The Feminist Chronicles - part 3

Tonight sucks. I'm upset with my older daughters choices. My husband and younger daughter are gone for a couple of days. He's in IL with his parents tonight, as is Luciana. They will drop him at the airport tomorrow, so he can fly to PA to attend a meeting. She will stay with her grandparents until he returns from PA and then they both come home. As if that's not enough, I typed up my rather disjointed, stream-of-consciousness, unedited post below and decided I just had to get wedding pictures to go with the post. None of my wedding pics are in digital format, they are in high gloss, which doesn't photograph well, so I had to scan them in. I hadn't yet reinstalled the printer driver and software (it's a multi-function printer, so it scans) on to the machine after I wiped the hard drive, so I had to find that cd and install it. Then I got REALLY bummed when I noticed how much skinnier and better I looked in those pics than I do now. And I have a rotten sinus headache. That commences the whinging portion of tonight's post. On to part 3 of the epic feminist post. Oh, and wedding pics. :-D

Marriage brought its own host of feminist issues into my life. It was hard for me to get married. It is something I never intended to do. It wasn’t due to a lack of love or commitment on my part, nor was it anything at all to do with Mark or our relationship. It was the history of, purpose of, and institute of marriage that disgusted/disgusts me. I have major issues, as a feminist, with so much about marriage…where do I even start?

Marriage, historically, was appallingly sexist. It wasn’t about romance or love. It was merely an economic contract in which a male gained ownership of a woman and all her resources. It allowed full freedom to the male, and left the woman completely at his mercy. Anything that is rooted in the concept of women as property is sick, fucked, and should be eliminated and replaced with an institution that is grounded in equality.

Along these lines, women, upon transfer of ownership from their fathers to their husbands, indicated this change of ownership by changing their last name. Slaves had to do the same thing—their last names were changed to reflect their current owner. I’m almost frothing at the mouth from just typing about this, it is such a hot-button issue for me!

Needless to say, I did NOT change my last name when I got married. Because I married a secure, intelligent man, he had absolutely no problem with this. We both agreed that since we each had our very own last name, we didn’t need a new one, and that was the end of that. Now, the last name of the children posed a bit more of a problem. I don’t like the hyphenated name, as it seems unrealistic as a long-term solution to this problem (what happens to the second-, third-, etc. generations who continue to hyphenate the children’s last names?). M wanted the children to carry his last name, and of course I wanted them to have mine. He really wanted the girls to have a hyphenated last name, so they could have both. I really hated that solution.

This was resolved after debating and negotiating for months. There was simply no way that the kids would have only his last name. I endured two hellish pregnancies, childbirth, and the bulk of the early parenting responsibilities. Why would I not pass MY name to my girls? It is completely ridiculous and incomprehensible to me that a woman would give her child only the man’s last name. We do the work. We are inescapably pregnant and have to suffer through all that entails. Even with Mark being a very good, very involved dad, I was still the primary care giver as are most women. So why would we give our children the name of a man who may contribute or may walk away at any point. We can only ever be 100% sure of who the mother of a child is, so again—one more reason to pass down the matriarchal name. Because my husband is a good man whose feelings are important to me, I went along with the hyphenation. Definitely not my first choice, but a decent compromise. Now the girls will have to decide, if they ever have children, what they will do with that hyphenated last name and which name(s) their child(ren) will carry.

I should add that I also believe that paternity testing should be required in every case. I have a number of male friends and relatives who have been duped. For the protection of the handful of nice, cuckolded males, this should be done always. Women lie. Women misremember. Given the technical ease with which paternity can be established, it should be de riguer by now. I also feel it is vital for the children to have complete certainty as to their medical history and genetic weaknesses. This attitude is thought to be anti-feminist by some. Oh well. And for the record, I demanded repeatedly for Luciana’s first two years or so, that M go take a paternity test, so it could be 100% scientifically validated. He refused repeatedly and never did go. If I were a man, I would want the certainty of that test, regardless of the situation. I’m not a particularly trusting person.

I am angry with the feminist movement that this patriarchal naming structure hasn’t been questioned and corrected on a national level. I am disappointed with my sisters for selling out by giving up their names and/or unquestioningly following this antiquated and insulting tradition. It’s thousands of “little things” like this that are accepted and unexamined that feed into the cultural mindset that it’s a man’s world, and we’re just here to make it nicer for them. UGH!!!

I’m even more angry that the feminist movement has dropped the ball so badly when it comes to our child-rearing options. I believed that I could, as a woman, have it all. I went to college and got an education so I could have a rewarding career (and support my child and myself). I spent so many years in agony. I could never do anything but put my child (only one at that time) first, but my career was important. Even with a professional job, where I was supposed to be able to enjoy both career and family, it was a constant conflict. I always felt that my focus was compromised. I would leave my child and spend the day trying to not cry, feeling like my heart was ripped out. I came home from work exhausted, and spent all non-working time trying to make up to my child for the time I was gone and trying to keep up with my house. Having it all sucks. Nobody should have to choose between a career and motherhood.

