Friday Feminism: “We need feminism because … Equality for Women is Progress for All”

I wrote this for the next edition of Nucleus, UNE's student newspaper - it should be out sometime this week, but this is what I came up with, anyway.

Because I'm out of practice with my writing, it took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to say. I didn't want to whine about all the things that are wrong, although technically I have pointed them out anyway, in this list. I also stole from the blog a little, but nobody reading it at uni is going to know that, unless you tell them.

Here is what I wrote:


March 8^th was International Women’s Day. The official United Nations theme for 2014 is ‘Equality for Women is Progress for All’. For me, that means calling myself a feminist, and believing in feminist causes. 
 

When I call myself a feminist, this is what I mean: I'm 28 and unmarried, free to use birth control, believe in a woman's right to choose, am pursuing further education, work to support myself, spend my money how I please, spend my time doing things I enjoy (some of which have no conceivable contribution to society), have actively involved myself in contributing to society, have various friendship circles, have developed my own politics and life philosophy. I make big and small decisions based on what I want my life to look like. I do all these things wearing what I want. I encourage others to do the same, and I'm aware that as a white, middle class, educated woman, I am incredibly fortunate and privileged compared with many others in the world. I am knowingly lucky, and try my best to make the most of all this opportunity. I do my best to exercise compassion and care for others, regardless of our similarities or our differences, but I reserve the right to fail at these lofty aspirations occasionally.

I believe I deserve to walk in the world feeling safe, and heard, and respected. I believe every human deserves that right. I believe women and men should be equal, although equality may not look the way we think it does. In the world we all inhabit, sometimes we are equal, and sometimes we aren't.

If any of this list applies to you (particularly the last part about women and men being equal), well then, you're probably a feminist too. Oops. Feminism: it’s not just for girls.

So now I’ve established that all of us are feminists I assume the rest of my article basically writes itself. I am a privileged woman and I can only really speak for myself, but I do say this – the sooner that women and men are equal in all the ways, the happier the world shall be. And that’s this month’s theme, right? Happiness.

For the sake of a theme of happiness, I shall offer up some ideas about how awesome all the things might be for all the people in an equal world. It will be a numbered list, because that is something that makes me happy.

1.       The Celebration of Everything – Girls could play football in the mud and enjoy a spot of sewing pink dresses to wear. Boys could play house and have a thing for big trucks. Women could be strong and tough and cry in public. Men could confess their insecurities to their friends and make tough decisions under pressure. A person wouldn’t even have to call themselves a man or a woman if they didn’t want, and no-one would find that a threat. The thing that makes humans amazing is the many discrepancies. In an equal world, we would allow all those parts to exist. Heck, we would celebrate all those different parts of a person.

2.       Strengths and weaknesses would be re-defined, so that anyone could be a hero. So that emotional was no longer equal to feminine and logical was no longer equal to masculine. So that being emotional did not cancel out your stakes in the fight, but neither would logical responses make you unfeeling.

3.       Everyone would be a breadwinner and a stay-at-homer. And neither one would be worth more than the other according to the law, according to society or according to ourselves.

4.       An hour of a woman’s work would be equal to an hour of a man’s work.

5.       Everyone would walk safe in the world– women would not be targeted for attacks of a sexual nature, men would not be targeted for attacks showcasing a warped sense of ‘asserting masculinity’. Nobody would be attacked because they didn’t look or ‘act’ like a man or a woman. The makers of laws would show the same level of motivation in addressing victims of domestic violence as addressing victims of king hits.

6.       No would always mean no, and yes would always mean yes, and there would be no alcohol/attire/attitude-based excuses for misreading the simple fact of the matter.

7.       Nobody would ever be excused from unacceptable behaviour because of ‘biology’. Seriously, how is this still a thing? “Boys will be boys” should not equate to prevalent rape culture in male-dominated sports. “Throwing like a girl” should not equal with weakness, or second-best, or second-class.

8.       Bodies would be off-limits as a site of demonstrating power – women would make decisions about their bodies in real and meaningful ways. Laws would not be written removing women from their reproductive rights. No-one would die having needed to break a law just to make a personal decision.

9.       Anyone who was brave enough to put their hand up to run the world or the country or the state or the city or the business or the department or the meeting should be able to do it based on merit, and not on any other factor.

10.   Amazing popular culture that actually lead by example, teaching girls, boys, women, men and everyone else that their heart and mind are cherished beyond any physical characteristics. I believe this to be the biggest wish of them all…

You see, equality for women can be progress for all – a natural extension of this epic wish list is that any person who has been victimised or devalued or disempowered would step out of the margins into this same world and be equal. Homophobia and transphobia and racism and classism and any ism you care to name, gone the way of sexism. Progress! That’s what I believe feminism to be working for.

