My grandmother was three years old when the 19th Amendment was passed. She lived to be 96. And we are STILL fighting for the same sort of respect. The "opposition" uses the same phrases, the same tactics. It makes me angry. Angry in a way usually reserved for my older brother, or video games like Mortal Kombat. Because of this, I am a feminist; because it's still necessary. But that's not the only reason.
I am a feminist because of my grandmother. She was a teacher, my bedstemor. She wanted to be a PE teacher, for she brimmed with passion for sports and exercise and the outdoors. She was accepted to the Colorado School of Mines, though it was an all-male college at the time. Her name, Aase, made them believe she was a capable, intelligent young man named Ace. Since she clearly was not, she wasn't allowed to enroll. Because she was female, she couldn't teach PE. Instead, her first classroom was a one-room schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere on the Colorado plains, something I have always believed took a crazy level of courage. Out there, alone, in the middle of the Great Depression with kids who didn't have to follow her instructions? A lone young woman, protected only by the respect of her position and the support of her community? A spine of steel, my grandmother had.
She married late. Didn't have children until she was 40 (not so strange today, but in the '50s?). She lost her husband before she turned 60. I never knew him. I knew only the blue-eyed, pursed-lipped woman who demanded strength and excellence for my own good.
I am a feminist because of my mother. My mom is, in a lot of ways, the opposite of my grandmother. She's a woman of softness and comforting arms, made of love. She married relatively young, had babies right away. At the opening of the '80s, that made her anti-feminist to a lot of her contemporaries. I know, because I watched it happen. The way some women looked at her. The way they spoke to her like she was weak, unenlightened, or part of the problem. I watched it happen again when, at the opening of the '90s, she had her second round of kids in time with her friends...and they ignored her decade of mother's wisdom while still lifting their noses at her lack of career. My mother wanted to be a Home Economics teacher. She fought - through most of my childhood - to finish her degree around the demands of hearth and family. Her board of professors labeled her too trendy and immodest (in other words, too modern); the anger of unfairness still courses through her when she talks about it. I was so unbelievably proud of her when I sat in the enormous university gym for her graduation. She had a life, full of demands and responsibilities that challenged her to find ways around them, and she determinedly earned that degree.
My mom is the very definition of "homemaker," a term she insisted on using instead of "housewife," choosing to be recognized for her tireless work instead of her marriage to a working man. She is magic, my mom. She can look at a space and, seemingly with no effort whatsoever, turn it into a home that welcomes, invites, and nourishes both the body and the spirit. She taught me to sew and to bake, and to pick myself up by the boot-laces and face forward no matter how badly I might want run away. She drilled empathy into me the same as her mother drilled the virtues of self-comportment.
I consider myself immensely blessed to have had two such role models standing behind me. Through them, I aspired to independence, self-sufficiency, strength, and excellence, even as a child. Because of their vast differences, I learned that women can choose any path with any number of options and still be excellent examples of what it means to be female. Hard or soft, sweet or sharp, career or family or somewhere in between; all choices are equally viable.
But for all the lessons they taught me, all the strength with which they imbued my little self to go forth and be great, they couldn't teach me how to break the glass ceiling.
I remember very clearly the moment I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I was never going to be allowed to be as great as they wanted me to be. As a tomboy, I had plenty of opportunities to experience the differences between boys and girls. I made the choice for myself to be judged on the boys' scale, because even at five years old, I recognized it earned greater accolades and was considered to be more challenging. For better or worse, I was born loving a good challenge. So I ran faster, played harder, shot straighter. I aimed to be the equal to boys three and four years older, with bodies practically twice my size. And on fields where physical differences meant nothing, like video games, I fought all the harder.
