I realize that there has been a lot of meta and arguments that swelled up from a diarist-proclaimed "feminist" diary. My diary will not be meta. It won't call anyone out, and hopefully it won't insult anyone - if it does, please know up-front that that is not my intent.
This is a diary about feminism as perceived by a woman who would not consider herself a feminist.
I'll explain more over the fold.
The first time I thought seriously about myself in the context of feminism was following the Pie Wars. The whole incident has become fodder for one-liner snark, and I think that that's appropriate - but at the time that it occurred, it really ripped the scab off of a lot of emotions and perceived viewpoints. You can go to the link I provided above if you are blissfully ignorant of the history - but suffice it to say that many of the site's prominent and self-proclaimed feminists left Daily Kos as a result of the Pie Wars. To this day many of them have not returned, which is certainly their right.
I remember sitting back and thinking about the issues at the time. Personally, I wasn't offended by the Pie Fight advertisement. Seeing well-endowed women fight each other with cream pies doesn't really affect me in any sense. I'm neither horrified nor fascinated. I was, quite literally, completely indifferent. Yet women with voices that I respect here on Daily Kos were mightily offended - first by the ad itself, and then by the reaction to their outrage over the ad. Since I wasn't outraged in the first place, I wasn't outraged by the response. Yet I had to step back and think about whether or not these women had some point that I was missing. Should I be offended by the Pie Fight ad? As a degree-holding, income-earning, multi-tasking, engaged and capable working woman, was I missing something? Was I a feminist or wasn't I?
Honestly, I still don't have the answer to that question. Perhaps it's simply because I don't know what feminism is - is a feminist a person who reads feminists books and dedicates themselves to feminist causes? Is it like being a doctor, where you are either capable of doing surgery or you aren't? Or is it more like having a degree in Liberal Arts - where you know a lot about a lot of things but where your Liberal Arts degree may be fundamentally different and convey different skills than the person you graduated with who also has a Liberal Arts degree? In other words, I was trying to decide if my actions make me a feminist by example more so than any study of feminism or women's issues. Because if the criteria is the latter, I'm not a feminist. I haven't put in that kind of time an deffort.
Allow me to step back for a moment and share a story. I've told this story before, and it's particularly relevant to this diary. It's about my mother. She'll be 64 this year (sorry Mom!). She graduated from high school in 1961. She was a popular young woman and an excellent student, possessed of an independent streak that was unsupressable. Shortly after high school graduation, she eloped with her high school sweetheart (HUGE backstory to that but I'll skip it). She set about doing what young women of that time did - they were wives, established and maintained the household, started families, supported their husbands etc. She didn't go to college except to take a few classes here and there during their marriage. She had to work, however, for financial reasons, and she eventually took a job as a clerk typist in the typing pool at a Federal government agency. I came along in 1967 and she had to continue working. By 1969 (when I was 2), she and my natural father were on their way to divorce. By 1970 (at the latest) the divorce was final, and she was a single Mom to a toddler.
Needless to say, this was outside of the norm for the times. She repeatedly dealt with issues of not being able to get loans or credit - those types of things were reserved for men and she (presumably) suffered the effects of a very paternalistic culture. By 1971 she had married my Dad (stepdad, I guess, technically - though he's Dad to me). She wasn't particularly engaged with the menial job she had and one day, reading the 'Wanted' section of the newspaper, she saw and ad for an entry-level sales position with a budding technology company. At the bottom of the ad it said "No experience required - Women and Minorities strongly encouraged to apply". She did, and she got the job. When she left there in 1981 she was the Vice President for all Federal operations for what had become a Fortune 100 technology company. It was a big job and, more importantly, one that she earned. Many years later, she was invited to be an incorporating founder of another technology firm. As all the founding members assembled their resumes for the Articles of Incorporation the firm would submit, my mother saw Bachelor's degrees and Master's degrees and PhD's among the experience profiles of her fellow founding members. When it came time for her to provide her educational background, she simply put this:
Degree from the school of hard knocks.
I'm not making this up. I've never been prouder. In her early professional career years, she put up with A LOT of shit. Leers, propositions, promises of sales for "favors". Remember - These were days prior to harassment protection and all the legislation that would follow to secure freedom from abuse and freedom to advance on merit for women. I'm sure a lot of what she had to endure pissed her off to no end - yet she lived in her own time and things were the way they were. She persevered, and did so because she was, essentially, paving the way for me to be able to have my own choices without as much struggle and hassle. She hired and nurtured a lot of other women as well, though not exclusively. It was the talent she sought, not the gender. And when that talent was resident in a woman, so much the better. She did not fail - NOT ONCE - in her entire career to meet the expectations that were handed to her. She fought for her employees, was fair, and ensured that everyone had the opportunity to have fun as they achieved success. And while she did it for herself in many ways, she did it for me, too.
And so when I contemplate whether or not I am a "feminist", I am drawn to my mother's close personal example. To my knowledge, she never put herself forward as a feminist. I don't recall her ever reading feminist books or as having "feminist" as one of the words she would choose to describe herself. Yet she WAS a feminist, wasn't she? Because she saw the opportunity to not only enrich her own life (financially and experientially), but to enrich mine as well, with gilded chests full of choices. The path she walked opened doors for me and other of my contemporaries and those women who came after me. She filled us with the riches of choice.
To me, that is one of the highest forms of feminism. And I feel the responsibility of all that she endured in my daily life - the responsibility to conduct myself in a way that carries on her tradition of a successful, competent, capable and respectable woman, equal in every respect and every measurement (job level, income level, achievement level, etc.) to any of her male counterparts.
She is a feminist success story without ever characterizing herself as a feminist. I haven't quite lived up to her example, but I have time and I aspire.
The whole recent "feminist" diary that kicked off my contemplation and subsequent walk down Family History Avenue disturbed me in many respects, namely because I saw a self-proclaimed feminist calling out other prominent and visible women on Daily Kos for failing to 'serve the cause', for lack of a better description. And if you're familiar with the diary I'm hinting at (and won't link to - it's unnecessary to feed a flame war), don't get hung up on the diarist in question. This isn't about her, because she's not the only one I've seen admonish others for not being "feminist enough".
Some of the prominent female diarists here at Daily Kos were and have been essentially criticized (now and in the past, sometimes very respectfully and sometimes flagrantly disrespectfully) for not using their platform to advance feminism. Yet I would argue that they are there and speaking their mind about whatever they choose to write about is the very essence of the success of some of the goals of feminism. They choose to write about Valerie Plame. They choose to dedicate their efforts to complex political analysis and research. They choose. They serve no master, feminist or otherwise - they serve their choices and do so admirably. Another feminist success story. They are treated equally, as near as I can tell, and the fact of their gender never seems to enter the discussion until and unless they are called out by a small but vocal subset of feminists.
That's what my mother fought for - and just because she wouldn't, herself, apply a "feminist" label doesn't make her any less successful as a feminist.
I'd be grateful for any insight from the community. We have MANY bright and thoughtful feminist writers here (women who would identify themselves as "feminist") and I'm interested in their input as well as in the input from men and woman who do not as strongly identify themselves as such.