While we feminists are humans, and bound to get things wrong sometimes, just like everyone else, we have heart and passion and courage, too. The world, and women, need feminism, for the sake and passionate pursuit of equality.

 

secret: creative brain fry, or, the fine art of pottering

i don't know about you folks, but when i have a lot of things on my plate (not literally, although i do love a good full plate of thanksgiving dinner) my creative will to live just disappears out the window.

when i finally do have a night off, and i have to say i haven't had one in a while, i need some decompression time, in the form of pottering. i thought i'd share the sorts of things that happen during a pottering session in my lovely (chaotic) space.

music debrief:

i've had a few "must listens" floating about lately on my ever-expanding list of things to listen to. thanks to a music-loving friend with whom i share many great favourites, i was reminded that a certain amount of time has passed since i'd listened to some of my all-time bestest favourites, namely Radiohead and Elliott Smith. I'm really digging this particular track from Elliott:



and OK Computer reminiscence (let's face it: Radiohead in general) lead me right to this beautiful thing that i once was able to play on piano, harder than you'd imagine.



i also have quite a lot of live footage to watch from my all time favourite thing i've found on YouTube so far, tiny desk concerts via NPR. crazy into The National at the moment, and so this show has pretty much given me the feeling where the world opens up and you fall in love, right down to your little toe.



apologies for the music-heavy sharing, but i just can't get enough of this at the moment. so of course, it's time to make my november Maude the Mazda Mix (they are famous, but only in very tight circles of maybe 2 people, one of which is me... the other is one of my brothers, whichever one is handy).

YouTube giggles

my YouTube dirty pleasure is interviews on ellen, mostly when it's ryan gosling. i recommend you look that up, the one in onesies in particular.

besides this, i also like to watch standup comedy from such greats as dylan moran and louis ck.





Pretty things

i am a bowerbird when it comes to pretty things. sometimes, when i'm pottering, i like to arrange my pretty stuff that i own into aesthetically pleasing combinations.

all of the favourites, but of particular note is the sweet 'hello' necklace from the awesome anna at The Eclective, the sweet and special 'imaginary lovers' zine from deerface, and my granny's old copy of Alice in Wonderland

sometimes, i like to just sit in my chair and rifle through books i haven't actually read yet, looking forward to having time to read them. 

this weekend just passed i had a great score from a book stall at the local steiner school's spring fair, and the illustrations are so much lovelier than disney characters. don't get me wrong, i love the disney classics, i'm just a bit bored of what disney thinks people look like.

Writing notes and letters, and finding old things I wrote once

i found this recently. a thing i scrawled into the back of a notebook long ago, when i still lived in melbourne and longed to escape whatever it was at that point that held me there:

i have a fantasy about swimming in an open air pool at night time in summer. this fantasy is so tangible to me that i wonder if it may in fact have happened once, a dormant memory of sliding into a pool the temperature of my warm arms, the weightlessness of my previously cumbersome body, sounds echoing off the water.
surely it has happened, at one time, to somebody; how else could we know how it feels to swim at night? the cocoon of water closing over and into my ears, the smell, or imagined smell, of warm jasmine blowing overhead all through Brunswick.
i can hear my own gasping breath as i pull to the surface each 4th stroke, and i feel my heart hammering. why must my words end here? for suddenly, the warm summer night is lost to the absence that is you my dear, and all i remember is floating, face down, with night city noises filtering through the pool water.

i write postcards and letters to the friends of far away that i am missing lots lately, perhaps because i get to see them again soon.


these are the things i do o a quiet quiet Monday night. and find new artists to fall in love with, again on YouTube (such a magical place).

i leave you with a beautiful tattooed man whom i shall perhaps one day meet and marry.

#30daychallenge day 19: disrespecting your parents

So here's some thoughts more on generational issues than on parents in particular; could mean coworkers, older family friends, aunts and uncles, grandparents ... relationships. Tricky.

I don't think it's news to anybody that close relationships operate a lot better when everyone respects each other. It leaves room to disagree, without things getting ugly.

I think it's important to note that in the case of adult relationships, the respect thing has to go both ways. It's interesting, to come back to your hometown as an adult and have to renegotiate that particular relationship. Once you factor in the generation gap, there are plenty of negotiations to be made; a balance between support and independence, the push and pull of meeting expectations and being free of them, the space to pursue whichever path your life is taking that particular week and the confidence to make decisions of your own.

