Kate wrote:
> Joni:
> "I am absolutely not a feminist. I prefer the company of men to women,
> always have. And I'm constantly lumped in with women with whom I don't
> belong."
>
> <<Sigh. Damn her hide anyway.
> Obviously she doesn't know what the dictionary definition of a
> "feminist" is. And for a woman of her intelligence, I am surprised, I
> admit it! And frankly, being a feminist, or not, has dick-all to do with
> whether you prefer the company of men over the company of women.>>
***
Kate, I am always interested in a discussion on feminism and who claims to
be one, and who does not, why and why not. A few years ago, I graduated
with a degree in Women's Studies/English at York University in Toronto. I
heard and saw and felt first and second and sometimes third hand, many
interpretations of the word 'feminist' . For each person who proclaimed they
were a feminist, the word took on a new meaning, for them, and how it fit
into their scheme of things. I learned that some "feminists" choose not to
wear the "F" word on their political sleeve.
I knew a woman who, when she first attended York, walked around campus
flying her feminist banner high...because she thought it was a good thing,
an important thing. She discovered she had a voice and be damned if she
wasnt going to use it. She wasnt going to stifle her politics anymore just
because someone didnt like it . What mattered was all the things that
feminism meant to her.
Feminist politics. Feminism. Feminist. That dirty word. Yea, she knew all
about it. She had been on the receiving end of oppression and general
disrespect just for being a female and she wasnt going to take it anymore.
She told everyone around her. Fight for the cause.
She spoke out, ranted, raved, talked, marched and fell into a life of
activism. Every December 6th, she went into Vari Hall and lit a candle to
remember. She remembered along with hundreds of thousands of other women
that you risk staring down the barrel of a gun if you wear feminism on your
sleeve.
As time went on, new words began to shape her being. She became all too
familiar with words, a whole horde of alternative words for
"feminist".....she felt the sting of backlash in the form of gay bashing and
racism and misogyny and patriarchy and and "everything else that wasnt right
wing" bashing and as each year went on, she became a little more afraid of
standing up for what she believed in. She learned the meaning of the word
fear. She feared for her own safety and for the safety of her sisters as
well as her brothers, for she saw they fell into the fox holes of oppression
along side her.
Cynicism started to take over and she looked at herself in the mirror one
day and saw someone she didnt recognize. She was bent and shaped into a
state of compliance because of all the every day resistance to the very
things she believed in.
What happened? She learned pretty damned quickly one day in a hallway,
trapped by a stalker from one of her classes, that if she says she is a
feminist , she'll be sorry, big time. She learned the hard way that that she
best not open her mouth because if she does, one day, the wrong person is
going to hear her and make her pay.
Feminist. If she says shes a feminist, she knows all about the judgemental
waves of resistance that word creates. She knows she may very well get
stuffed into the box of everyone else's definition of what she means by
that. Instead of mouthing off that she is a feminist, she decided to
"live" into feminism in her every day way. The personal is political. So she
was told. It didnt take her long to realize that it was a lot safer and more
comfortable and less confrontational to deny her feminist politics
outwardly.
Hopefully she knows she made a difference. Her colleagues and professors
still remember her to this day. Her words live on in a collection of stories
published by the york university womens collective which gave a channel to
her voice. Silenced today, yea, maybe...however, her words live on forever
in that book.
Mags, who is not a feminist.
>
>
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
_~O
/ /\_,
___/\
/_
-----------------------------------------
