part two: the G word

Or, "In Which Heidi Rants Aimlessly about Embracing the Real Feminine."

Gender, girls, girliness. Pink shit, prissy princesses, Disney hyperfeminization, Barbie & Bratz, dolls & dresses, Gardisil & sex education. I've been swirling my thoughts about gender around in my brain for a couple of days in preperation for Blog for Gender Liberation Day.

I'm coming up with more questions than answers. My initial thought was about the paradox in my own beliefs... Wicca is so gendered, all about Mr. High Priest does this, Mz. High Priestess does that, perfect balance, blah blah blah. I reject and buy into it all at once. The dual nature of the universe is so evident. Gender is everywhere in nature. The thing is, it can be so obviously oppressive. There's an overlapping that traditional thought leaves little room to explore. Things transition, they sway, they defy categorization sometimes. A little expansion in our approach to gender would be such a positive thing.

Then I daydreamed about my superfical femininity in the shower. I am very girly compared to some. I adore long skirts, cute hair, getting flowers, and I am a silly, flirty personality most of the time. I revel in my body hair, though, and I only wear make-up twice or three times a year. I have series of artwork about how awesome my period and the moon are. I think of myself as celebrating a human/mammal femaleness. Soft round bloody milky hairy womanness. When I write that I'm so aware some people will be put off. Why?

The bulk of my musings are about being a woman, raising a daughter, in this time and place. Murky waters there, let me tell you. I want so much to allow her to find her own expression of girl-ness. At the same time, I find it exhausting to think about policing her environment. I have stacks of princess movies, that I loved as a kid, and of course I want to share them with her. I think dolls are mostly OK, but scantlity clad sexed up things will be banished.

The doll thing... I think dolls are wonderful. I can't think of anything more positive than nurturing to teach any child. I used to think I'd shy away from letting my daughter have dolls. I didn't want her to learn that her only worth as a woman is her potential to be a mother. Now that I am a mom in practice and not theory, I can't think of a more important set of skills to have. Learning to nurture and empathize and comfort are so important. It's not that girls need to be exposed to this less, it's that boys need it more.

I feel like I've written poorly organized essays instead of blogposts all day. Indulgent and weird? Back to the usual mommy blog tomorrow. Er.

part one: the F word

The past several years I’ve had roughly 1,572 encounters with women, usually younger than I am, who have said/written/expressed, “I’m not a feminist.” After I hear that, my blood pressure shoots up and my voice gets screechy and I get dizzy and have to deep breathing because I am so mad I want/need to scream. I can’t decide if I want to scream at this girl/woman or at the rest of the world. I can’t figure out how a person comes to that conclusion. Not too long ago I read a reference to feminists defined as women who hate p0rnography. What? Every time I hear a girl say that I think of Tinkerbell (clap your hands. Say you do believe in fairies feminists)and some hopeful piece of me wants to die in a tiny way.

When my senses return and I find a zen, reflective place and listen to these young women, it seems that we have a youth culture who have bought the “feminazi” paradigm hook, line, and sinker. It is not cool or sexy or normal to be feminist. Feminists hate men. They hate other women too if they are wearing too little clothing, or do not share in the angry orgy of man hating. I am a naïve thing, because I really thought no one bought that backlash bullshit- least of all girls brought up in this generation. I thought each daughter would be a stronger and more powerful woman than her mother. I thought our moms and dads worked way too hard for us to be where we are now. I am really angry on their behalf that girls are so ungrateful and unwilling to keep fighting/writing/loving/screaming/blogging for our own power. We should be dancin' and hollerin’ with joy that we have the luxury of taking feminism for granted.

The root of the issue, and arguably every conflict I can think of, is binary oppositional thinking. We have got, as a culture, to embrace holistic and inclusive thought. Feminism is a fluid, living ideal. The whole point was to eradicate strictures about women’s roles but so many people are buying into new ones. Feminists can be angry and joyful, beautiful and strong, sexy and intelligent, gay and straight and bi and transgendered, and I could keep going but listen: a feminist is a girl, woman, boy, man, human thinking being who does not believe that any gender is inferior to any other gender or that one’s sex at birth or by choice can determine the path of her/his life.

Arguing over semantics is ridiculous and divisive. Feminism is, by its essential nature, not a single-definition thing. And why should it be? Celebrate your own feminist spirit today. Delight in the anima and do something that makes you feel beautiful, or grab a marker and make an activist T-shirt. Write a letter to your Congressperson or refuse to do the dishes unless your brother/dad/husband does the ironing. Do some little thing. My feminism today is gratitude for a free and expansive outlet for my thoughts, and the promise of a warm, quiet bath with my nursling daughter.

gender liberation

I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Linkie here, too, if you play.

free, natural breast enhancement

I forgot my pump. Ergo, I look like a p0rn star and feel like the Hoover Dam. I need to learn to hand express better. We need a HazMat team in the bathroom after my squirty attempt to fix myself, since we all know breastmilk is biohazardous and complicated to deal with.

blog for choice

I'm late, but:



Why?

Because it never occured to me to be anything but pro-choice. As I matured into a sexual creature as a girl, it just became a passion that this new world of sex would be my own to explore freely and hungrily and curiously. The responsibility inherent in this exploration was a given, and this beautiful world of new textures, tastes, smells, sights, and sounds was about beauty, and GodGoddess and love, and wasn't about motherhood.

Because the most rewarding job I ever had was at a women's health clinic, and the women I met there changed me, and enriched my understanding of the unending complexity that is the life and body and soul of a woman. Because every woman I met who needed to end a pregnancy had
her own reasons, and her own particular bravery about her choice. Because the girls I met who needed many more years of childhood kept me from sleep nights on end and it made me feel like the most important thing I could be doing, ever, was to be a calm and gentle voice on the telephone when they called, or a supportive smile when we met.

Because every woman who bears a child should be allowed to do so as purposefully, with as much joy and excitement and anticipation as I did.

Because every being conceived deserves respect and a conscious and careful consideration of the best choices for that potential life.

Because I am a woman and I demand absolute, informed power where my body is concerned. I will make love or not, conceive or not, according to my own purpose. I will decide what kind of medical care I need, and determine when I do and do not need medical care.

Because the prevaling cultural attitude that doctors and legislators can make a better decision than I can about when to end a pregnancy and how to bring one to fruition is a lie that hurts all human beings.