at the crux of the problem there always seems to be someone’s intolerance.
I’m all for women in the work place, equal pay etc. In the past in my own businesses I’ve employed a lot of women and made sure they got equal pay. But if a woman wants to stay at home, I see nothing wrong with that at all. There may not be a paycheck attached to it, but raising kids is a lot of work! I actually think there’d be more stay at home parents - both women and men- but the sad truth is most families can’t afford it. So the feminist you were speaking too may not be able to take as much credit as she thinks. Feminism may have helped women get better working conditions but necessity has forced them into the workplace to begin with. Great post!
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December 31st, 2007 at 7:32 pm
I actually think that part of the grip of patriarchy is the idea that we SHOULDN’T stay at home with our children. The idea that one shouldn’t stop working, as if the work of mothering were not ultimately important. It is anti-feminine to say that one shouldn’t be a stay at home mother. I sure as heck would be, whether I had a husband or not! I would not ever put a child away from me for any length of time that was not directly the child’s choice. Not until a very late age, at least. If I were working, the child would go with me. It is not fair to such a dependent human being to do otherwise–at their most tender and influential age, children NEED a loving and attentive mother to care for all of their needs and to never ever force them away. How much damage and loneliness and alienation does that cause in people… I do not know but I strongly suspect it… I viscerally remember somewhere screaming and crying for my mother for hours and she never came (I completely regressed to that emotion at one point, after someone I lived with pulled a knife on me to prove a point and scared me to death), and I know that my life has been full of struggles such as believing that the universe was inherently abundant, that God really did love me and wouldn’t abandon me, that people wouldn’t necessarily abandon me either. It was real hard to believe that–and I swore to myself (after that knife incident!) that should I have children I’d never ever force the child to be away from my very skin if he or she wanted at ALL to be there.
Whew, well that’s my rant–so yes, I definitely agree with you–not enough respect and space is given period to the very important and singularly feminine work of mothering in our culture–not by ‘feminists’ and not by anyone else, either.
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December 31st, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Oh, and I forgot to reply to the rest of your post, too.
The idea about women being more nurturers–I agree with that. Women are naturally more grounded than men and have more energy. Men are better at focus. It is not nurturance that makes a victim–not at all–it is rather the utter repression of everything else a woman IS. Like I mentioned in my other reply, part of patriarchy is that it represses the importance of feminine work–mothering, dreaming, nurturing. Another part is that many times patriarchy will uphold feminine qualities as partners or helpmates to the more focused masculine energy. Both are necessary, I think, and I think there is far too little of anything feminine in our culture… in men OR women.
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