All Request Day: Feminist or Not?

Oh, geez, you readers have such good questions and I have such lousy answers. 

Cmc wonders whether I would describe myself as a "feminist"?   

I don't even know what a feminist is.  I'm tempted to tack on "these days" to the end of that sentence but I'm not sure, if I did, what the clause would qualify.  Does it mean that today I don't know what a feminist is but once I did and that what's changed is my understanding?  Or does it mean that I know what a feminist used to be but I don't know what it now means and what's changed is the term?  Hmmm.  I don't know which and so I'm just going to say I don't know what a feminist is and perhaps I never did.  Yes, I've seen the bumper stickers and yes I've read the blog posts and I still don't feel like I'm able to answer the question.  I guess because if I say "feminist" and you hear me say it I have no idea if we're thinking the same thing, if the same parts of your brain are lighting up and the same neurons are twitching and associations are generating as what I'm trying to send to you.  Whereas if I said the word "horse" I'm pretty sure we're thinking of the same beast, and the picture it evokes in your head is going to be the picture I'm trying to paint.

So I guess the short answer is, no, I don't think of myself as a "feminist" because I don't understand what that means.  Which maybe means I don't understand your question. 

For me the word is so fluid that it seems dangerous to say that I don't think of myself as one.  Wait!  What am I eliminating or rejecting?  Some of the associations I have with feminism are really cool.  So I don't want to say, nope, I'm not one of those over there.   

Geez, all these requests are making me feel like I'm wading through molasses.  Someone, ask me something easy. 

I can say that I am glad to be born in the generation of women that I'm in.  I've never felt limited -- professionally, intellectually, financially, socially -- by my gender.  I mean, maybe from time to time I have, but those moments are rare and strange.  The general water I swim in is full of possibility.  I'm accustomed to being the only woman in a room full of men and am not a bit shy or self-conscious about it.  A lot of times I hardly notice it, in fact.  Or if I notice it it's only when their wives come to meet us afterwards and I'm not sure who to sit with and talk to.  Those moments are confusing to me.  As are the times when I puzzle about when and how to raise a family and how that fits with a professional identity and aspirations.  But I don't have a clue what the "feminist" take is on all of this.  The word just doesn't help me with the puzzle. 

I can also say that I'm trying to figure out what it means to be "feminine."  And that I'm interested in it.  I'm learning, I think, how to be more feminine, not in terms of artifice and makeup and fashion, but in terms of how I respond to the world and to my own feelings.  I think I've lived a lot of my life trying to be exclusively rational, assertive, competitive, jovial, and self-determining.  I'm learning how to be more intuitive, responsive, connected, emotional, and fluid.  I'm not sure it's so much learning how to be those things as it is relaxing and not trying to pretend I don't have those parts of me.  I don't know what this has to do with feminism but it has a lot to do with me trying to figure out how being a woman affects how I move in this world, and what my impact and influence will be.

Does that answer your question?  Heck if I know. 

Comments

[MC]

Why do you want to be more feminine? And whats wrong with being "exclusively rational, assertive, competitive, jovial, and self-determining". Also, will being feminine necessary conflict with being "exclusively rational, assertive, competitive, jovial, and self-determining"?

[Scheherazade]

I guess the only thing wrong with trying to be exclusively rational, etc. is that I'm not exclusively those things. I have a lot more in me. I was just holding them in, maybe because I was afraid of being more feminine. I'm hoping that being feminine, whatever that turns out to mean, will give me more tools and ways of being, rather than fewer.

This gets kind of new-agey and embarrassing, and I'm not sure I can explain myself all that well. But it feels like I'm getting more comfortable with some aspects of my personality that I tried for a while to wall off, or viewed as though they were irrelevant to my success and my personality. I no longer think that's true, and I'm trying to open up to them.

[cmc]

I only just saw your post, and yes, that does answer my question. Your views are very similar to mine in that, when I have been asked if I am a feminist, I have always qualified my answer by pointing out that I do not know what the term means to the person who is asking me. So I don't want to say I am a feminist and have my listener conclude, "Oh, that means she supports federally funded day care," when that is not the case.

At the same time, I always think of myself as a feminist and that term is extremely important to me. I have been asking myself why, and that is what prompted my question.

While I have never encountered sex discrimination in the legal profession, I am always conscious of 1) how very little time it has been since rampant and blatant sex discrimination was the norm in the U.S., even during my own childhood in the '70s; 2)how far hatred and fear of women can be taken (i.e. the Taliban, the Middle Ages' Malleus Maleficarum; and 3)the fact that women's position in the U.S. over the last 30 years has been a unique moment in human history. I guess I just have a strong sense of the fragility of "women's liberation" and somehow that is tied into my strong emotional connection to the word "feminist."

Again, thank you for this great blog. Yours was the first blog I discovered. The interactive aspect of blog reading never fails to thrill.