My Amusement Park: Five Things Feminism Did For Me

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Saturday, October 07, 2006

Five Things Feminism Did For Me

I've been tagged with the feminism meme.

1. I've been able to have meaningful intellectual, emotional, professional, and nonsexual relationships with men.

2. It may seem small, but I am very grateful that I can choose to wear pants.

3. Education. By that I don't simply mean being let in the door, nor do I only mean being taken somewhat seriously once in, I also mean that my perspectives and feelings about being a woman were (once I hit college) often validated.

4. It wasn't until I was an adult and thought more about how fucking hard it is that I wondered whether it was truly possible for a woman to have a career and kids.

5. There was never a time in my life when I felt that "getting a man" was reaching my potential.

And bonus: 6. Feminism made it possible to see women in my life as fully human.

I tag anyone who feels moved.

4 Comments:

Katha Pollitt said...: Dear EL, since feminism has let you see the women in your life as fully human, and since I e mailed you politely asking you to remove my e mail address frrom your blog and am thus, in a tiny way, in your life and therefore theoretically perceived by you as fully human, do you think you could actually do what I asked? Remove my email address from your blog? I don't want my address to be automatically harvested.
Since you choose to be anonymous, perhaps you will sympathize with my wish not to have my e mail address totally available to spammers and such. Or perhaps not.; 12:32 PM
EL said...: I am so sorry. I didn't get your email. It will be removed immediately.; 1:57 PM
zp said...: What's with my prickly mood today?

This list makes me hate feminism. Or makes feminism look a lot like personal privileges accrued to white women. Maybe it's the question - what feminism did for ME that structures it this way, but still. What else is new?; 11:20 AM
EL said...: Yeah zp, when I was writing the thing about education, I had the same thought. This is what feminism did for ME.

I'm conflicted. Part of me thinks it helps all women (at least in potential and in abstract) for women to become CEOs and Stanford physicists, but another part of me is like, whatever.

I never thought I'd ever waver in calling myself a feminist, but lately I really question it. I really do.; 1:21 PM