First of all a six-week maternity leave is paltry and pathetic. We have the worst maternity leave/benefits of the first-world countries. The body does NOT recover from pregnancy and child birth that quickly. The hormones/emotions do NOT recover that quickly. It is simply cruel to put women in that position. Beyond that, it is brutal to the baby, who needs much more of mom’s time at that age.

Once we return to work, life consists of being yanked really hard in too many directions. It wears down our health and emotions, making us less-effective in both career and motherhood, and leaving us permanently fraught with constant guilt over our failure to be great at both. Women should not be faced with taking care of a sick child or keeping her career/job intact.

Redefining the work week, employment benefits, leave time, allowing a woman to be self-sufficient, self-supporting, and a good mother (should she choose to breed)—these are things feminism needs to be working on. Aggressively! It seems that the feminist movement has been playing dead for the last couple of decades.

I joined and held office in AAUW for a few years, but let it go. They’ve done a great job at opening the doors to women in higher education. We now comprise the majority (51%) of college students, and that was a very important battle. That’s been won, now. The problem is that when our young feminists finish college and start their career and decide to have children, our current employment/child care structures aren’t such that they help women to be the best parent and employee both at the same time. I’ve seen so many of my former feminist girlfriends from college, have kids, realize it’s too hard to work and be a mom, so they roll out of feminism right back into the silent patriarchy by giving up their career. Of course it’s their choice to make, but I resent that they are given such limited choices. I will scream from the mountains that feminists certainly can trade their careers for kids, but it is not the best decision for them, their children, or for other women coming up behind them. It is simply NOT safe to completely depend on a man (or anyone else) for care. It puts a woman and her children in a vulnerable and unsafe position, and often forces them to make many other unpleasant choices down the road. This creates a power inequity that can prove difficult or even dangerous for the women and children. I would do absolutely anything—even take another job to support my grown children/grandchildren—to keep my girls from putting themselves in this position. I don’t want them ever completely reliant upon a man’s mercy!

I feel like feminism started a good fight. Obviously we’ve made progress, but we’ve lost ground as well. We still haven’t realized true gender equity. I don’t feel that gender equity is enough though. We are not men. We are different. Our bodies are different. The fact that we can and do become mothers makes us very different. It means that our needs and priorities are different. I want to see feminism create a world where we can be true to ourselves, contribute positively to the world, and still meet all of our children’s needs.

At this point, it feels sometimes as though suffrage was our last major victory. Yes, I know the ERA was very important, but hasn’t been successful with its goals (just look at the pay inequity stats!), and those goals were not enough to create an equitable country. I want so much more for my daughters than the ability to sleep around freely, spend their lives torn between career and children—killing themselves with three fulltime jobs (career, raising child(ren), running a household). I want them to understand that yes, they are sexual beings and there is nothing wrong with taking charge of that, but taking charge of that does not entail ‘putting out’ to everyone who asks or dressing like a cheap tramp. It seems that the sexual revolution was also very, very costly for us as women and very, very beneficial to the men. It seems that most of the feminist efforts have been manipulated into being much more beneficial to men than women.

But just when we should be fighting our hardest, we can’t get our daughters to realize how important it is and just what is at stake. Somehow ‘feminism’ became equated with ‘butch lesbians’, and women are loathe to admit to being feminists. How can a woman proudly announce, “I’m not a feminist or anything like that” (with a slight sneer as the word ‘feminist’ is spoken)? Really? Is demanding equity and respect that distasteful? Is making the world a little bit better for our children and ourselves so disgusting? Or is the disdain based in the horrible thought that someone (read: men) may find you too ‘butch’ or ‘unattractive’ if you speak up for yourselves and the women and children who don’t have the power to speak for themselves?

I have been very lucky in finding balance in my life, but it was not easy. I work part time within my career field. It was ridiculously hard to find part-time professional work. I think that many women, like myself, would be thrilled with the option to maintain their careers on a part-time basis (whether or not they have children, really). I need to use my brain or I become very depressed very quickly. I could never completely give up my career. I am able to have the best of both worlds right now. I have a challenging career but still have the time and energy to be the mother I need/want to be. It shouldn’t be this difficult for women to find balance. This affects all of us, not just lesbians. Even better, while I am at work, my girl is with her grandma, so I have complete peace of mind, knowing my mom is the best possible caregiver for my kids, when M & I are unavailable. I really would like to find a movement (I’ve looked but not found anything) that is working on making it easier for women to find balance in their lives. While I have worked hard, I am aware that I've also been very, very lucky! Others who have worked just as hard are not always as lucky as I have been. I feel really bad about that.

Really, at the bottom of it, feminism for me is pretty simple. I really just wish we could find a way for everyone in the world to be happy and healthy. I know it's childish, but just think how cool the world would be if everyone you encountered, every day was truly happy. I think feminism, simply making a little more room for the happiness of living beings, is one small step in that direction.