April 26, 2001
Feminism
I was going to write yesterday, but I got sidetracked by Contact. It was on cable last night and how could I resist a good Jodie Foster thought provoking Sci-Fi?
I have been reading The Feminine Mystique like it's going to distintegrate in my hands. I can't put it down. This book absolutely and positively must be read by all females alive. I adore it. Hell, I'm campaigning for it. Most people who have noticed my recent distraction merely laugh it off, make some feminazi joke and move on. But it's not like that. I think the feminist movement, as of late, isn't accomplishing anything. Sure, we have abortion to bitch about (gotta go pro-choice), but beyond that, the only restraints upon us are the ones we delude ourselves into thinking we have. Sure, the world is populated with many offensive, sexist bastards, but no movement can change the mind of a stubborn male. It is compassion that activists pray on, and there is little left to be found.
At any rate, back to my initial point, the book isn't even about man-hating or all that other stereotypical shit that is automatically assumed to be in a girl's demeanor when she declares herself a feminist. There are girls I know that are scoffing at my literature. So afraid are they to seem proud to be female, to be independent and strong (afraid they'll scare away their boyfriends, probably) that they make me out to be some psycho ax-grinding bitch. Which is far from the case (aside from the psycho part, of course). The Feminine Mystique deals merely with the delusions in the fifties where women gave up the opportunites the previous generations had fought for in order to return to the home. To revert, again, to the ideas that a women can find no fulfillment outside of the home; that a woman who would desire something beyond her husband and her children is suffering from mere penis envy. The book is fascinating, not only the philosophical content but the factual content as well, percentages and anecdotes and such. You can't be a girl and not read this book. It's important to know how we got to where we are today, and how easily we could slip back into that housewife cage if we forget.
The fact that I wore the Xena boots and threatened to kick Ryan in the balls yesterday is irrelevant evidence in this whole case about my being a feminazi. I was just joking....probably...
astera at afternoonie