Feminism is A Bad Word

                I was raised to regard feminism as a bad word. 

                No doubt this distorted view came from my father.  He conjured up images of masculine women who didn’t shave, burned their bras, and protested every perceived slight.  Life was a tranquil pool, and feminists insisted on splashing, disturbing the rest of us.  Feminists were angry, confrontational women who would fly into a rage just because a man held the door for her.

                To be a feminist was to reject the goddess, the virgin Mary, the mother, and not only embrace the whore but own it.  It was an act of rebellion against society.  People lulled into contentment by television, video games and Disney vacations, people who where happy with the way things were, were threatened by the notion of change.  We were riding on rafts on the surface of a placid pool, and those damn feminists kept splashing around and ruining it.

                The current administration has done us a favor.  They’ve awakened millions of Sleeping Beauties and thrown napalm into that placid pool, so that becoming a feminist is an act of survival. 

                Millions of women have never questioned why before.  Why, if you were raped walking home alone at night, it was regarded as your fault.  Why accepting an invitation to a man’s house was as good as consenting to sex. (Damn, woman, did you really think you were going to watch a movie)?   Why, if we were being harassed in the workplace, we were asking for it.  That going to HR meant defending your own actions as if you were the one at fault.   Why we were the ones judged for getting pregnant and judged  again, no matter how we handled the situation.  Why we were endlessly given the message that we were nothing without a man. 

                The pendulum has swung too far right, and now millions of angry feminists are firing it back to the left, right in the smug faces of our politicians.  A revolution is afoot.  And it has begun with one simple word : Feminism.

                Since identifying myself as a feminist, I am shocked, and sometimes even amused, at how many people in our society are triggered by this.  Just by putting “Feminist” on my Twitter profile, I’ve had strangers literally pop out of nowhere to harass and abuse me, without provocation.  I’d like to say it was just men, and yes, a lot of them are white men, usually of the Baby Boomer generation, like my father.  It’s like I’ve popped my head up and they’re trying to bop it down.  Their attempts to silence me only make me louder.

                Yet, it’s not only white men.   Less often it’s men of color.  Usually, however, and this is most perplexing and distressing of all, it’s other women.  And they’re the most vicious and unrelenting.  Whereas a man would throw the same tired old insults, “you’re ugly, you’re fat, you’re stupid, you’re a bitch, you’re old, no man would touch you with a ten-foot pole,” (and yes, we feminists compare notes) women are more adept at pressing buttons.  They know just what they are, since we share the same ones. 

                It’s hard to understand.  We’re fighting for women to have an equal voice, to get equal pay, and to be safe, and other women are fighting back.  Why?  I liken it to those misguided Jews who collaborated with the Germans during the Holocaust believing it would ensure their survival.   A powerful man might let your temporarily wipe his ass, but he’ll trade you in for a younger model once you’re past your prime.  That’s the way it works when men have all the power.  So why are so many women defending this way of life?

                These women have managed to manipulate the patriarchy to their advantage, and yes, we know these women, and we may even have resorted to their tactics.  They used their “feminine wiles,”  to get whatever they wanted, they learned to play the game and win, as much as the game can be won by a woman.  They are the Melania Trumps of the world, looking down their nose at the rest of the rabble, but unable to see that the only difference is their cage is made of gold bars.

                If we stop judging women by their looks, what does that mean for all the gorgeous women out there getting by on their looks?  They’re going to have to get their hands dirty like the rest of us.  Equal means they won’t be up on a pedestal, they’ll be digging trenches like everyone else.  They don’t want that to happen.  Only uggos need to work hard.

                Except, so many of those anti-feministic women are not all that attractive, quite the contrary, in fact.  But if all you need to do to be considered a success in life is nab a man, and you’ve managed that, you feel like a winner.  These women are trying to protect that status.  That’s all they have.  If being a wife and a mother is no longer the measure of a successful life, they’re no longer winners.  In one fell sweep, they’ve become losers.  That can be very threatening.  Suddenly that happy, content woman that never did much after high school but raised three wonderful kids feels cheated and filled with regret.  The notion that you can be a feminist, can be for equality, and still take pride in being a homemaker, is foreign to them.  How can they embrace feminism when they rely on their husbands so much?

                The way people in this society viciously attack feminists suggests that our existence threatens theirs.  They can’t ignore us.  We may take something away from them.  Even if it’s only their dignity and sense of contentment.  Don’t tell the angry, threatened homemaker, “hey, once your kids are all in school, you can take college classes and make something of yourself,” because they are important already.  They’re homemakers.  Feminists consider this a valuable role, but women in this situation don’t want to hear it.  It’s like we’re witches trying to seduce them over to the dark side.  They’re afraid of what may come out of Pandora’s box if they open it.  All the bad experiences and inequalities and shame they’ve accepted as paying their dues may come shrieking out and demand to be given a voice.

                They fear trading happiness for anger.  Feminists are angry.  If you ignore inequalities and pretend it away, you can live a somewhat happy life.  But once it’s pointed out to you, you can’t unsee it.  For instance, I thought the movie Wedding Crashers was hilarious the first time I saw it in the theaters in 2005.  I even purchased it on DVD.  Recently, I watched it on TBS or some other channel that randomly shows movies, and was appalled at how glaringly sexist the movie was, toxic masculinity in its glory from start to finish.  I could write a paper on it, as a matter of fact.

                Once my eyes were opened to such things, I ceased finding them funny or enjoying them.  Most people don’t want that to happen.  If ignorance is bliss, they’d choose it every single time.  The happiest times in our lives are when we existed in our own little bubbles.  1994 was a happy year for me.  Thousands of miles away, on the other side of the globe, the Tutsis were being brutally slaughtered in Rwanda.  I hadn’t the slightest clue.  I’m not sure I even knew about the country of Rwanda back then, but you can rest assured I wouldn’t have been happy had I known.  It was better not to know.

                Feminism isn’t just an ideal, it’s a burden.  We must explain our position constantly, and often to no avail.  You can tell a balding white man in his sixties a hundred times that equality isn’t a pie, women getting more doesn’t mean he’s getting less, he’ll persist in seeing it that way.  Women with traditional values will continue to bash us masculine feminists attempting to take away the one thing they’re good at, motherhood.  You can explain to them that feminists value mothers, but they won’t listen.  If their husbands are threatened by the notion of feminism, they can’t be one.  They could lose everything by hearing us.  Unless their husband leaves them for a younger woman, or gets sent to jail, or the hundreds of possibilities that leave them fending for themselves and their children without the protection of a man.  Then they’ll see the light and embrace feminism, and feminism will always, without fail, embrace them back. 

                The current state of things shall pass.  Each feminist push brings us closer to equality.  We’ve come so far in just a hundred years, and we still have further to go.  Things will settle down.  The #metoo movement will stabilize and we’ll find our equilibrium, a new normal.  It’s already beginning to happen.  We have more women running for positions in government than ever before, so things have changed.  We’re not there yet.  This will calm down, we will be content again, until the next push, maybe not even during our lifetimes.  But society is changing, women are being heard for the first time, and the pain is worth it.  Change always hurts. 

                I can only hope that at the end of this current phase, the word “feminism” will no longer be a bad one.