As I was admiring my lovely daughter's face this afternoon as I nursed her to sleep, I couldn't help recall a moment from college that has always stuck with me. It was one of those moments where you can't elaborate on what you mean, you can't make someone see your point of view because you get flustered and want to appear "nice" and not blow up in utter disbelief and frustration at your roommates, lest your outburst makes the remaining semester of living with them unbearable (it wouldn't have been, we loved each other dearly, but you know what I mean).
We were sitting around, just chatting, and one of them said: "I don't need feminism. It's pointless. Women have enough rights already. I don't want anymore."
Cue me: *sharp intake of breath*
At the time, I was in the depths of WomanStats depression, working nights as a manager at the domestic violence shelter, spending 48 hours a month on call as a rape crisis counselor. All of the pressure and stress and sadness I felt on a daily basis, as I learned about rape and intimate partner violence and female genital mutilation and forced marriages and honor killings and sati and widow cleansing and forced abortions and female infanticide, came crashing down on my chest when she said this.
And it's not just the big, life-changing violence that is happening worldwide or in my own neighborhood. It's misogyny on Facebook. It's the fact I will always make less than my male colleagues, for doing the same work. It's the fact that because I'm a mother, I know there is the inherent bias that I'm not up to par. It is the societally-induced guilt of leaving my children, even if they are with their dad. It's going to Church and seeing only men on the stand.
Because although we have more freedoms than our foremothers (god bless our suffragette sisters and Margaret Sanger!), equality is far from being realized, and we simply don't have "enough" rights yet.
Because ALL women, EVERYWHERE, deserve the right:
- to feel safe in their own homes
- to go jogging at night and not feel threatened
- to affordable contraception
- to equal pay
- to freedom in birth
- to pursue their studies
- to choose who they marry
- to autonomy over their bodies
- to not be left in poverty post-divorce
- etc...
And until then, yes, I will be angry about it. I will not sit idly by as my daughter grows up in a world that tells her she is less than her brother.
* And if you're already a feminist, or aspire to be one, you can now laugh at this tumblr.
We were sitting around, just chatting, and one of them said: "I don't need feminism. It's pointless. Women have enough rights already. I don't want anymore."
Cue me: *sharp intake of breath*
At the time, I was in the depths of WomanStats depression, working nights as a manager at the domestic violence shelter, spending 48 hours a month on call as a rape crisis counselor. All of the pressure and stress and sadness I felt on a daily basis, as I learned about rape and intimate partner violence and female genital mutilation and forced marriages and honor killings and sati and widow cleansing and forced abortions and female infanticide, came crashing down on my chest when she said this.
And it's not just the big, life-changing violence that is happening worldwide or in my own neighborhood. It's misogyny on Facebook. It's the fact I will always make less than my male colleagues, for doing the same work. It's the fact that because I'm a mother, I know there is the inherent bias that I'm not up to par. It is the societally-induced guilt of leaving my children, even if they are with their dad. It's going to Church and seeing only men on the stand.
Because although we have more freedoms than our foremothers (god bless our suffragette sisters and Margaret Sanger!), equality is far from being realized, and we simply don't have "enough" rights yet.
Because ALL women, EVERYWHERE, deserve the right:
- to feel safe in their own homes
- to go jogging at night and not feel threatened
- to affordable contraception
- to equal pay
- to freedom in birth
- to pursue their studies
- to choose who they marry
- to autonomy over their bodies
- to not be left in poverty post-divorce
- etc...
And until then, yes, I will be angry about it. I will not sit idly by as my daughter grows up in a world that tells her she is less than her brother.
* And if you're already a feminist, or aspire to be one, you can now laugh at this tumblr.
