Feminism Ain't Just for Women Anymore
Gender roles, Muslimwoman--that is what this is boiling down to.
Hmmm, this is a tender subject for me. Is there a distinction between the Women's Liberation Movement that you've referred to and the branching, evolving paths that Feminism is taking? To me, Women's Lib as you conceptualize it really isn't much about liberation for women or men. It's about allowing women to have careers and be big men with money and possessions. That's a very capitalist, protestant work-ethic rooted concept. And as you know, not everyone wants that. Some (many?) men as well as women don't want to live materialistic, workaday, acquire-the-most-crap-and-die lives. I certainly don't want to live that way.
To illustrate, I may rip a page or two from my life for show and tell here. Raised in a very suburban and protestant work ethic-oriented environment, I was subjected to and drilled with a set of values that are very toxic to me. I'm a man, but I don't fit the man mold. I like to accessorize my wardrobe, I think hunting is not only bad but utterly boring and a waste of time, I would only go be a spectator at a sports game if someone paid me and there was plenty of
good beer (not Bud Light, thank you very much), and I'd much rather sit at home, reading and doodling on the majority of my Friday nights, than go out to a bar.
What's more, I don't fancy myself a wife who will do all the cooking and the housework (okay, well maybe the laundry...) because I enjoy cooking and organizing my spaces. Although I don't clean every day (really now, who does? Don't lie now
), I do enjoy stretching my body out on a clean carpet, reaping the just rewards of a good vacuuming of the whole house, basking in the steamy balm of freshly lit aromatherpy burners.
I wouldn't enjoy the life of watching soaps and gossiping on the phone, but at the same time, I don't want to pack up a goddamned unfashionable briefcase at 8 am after eating a bowl of cereal with my nose in a newspaper and then drive off to an oversanitized office where the phone won't stop ringing and there are a bunch of numbers, orders, and tiresome meetings waiting. Naw, not for me.
Rather, let me work twenty hours a week and scrape by. I'll cook dinner for my fiance and have it ready when she gets home. We'll do some mad libs after dinner and talk in silly voices and laugh and dance, much like kids. We'll speak for our animals as we play with them and pet them. We'll dance jigs to music played from a Radio Shack grade stereo (Actual Retail Value? Five Dollar). We'll take a walk to the garden and play in the dirt.
So clearly I agree that the consumerist life is nothing but bullshit and poison. Yet...
Feminism and "gender equality" is not just about women being free to have careers (why was
that worth fighting for, you ask, and rightly so!). That was a ridiculous, blinded lurch of a first step. It didn't take too long for women to sober up from that drunken stumble, though. "What? What am I doing? I want my life back!!" Muslimwoman and many other stupposedly "liberated" women found themselves ensalved to a system that was sold to them. So do some men, and I am one of them.
No less that any liberated woman, I find myself displaced among the brainless and blind power structures that have been built around convenience, commodity, and consolidation of money. I don't use the word
wealth here because
wealth is something entirely different and even separate from money. Sure, money may be a good and useful tool, but it ain't
wealth. Too often it is actually the opposite of freedom of mobility. That's right, instead of being actually free, the market-obsessed and money-obsessed capitalist empties his or her energy into the machinery of making money. More and more time must be devoted to the securing of money, leaving little to no time for anything else, be it family or fun--or here's a revolutionary concept: having a
fun family!!
I mean damn. As Muslimwoman has pointed out, it doesn't take much money to make a child laugh. All you need is a malleable mind that can go back and inhabit that five-year old mind. Here's a tip to getting there, too: be wondrous! Don't be afraid to be amazed. And guess what? If you surround yourself with kids and let them sweep you away with their questions and exclamations, it won't take long to be amazed.
Here's a sad story about a man who didn't have time to be amazed by his amazing, laughing five year old daughter. I witnessed this last week in the bookstore I work in while shelving young adult books.
Ding!!! The back door to the store opens and little feet race down some steps, turn the corner and dart into the kids room behind me. I didn't see her enter, but heard this little girl giggling like a brisk wind as she burst into the store, riding a high of five year old energy.
Her dad kind of plodded in behind her. It almost took him five minutes to catch up with her. I looked over my shoulder at him and his face was numb and dead, pudgy. This dad said not a word to his little girl. He just visually checked to see where she was, then walked on to other parts of the store.
Me, I was shelving books near this gem. Giggle, giggle, talking to herself, hahahahah, books, she loves them, oh so much fun. I am grinning and shelving books, feeling a bit radiant myself just because there's basically this little elf perusing the magical world of books in the room behind me.
Dad comes back. Clop clop. Moving slow, lethargic. The girl must have gotten mostly mom's DNA, I think. Giggle giggle goes elf girl, then, "Daddy!!!" Exuberant at seeing her zombiesque father. She loves him, sees the litte elf sparkles buried under his dulled physique and demeanor. Her vision is fresher than mine, for sure. "Daddy!!! This book has a puzzle!!" And this was a great liquid exclamation that exploded into tittering laughter so intense at the end of the sentence that it nearly blurred and drowned out the word "puzzle."
I mean, wow. Children. It was a puzzle. In a book. Not a big deal to those of us who have been in the world a while. But to this five year old, it was a frickin' tickle session. Awesome!!
That's the high point of this story. The low point is that Dad didn't find the horror books he was looking for, didn't let his daughter get even one book either. He manipulated her into leaving the store by telling her that her doll was bored and wanted to go. He negotiated not buying her one book (and these books are used, y'all, like $2-$3 for most of them) by telling her in a monotone drone that he would read her Daddy is a Doodlebug when they got home.
Of course, this wasn't a sad occasion for this girl, whom saw every moment as a fresh box of explosive surprises, never know what you'll get. Nope, it was an occasion for celebration: "Daddy is a Doodlebug!!! Yay!!! Hahaha!" Probably heard that book a thousand times, but it's still amazing to have monotoned Daddy read it to her.
Awesome.
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Okay, so I gave the Dad a hard time in this story. Maybe he was just tired, had a bad day. Maybe he gets self-conscious about being his normal silly old self in public places. For all I know he could have a choreographed dance routine and party favors that he gives out when he reads Daddy is a Doodlebug... but hey, I'm just reporting what I witnessed. It makes a point, I think.
Gender roles need to be bent. I'm a male, but I'm not 100% masculine or feminine. I slide along a scale. My gender's malleable. Today I have a beard and may wear a tie (okay, fat chance of that), but tomorrow I might shave and accessorize with bracelets. Whatever, I just want to enjoy my life and bring joy into other people's lives. It's hard to do that when you are spending way too much time pursuing a corrupted moneyed version of the American Dream.
Peace,
P
