Last night I ventured over to Electric Venom, on the recommendation of Alas, A Blog, to read Kate's essay on What Do Women Want?
It is, as she says, an intensely personal essay. Hers is a full life, brimming over, even. She writes clearly and insightfully about balancing the needs and desires of her children and her husband. She has set her cap for them, and for herself as one of them. And she is, as she told her daughter when asked, "incredibly tired."
Truly caring for others is a wearing business. Placing their needs on a level with one's own, or, when rock meets hard place, above one's own, is the very definition of virtue, the highest pinnacle of human spiritual development before one actually joins the Elect, in most Western religious teaching. And yet, somehow, when some women's lives attain this level of caring, it's seen and spoken of as no more than they should be doing in order to honour the choices they made. "You chose this when you married that man. You chose this when you had that baby. You chose this when you took that job." As though the choices themselves were somehow extraordinary, as though living and breathing in the world normally means being alone and unfettered.
I mention this not because it's any great insight, but because an initial state of isolated independence seems to be tacitly assumed in diatribes on the so-far results of the feminist movement. "Well, you wanted it all, you Women," opines the reactionary, "You wanted careers and your homes and your families, and now you have it. Well, this is what it's like, and you should have known it when you made your choices, so deal!" This assessment of feminist goals, for some reason, keeps cropping up whenever a woman lets on that her daily life is a bit overwhelming at times.
This statement treats women's choices as self-contained, limited in number and scope, each one discrete and its consequences easily foreseen and expressable in neat, bulleted lists. I, a Woman, choose to have a Career. The results of this choice will be A, B, C. I, a Woman, also choose to have a Family. The results of this choice will be D, E, F. I, a Woman, make note that result D will at times conflict with result A. I will choose in that event to prioritize A over D, unless F needs a diaper change.
Implicit, too, in this statement is the idea that any conflicts which arise are wholly the responsibility of the woman who has chosen job and family. That job and family are accessories rather than essentials. It implies her choices are utterly isolated from those made by her partner, her children, her co-workers. As though cooperating with others is optional. As though healthy people often choose to live in hermitic isolation and thus a choice to live in the world is entirely discretionary.
And that if things get a bit messy, if choices conflict, it's because she made the wrong ones. If there's too much on her plate, it's not because the waiter keeps coming round, but because she lingered too long at the smorgasbord.
"Men don't have these problems," says the reactionary. Frankly, any man who has a job and a family and thinks these problems are not his, has resolved them by delegating them to his wife.
"Having it all", so far from being an expressed goal of feminism, is nothing of the sort. It was an advertising slogan pinned to the coattails of the movement, intended to sell products. These products were marketed as solutions to time and energy conflicts expressed as uniquely women's—the same conflicts which arise inevitably whenever one, woman or man, seeks to live one's life so that the needs and desires of others are on par with, or above, one's own.
The true goal of feminism was and is not "having it all", but "sharing it all". Sharing the responsibilities and rewards of being part of a family, a community, not in terms of rigidly defined areas of opportunity, but in terms of the needs, desires and abilities of each individual member. So that instead of one family member being always expected to subsume her own needs to those of the group, all members are expected to take turns.
It's less tiring that way, and more fun.
11 Comments
Yes, yes, yes! You have said it perfectly.
Thank you.
:-)
There’s been a lot of cant written about feminism as a theory, and about women themselves, in the last few years, much of which seems to spring from a collective sense of injured innocence as anything else. And the reaction in the comments to your essay kind of brought that into focus for me.
Say, about those Polar Bears– I didn’t know they were exported. If they’re the same beers from the same micro.
fantastic analysis. bravo.
Thank you, m’am!
I remember my father telling me when I was small “Your a woman that means you will have to work twice as hard for half the reward if you don’t like it do something about it” and in my mind that is the way it should be I wouldnt want things handed to me how would I know I had earned it and deserved. of course anyone who knows me knows I dont think its worth doing unless its difficult and as for the redneck who thinks that american woman have a chip on their shoulder i would hate to carry his that says as a man he has a right to require that woman don’t ask for equal treatment in the home he has a right to a submissive woman child who will obey his whims raise his children and allow him to cavort around doing whatever he pleases never really growing up. Ugh I have to say being raised mainly by my father who in my mind is the definition of a true man (able to intelligently converse about womens issues gay rights and the difference of anti war but pro troops and the need to keep prayer out of schools while simultaniously tearing apart and rebuilding a harley engine with both eyes closed and a beer in hand) I dunno if he was always so sensitive to womens issues or if it happened when he realized he was having a baby girl but he taught me chivalry and how to tell a good man from a dud. and that guy is a dud definitly. I never understood how a woman could ever find herself attracted to someone who ultimatly thinks she is inferior to him. its a sad sad thing
(p.s. maybe men are on the defensive because they have realized that as women at times we do make better “men” genetically we are better fighter pilots better welders and i myself can out spit most of the guys I know and my dirty jokes are well known )
I think a lot of men (and women) are defensive because they are comfortable with the status quo, warts and all, and because they are uncomfortable with the idea of change.
They know how this game works, even if it’s not to their advantage. The new game, where everyone really is created equal, would reward ability rather than genetics. This is not to say that reactionaries are not possessed of abilities or talents, but that they are not comfortable with the idea of depending wholly on them to maintain social or professional positions which they view as being “naturally” theirs.
Maybe women are not the only people who have problems. Maybe men have problems also. Maybe sometimes women are misstreated by women. Maybe sometimes being a man is harder than being a woman. Maybe. But I wouldn’t want you to take those things into consideration. You are doing so good at talking about your own problems.
Oh, dear. I’ve goaded someone’s prize pig. Fud dud, I’m glad you wouldn’t want me to take those things into consideration. No doubt you had reached the same conclusion as I– those things you mention, being sweeping generalizations on marginally-related subjects, have no place in this essay and would only serve to dilute the central theme and turn a tight piece into an incoherant mish-mash.
Having it all, vs. Sharing it all
Tom pointed out Venomous Kate’s rant on what women want today. It’s a few months old, but it’s new to…
I think “having it all” is an exhausting and dangerous myth – I am a clinical psychologist and see the damage it wreaks on a daily basis. Guilt, low self-esteem, sense of failure and anxiety tend to accompany it. I do not now (having had a family of my own) believe it is possible to “have it all” – you can have some of it some of the time and this involves complex and messy trade-offs and hard choice that in many cases still fall onto the shoulders of women to make. The nature of work and our definition of success needs to change and we all need to individually question our own definition of achievement and what our valued life looks like. We are bombarded by what I call lifestyle pornography that sells to us an unattainable image of what the successful woman looks like and it is time we rejected it, for something more real and sustainable.
Thanks for your thoughts, Sam. I wholly agree with your assessment of the damage done by “lifestyle pr0n”, and the constant pressure to prove one is a success by the amount of glittery bits one can display.
I’ve gotten, finally, a pretty good idea of what my “valued life” looks like. For some reason, it doesn’t seem to involve a great deal of overtime.