Let’s please be serious grown-ups: real feminists don’t depend on men. Real feminists earn a living, have money and means of their own.
If the movement had been serious about being serious then the idea could not have caught on that equal is how you feel. Or that how anyone feels about anything matters at all. Men know better. They look at numbers, and here is how the statistics are running years after women first started screaming and yelling and burning bras: We still earn 81 percent of what men do, and an act to make things more fair was blocked in Congress by Republicans. For anyone who doesn’t care to count, but understands traffic signals mixed with policy speculation, I think it’s safe to say that the day is near when a teenage girl will be forced to get a vaginal probe before she is issued a learner’s permit in the state of Virginia. And this is all because feminism has misread its mission of equality as something open to interpretation, as expressive and impressive, not absolute.
Don’t agree? Try this: smart is how you feel, pretty is how you feel, talented is how you feel — we are all beautiful geniuses. Feminism should not be inclusive, and like most terms that are meaningful, it should mean something. It should mean equality.
And there really is only one kind of equality — it precedes all the emotional hullabaloo — and it’s economic. If you can’t pay your own rent, you are not an adult. You are a dependent. But because feminism has always been about men — our relationships with them, our differences from them — as much or more than about money, it’s had few consistent tenets. Hemlines up, hemlines down, choice this, want that — once we get away from the scientific need for sustenance, it’s all gobbledygook.
I am all about questioning ‘choice feminism’ but among the criticisms I have with this piece by Elizabeth Wurtzel in The Atlantic:
Criticisms of the 1% and how they are sorting parenting and working and then using those as sweeping generalisations about all mothers? They’re not called the 1% for nothing, you know.
Any blanket statement you make about dependency removing your adulthood status says a lot about how you see the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the ill and even children, because they’re clearly these insignificant, not fully human members of our group that you can be reduced to if you are not a part of the market place. And this is a type of feminism, but it is one that absolutely serves the interests of the 1%.
There are some who will embrace Wurtzel’s explanation for the failures of feminism, but blaming mothers strikes me as suspiciously convenient for a misogynist society. And given Wurtzel is critical of ‘choice feminism’ you would think she might also be a little more sceptical of the myth of choice for mothers in American workplaces, because America is pretty much the last significant economy without paid maternity leave and it also has some of the least family-friendly work options.
I’m on board with the idea that the very rich have not much clue about how the rest of us do it all but I’m telling you that exploitation of people’s disadvantage does not stop even when very rich mothers work outside the home. A much longer game is being played here than current manifestations of the War on Women.
(The link to the article came via Tedra).
Critique of choice feminism assumes neoliberal forms of choice, accepting the basic forms of gendered inequality of work as reality principle. The idea that the ruling class wouldn’t be fucking with everyone else if it had more women in it is pure choice feminism. Isn’t it ironic, yeah I really do think.
So when she says:
“there really is only one kind of equality — it precedes all the emotional hullabaloo — and it’s economic.”
I want to scream SO WHERE IS THE PAY FOR CHILDCARE, HOUSEWORK AND OTHER FORMS OF HIGHLY GENDERED WORK?
excellent comment – I am routinely shocked by the debate occuring around the ideas and realities of feminism at the moment – the whole idea that unpaid work is just part of life and therefore ‘doesn’t count’ just floors me. I usually feel unable to articulate my thoughts very clearly in response to these opinion pieces and that is why I enjoy reading this blog so much.
@ Emily – Word. I’m consistently stunned to hear feminists critique choice feminism by elevating certain choices above others! How can they not see that they are, in fact, engaged in choice feminism when they do so, just in a different way? Resisting the idea that “all choices are feminist” is *not* saying “I believe myself authorized to say who is making a ‘real’ feminist choice and who is not”. The opposite is being engaged in the actual work of actual feminism – critiquing and attacking unequal structures that keep women second class citizens! Stop blaming women for the patriarchy and instead attack all the mechanisms of the kyriarchy that oppress people. Seriously! Having to explain this to “professional feminists” is mind-boggling to me. And have you guys noticed that in the English speaking world, the Wurtzel type feminists are the only ones whose voices are heard in public fora? The 1% loves to reproduce itself! It makes me so angry, the delusion, as others have commented, that women have “choices” at all, especially poor women. I’m not sure how deeply I believe in free will anyway, but clearly nobody can make a free choice without economic and social power/protection/privilege. That feels sort of like, duh, to me.
