Unfriendly Reminder
This is a LOUD and RUDE REMINDER
Women who embrace traditional gender roles, women who want to be (and are) mothers and homemakers and caregivers and even damsels in distress, even fictional ones, are as VALID AND IMPORTANT AS THOSE WHO DO NOT.
PEOPLE WHO DO NOT SUPPORT THIS MESSAGE CANNOT CALL THEMSELVES FEMINISTS
I really don’t know very many feminists who say this. I doubt many people know many feminists who do. Do you? I mean… this isn’t a trick question. I’m sure you can find them. But there really aren’t many and pretty much none of them are particularly prominent in actual feminism.
What you will find lots of feminists saying is that society should be structured to make traditional gender roles a choice instead of a rule, law, or obligation such that all women are forced into those conventional roles and punished socially, economically, educationally, or legally for failing to fit into them.
Kind of a big difference, no?
It’s kind of like the difference between “we should embrace women in kink who like to be tied up and beaten, humiliated, and treated worse than livestock in a 24/7 M/S relationship,” which we should all be willing to get behind as long as it’s consensual, respectful, observes negotiated boundaries, and is what they actually want… and saying “yeah, that’s how all women should be treated, it’s how the law should let us treat them, and if they complain about it or resist society should band together to stake them out to die they way fundamentalists in Afganistan and Alabama think should happen.
So….
Again, no need to be rude to feminists at all. Because all but a really fringy minority agree with you completely. Long as you agree no woman should be forced into that against her will.
Little side note here: I go on about feminism not so much because I want to “stand up for the little ladies.” Because, frankly, women have been doing a pretty good job of standing up for themselves.
Instead it’s important never to forget how much society demands that men give up to preserve patriarchy. Because you know who had a “perfect” patriarchal life? Tony Soprano. How’d that work out for that shitty little neurotic asshole?
And you know that stupid song in Sound of Music? Where a boy only a year older than his sweetheart has to pledge to “take care of” her even though the poor little bastard is so immature he can’t even tell if joining the fucking Hitler Youth is a bad idea? Yeah. How’d that work for him either?
Feminism, it’s not just for women. Gender roles, they’re not just a choice for women either.