My big brother had a neighborhood friend who was the height of video game awesomeness: His family was Japanese, and his dad frequently brought him games from Japan. Japanese games were harder, see, and some of them never made it to our watered-down American market (or so the belief went). I frequently tagged along over the years and across my brother's friendships (something that drove him to no end of irritation). This particular boy I only visited once. We sat down to play - I don't remember the game - and, after much difficulty, I won. My brother fumed, but this boy looked at me with astonishment bleeding over into being impressed. His eyes sparkled, his mouth hung open just a little, like he had never seen anything quite so surprisingly cool. "Wow," he said, with the ring of honesty, "You're really good." And then, so fast I didn't have time to blink, a wall slammed down between us. His face went from open and shining to cold and blank. He shifted his gaze to the floor. "For a girl."
In that moment, I understood with soul-wrenching depth, the truth of what it meant to be a girl. No matter how hard I tried or how well I did, I could never be better than a boy. Or rather, I could be light years better than a boy; I could blow them all out of the water at their own games, but it wouldn't make a difference. I was a girl, and I wasn't allowed to win. Not on boy terms. I would never have their respect as an equal, let alone be king for a day.
I am a feminist today for that little girl. For all the little girls like her who deserve to smash through that ceiling built of culture and pride and fear.
I am a feminist because I believe in equality. I believe in the goodness of my male counterparts. I believe in the oneness of all human life, existence to existence, culture to culture. And I know, from personal experience, that a lack of gender equality hobbles a lot of men from being who they are as much as it hobbled me.
I am a feminist because I believe in equality. I believe in the goodness of my male counterparts. I believe in the oneness of all human life, existence to existence, culture to culture. And I know, from personal experience, that a lack of gender equality hobbles a lot of men from being who they are as much as it hobbled me.
Equality is the way forward. The way up.
But inequality is still built into our systems, our culture, like an old, corroded water main. We've done the principle work of adding a new, clean pipeway that can carry more water to more places than ever before, but we've left that old, gunked up central line where it is. Still carrying water it turns to sludge. Still causing metallic seepage. It's not there because we need it, or because it's important to our way of life. It's there because we're too afraid of relying on the new system. What if it breaks? What if our water flows in a way we don't understand? And it's there because we're lazy, and we don't want to have to do the work to shut off the water and pull out the old, sludgy gunk. And because some of the people with homes on the main line worry they will lose their status or their "better" water when access shifts a little farther away. And I get it, I do.
But here's the thing: The new pipes will never reach their potential, or our society through them, if we keep hanging onto the old because it's familiar. Or because we're afraid.
And so I am a feminist, and I will keep insisting on new pipes in old neighborhoods. I will get upset if someone attempts to reinforce the old ones. Especially if I love them. Because that is the kind of feminist I am - a soft, intellectual woman with worn boot-laces, a magical gift of empathy, and expectations of excellence from those near to my heart. And I believe we will be better, as individuals, as Americans, as human beings, because I believe in us. In all of us.
<3
But inequality is still built into our systems, our culture, like an old, corroded water main. We've done the principle work of adding a new, clean pipeway that can carry more water to more places than ever before, but we've left that old, gunked up central line where it is. Still carrying water it turns to sludge. Still causing metallic seepage. It's not there because we need it, or because it's important to our way of life. It's there because we're too afraid of relying on the new system. What if it breaks? What if our water flows in a way we don't understand? And it's there because we're lazy, and we don't want to have to do the work to shut off the water and pull out the old, sludgy gunk. And because some of the people with homes on the main line worry they will lose their status or their "better" water when access shifts a little farther away. And I get it, I do.
But here's the thing: The new pipes will never reach their potential, or our society through them, if we keep hanging onto the old because it's familiar. Or because we're afraid.
And so I am a feminist, and I will keep insisting on new pipes in old neighborhoods. I will get upset if someone attempts to reinforce the old ones. Especially if I love them. Because that is the kind of feminist I am - a soft, intellectual woman with worn boot-laces, a magical gift of empathy, and expectations of excellence from those near to my heart. And I believe we will be better, as individuals, as Americans, as human beings, because I believe in us. In all of us.
<3
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