I've been feeling listless for the last couple of days, so what better than a listy kind of diary?
I don't remember a time when I wouldn't have called myself feminist -- I have never been in the "I'm not a feminist, but-" camp. But it's true that the way I think about feminism has changed. As a teenager, I used to be all for equal opportunities in the military. But now I just want an end to militaries.
Anyway. On with the laundry list.
I'm feminist
- because I remember that N.Z. only celebrated a centenary of women's suffrage in 1993.
- because I was told as a student that "In this class I will use the male pronoun because there are no women composers"
- because I did my honours year two years later on an unknown woman composer who lived in Canterbury (and boy was she a warmonger. Yech.)
- because I like having been able to go to university.
- because I was able to get free helpful advice when I had a pregnancy scare
- because legal contraceptives are a fine thing
- because I was taught in a medieval history seminar that in England, soon after the Black Death, manorial records showed that women agricultural labourers earned approximately two-thirds the wages of male agricultural labourers
- because I know that in Michigan (the State where I lived for a while), women earn 67 cents on the male dollar.
- because as a kid I read about the Pankhursts' as a kid -- reading about Emmeline Pankhurst's legendary speeches in Hyde Park, about the W.S.P.U about Christobel Pankhurst's flight to Paris, about the hunger strikes and the Cat and Mouse Act, and Sylvia Pankhurst, raising hell in the East End and pissing off her family bigtime.
- because 2/3 of the 860 million illiterate people in the world are women
- because a woman's place is in her union
- because of my Mum and my Dad
- because lots of women are still afraid to got out for a walk at night by themselves
- because in Canada, "When the definition of pregnancy-related mortality is widened to include homicide, the leading cause of death during pregnancy or within one year after delivery is homicide (20% of pregnancy-related deaths)". (citation here, go to reference 38)
- because of the feminisation and racialisation of poverty around the world.
- because of an estimated 60 million missing women
- because I'm glad to live in a time and place where coathangers are for hanging your coat on.
- because sexism and racism are inextricably linked
- because this is not what women's liberation looks like
- because this list could just go on and on
So, why are you a feminist?