It has been interesting for me to get into this analysis of Generation Y for one of my assignments; there was certainly the heartening discovery (or I should perhaps call it a reassurance) that it is typical of our generation to lack the financial capital to purchase a house at the earlier age that our parents did; that we pursue further education and career changes constantly throughout our lives; that different world events have moulded our perceptions of ourselves, our peers, our parents, our lives, our family. While our families watch our lives unfold, chances are there's going to be a disconnect between those living this stage of life and those of a different generation who are watching. There's just not a lot of point saying "by the time I was your age I had this and had done this and this", because really, it's just not that relevant anymore. Nor are we, the Generation Y (oldest of us in our early 30s, youngest of us just 13) particularly fond of hearing it. We're not failures for doing things differently.

A feeling of disrespect might often be as simple as miscommunication, but for Gen Y where communication is everything, this probably has a significance to us that it may not have had to our parents and friends when they were at our age. We are social media kids, and so we are used to having a voice. It's less and less the case that children are meant to be seen and not heard. For instance, I use my 'voice' loudly, on a daily basis, and I expect to be listened to. The earlier generations can grumble about how it used to be, or they can realise that time has passed and things are done differently, and marvel at how much people like me who are writing are willing to share with them.


I mentioned in this post that one of my highs of this year was getting to know my parents and be friends with them, and it's certainly true. It's always a bit weird to sort out how everything should work when you still want them to make you feel better when you've had a bad day, but you also don't want them to know all the details of your life (and they probably have a point where some things might become Too Much Information). I like to think I've got it figured out, so far, for now.

To lighten your mood and leave on a sweet note, I also like to use 'kids these days', ironically or otherwise. And to completely embrace my inner Gen Y, here are some more hipster cats. I know you love them, even if you're too cool to say so.

#30daychallenge day 5: a time you thought about ending your own life

and BAM! with the heavy.

i've never thought of actually ending my own life, to be fair. i've been through the parts where i didn't give myself much value, i've been depressed & a bit lost, but to put an end to things is something which my brain refuses to process. i'm not sure why, perhaps because i've always had a little bit of curiosity about what tomorrow might bring, even if today, yesterday and the last 6 months has been a grey monotonous blur of 'ugh'. not suicidal by nature, me.

just because i would never do it myself doesn't mean i don't understand why someone would. i can only feel grateful that i don't suffer from depression to the extent where i honestly cannot see any other way out.

the worst of all of it for me was post-uni, pre-Canada. at the time, it wasn't so dramatic as all that; i just couldn't quite see the point of what i was doing with my life, but also frustrated because i'd made the decisions that had put me there. i lacked the motivation to change my situation up until the point where i took 2 weeks leave from work and had a bolt of lightning hit in the form of a 'i gotta get the hell out of here' realisation.

i'm not sure why i was so unhappy, and honestly it may not have been the situation so much as the repercussions of the past few years involving moving out of home, parents separating, ex-boyfriend with mental illness (very manipulative, very clever about it), going from being in the top percentiles of my highschool classes to just another essay in a pile at university of melbourne, being in a relationship with somebody who seemed to feel that artistic disillusionment equated with one's value as a person... i don't think all these feelings were necessary unique to the age i was, but i've found that not many people will come out with it and admit they're depressed. i certainly didn't- i couldn't call it that til i knew otherwise.

i'm so, so glad that i dragged myself out of melbourne and that awful mental state to the green green grasses of Canada - whistler, specifically. little by little, i began to enjoy my new life, once i moved past the sense of it being an extended holiday. people will call it that, but i was there for just shy of 3 years and it was not a holiday, it was my life. and it was good!

i realised that something huge had changed (very quietly) when i learned to snowboard and actually felt the adrenaline rush that goes with fearing for your life: at the top of my first blue run (for those playing at home, i refer to the Saddle on whistler) i thought i might die, and i didn't want to.

that's how i knew the worst of it was over.

the other thing i actually learned as i processed this realisation was the fact that being depressed is not equal to failure, or even failing. for someone like me, so capable of the insane happiness that a sunny day, a jug of beer and your bestest friends can bring, there must also be darker days as a balance. and that's what makes the sunny days so wonderful.

so no, there has not been a time when i thought about ending my own life. but there's definitely been a touch of darkness in some of my many days, and what i want to say to anyone pushing themselves through that same muddy puddle is it's ok to sit in a mud a while, but not forever. if i can push for anything in this post, it's to acknowledge that we all deal with depression at some point, and it's got to be easier to talk about this sort of thing than it currently is.

Visit Beyond Blue if you're depressed or think that a loved one might be- it's a place to start. I've also found this nice page by elephant journal to be helpful.