One blessing for which I am eternally grateful is that I came of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s, in an era where feminism was in fashion. So as I reached the age where I didn’t have much interest in listening to the feminist leanings of my mother, I could instead listen to those of Ani Difranco, Sarah MacLachlan, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey and Bikini Kill. Heck, even the Spice Girls brought the message of Girl Power to the mainstream, wearing both feminism and skimpy dresses with pride. I grew up in an era where tough chicks were cool and there were plenty of them to emulate.
But as I entered adulthood, feminism largely faded from mainstream view. I’ve often wondered in the intervening years what effect this has had on us, as women, as a society, on how we understand and perceive feminism, or even recognize the need for it. I’ve had an inkling that it hasn’t been good. Now I know it’s been, to use the parlance of our time, a disaster.
For the women who are grieving Hillary Clinton’s loss — and it is a profound grief that has surprised many of us with its depth — it feels like something inside us has died. And what we are grieving has nothing to do with U.S. politics or policies. It has nothing to do with the failure of the Democratic Party to mobilize its base or the media to accurately gauge the temperature of the electorate. It has nothing to do with whether Bernie Sanders could have beaten Donald Trump. That is a different conversation.
From where we are standing, a heroine was put forth to slay the dragon of institutionalized sexism, or at least mortally wound it, to claim a victory thousands of years in the making. Not only was she brutally cut down and incinerated in its flames, when the beast reared back to laugh, he exposed himself to be a multi-headed monster, much uglier and more ferocious than we had feared.
Standing behind him, or worse, on the sidelines, were so many of the people who should have been on our side; who didn’t see that her victory would have been an establishment change of an entirely different, more significant, sort. We already knew the world was a harder place for us. We just didn’t know how hard it was, how high the deck is stacked, how much more we have to climb, how much harder we must work.
It’s this realization that has had me waking up in tears, that has left my women friends struggling and speechless. Something awful has happened that has rocked our worldview, revealing implications that don’t stop at the border. Somewhere along the way the idea of feminism became contorted and distorted and bastardized. Its definition obscured, its necessity undermined. It is seen as, at best, a fringe issue, at worst a divisive force that pits women against men, and, more horrifying, women against women.
So we need to get clear here about what feminism is, and, perhaps more importantly, what it is not. Feminism is not a women-only club. It’s not even a women’s issue. It is a human rights issue, with very simple principles at its core. Women are human beings.
As such, they have human rights: the right to feel safe in public space; to earn equal pay for equal work; to be considered for and earn jobs based on merit; to live free of harassment and to decide what happens to their own bodies.
And there is a net benefit to feminism that is too often ignored: these rights apply to all human beings — men too. What is good for women is also good for men, who have the right to feel their feelings, to be given the permission and the tools and the language to express them; to work in non-traditional fields; to spend time with their children and contribute to their families in ways that reach beyond bringing home a paycheque (much easier to do with pay equity). Feminism does not ask men to give up their power, but to share it.
Much of the discord around feminism, the word, stems from anger. We all know the stereotype of the angry feminist — it exists for a reason. I am a feminist and right now I am angry. So angry I don’t know what to do with it all. It is an indication of my incredible privilege that I have lived 34 years on this earth and never, until now, felt so utterly violated by the world that I live in. I am not angry at men, I am angry at injustice. Going forward, our challenge, my challenge, is to channel this anger in a constructive way, so that women can feel our feelings and express them, without alienating our allies. Because as motivating as anger is, it is also corrosive. We need to find a way to invite people into feminism. We need our friends and lovers and families and coworkers, no matter their gender, to see themselves in this word, to take it from a trend to a movement — something that cannot go out of style. Our lives depend on it.
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@Jm_Barrett
