I am a Female human being.
I have never doubted that. Truth
be told I am a feminist. That is to say
that I believe I have as much right to legal status, education, property
ownership and self-determined destiny as anyone. But more to the point, I am female not only
biologically and legally but internally.
I have never felt conflict between my biological gender and my true
self. There are those that do.
I believe that the mind and soul and heart of a person is
the place that the truth of gender lies.
I believe that no one has the right to an opinion regarding another
human beings gender identity. If someone
identifies as female, they are my sister.
And that is something worth rising up to defend. If someone identifies as
male, they are my brother and they too deserve to be defended, the
male of the species is noble and honorable and deserving of respect.
I know where I stand and who I am regarding gender. But that is not the entirety of the issue. There are aspects of gender that the world consistently
has an opinion about and those are not so easily ignored. As a woman I am relatively “normal” in the eyes
of the outside world. I appear to be a middle-aged,
privileged, educated, middle-class, suburban, white girl, monogamous and
heterosexual. “Nothing to see here
people, she conforms to the norm.”
Perhaps slightly odd politically (I am a Libertarian and have been since
I registered to vote at the age of 18).
Feminist of course, aren’t all American women?
But I do find conflict in that “norm”. Because I love dresses and I loved playing “mother”
and I found power in the stories of the women in my story books. And because there are parts of my nature that
I am discovering that do not fit how the world sees me, that do not fit the
expectations of an educated, feminist, female of my generation.
It is those conflicts that I need to explore and to
reconcile. Not to the outside world but
rather with my own identity. Because
somewhere along the way, I bought into the expectations and I am no longer
willing to reject my true self in order to comply, in order to avoid conflict.
You'd be surprised at how many women actively consider themselves not feminist. My sister tried to tell me last winter that she's not a feminist, that feminism is no longer needed because it's no longer relevant. Of course, it's a stance that comes from privilege and flat-out denial of what the world is like.
ReplyDeleteIf she thinks she should have the right to an education, legal status, the right to vote and own property then by definition, she is a feminist.
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