Moreover, as others have commented, why have this particular group of feminists in the public eye decided that the way for women to smash the patriarchy is by acting exactly like men, showing contempt for areas traditionally assigned to women, and embracing uncritically the workforce and capitalist ideologies? Maybe it’s because most of these women are American, which is being held in thrall by capitalism? I have no idea, but it is unfathomable to me why anyone would want to participate in a social justice movement that says that the primary dignity and worth of human being derives from a paycheck, and that no other form of existence (let alone labor!) has any value. Part of the general argument (moving away from Wurtzel for a moment) is that women have to stop holding up society, have to go on strike so to speak, or nothing will ever change. I have some sympathy for that perspective, although I don’t see, for example, dramatically dropping birth rates in some countries leading to elevated economic and social positions for women.
I think these particular feminists are in the public eye BECAUSE this is their take. It’s not because they are American – I know lots and lots of American feminists who have been critiquing this article now that it popped up. None of them get published like Wurtzel, though, we have to put out our own press & blogs.
It’s a bit of a bind isn’t it? Is she basically saying that if you’re stuck in a capitalist patriarchy the only way to change it is to capitulate to it, to gain your economic equality by casting aside everything else in life so we can all be economically independent working drones. That doesn’t seem like a solution to me.
So under the guise of economic equality in a captialist society, just how much money should we be paying women to have children? What does 10 months of biological nurturing equate too exactly?….. Oh wait….. Apparently nothing unless you are a surrogate mother…… In which case the gift of motherhood comes complete with a price tag…. So who’s more equal under that setting? Some would argue that surrogacy is a form of female power yet just as many argue that surrogacy is the result of women’s economic oppression. Equality… dependency…. economic remuneration…. Why does this society insist on viewing mothering as an act of unpaid love when every other form of childcare arrangements are recognized financially? The amount of women providing free care and support on a daily basis to those around them is simply staggering. The patriarchal subversion of women’s labor under the guise of ‘familial care’ continues unabated…….Buying into the concept that all that’s required for equality is an equal income is illogical. Equality needs to begin with the recognition of women’s needs, achievements and wishes in all spheres…. True equality must go beyond economics.
I’m going to throw out something that just occurred to me with the caveat that it might sound stupid in the morning… and it’s a bit academic too (disclosure: I’m a man with a good job and a currently-dependent partner but no kids).
Over on some of the other blogs I read there has been a general decrying of the marketization of human interactions that in the past have been about gift-giving, love and sharing success and so on, in the way that you might volunteer to help a neighbour if they’re about to go in for heart surgery, to name something that’s happened to me recently. I imagine there’s a whole load of this non-monetized “economy” going on between friendly parents.
So what I idly wonder is, when trying to price up the value of child-rearing, either one way, how much all that stuff is worth, or the other way, how it would be possible to denote the benefits of child-rearing in gift-giving/sharing rather than dollars, and if that notion is at all useful to the cause, when you combine it with the general sense of the OWS crowd that essentially the market has invaded too much of our lives and should be involved less, not more.
Like I say, a bit of a pie-in-the-sky point but it occurred to me so I put it out there.
Wow. WOW.
All this adult feminist crip can muster for Wurtzel is a giant “fuck you”.
“And this is all because feminism has misread its mission of equality…”
No. This is because people who don’t want equality have fought feminists tooth and nail against every tiny increment of progress they attempted to enact. If there’s one thing that really raises my hackles it’s people blaming feminism for stuff those who fight against feminism are responsible for.
I’ve been trying to put my finger on what bothers me about Wurtzel’s argument all day. Perhaps it is sleep deprivation, but I haven’t quiet got there yet. I think of myself as a *real* feminist, and (NOT but) whatever way you spin it, I am dependant on others – on men, on a man – economically. And if I weren’t right now – as a mother, as a wife, as a part-time worker, as a daughter, as a sufferer of a chronic illness – I sure as hell will be at some point in my life – old age anyone? Let’s be serious. Real feminists know that circumstances, health and employment are tenuous, changeable, and will sometimes seriously fuck you over. Defining yourself by your ability to be independant isn’t feminist; it’s deluded.
Being indépendant and able to pay your rent for an entire lifetime is not something most people can manage, men included. We all have to depend on others from time to time. For some, it is a short while to recover from illness, unemployment, attending school, raising children. For others, like the disabled it can be most of their lives. This is part of being human, supporting each other and doing the best you can. Even disability or unemployment insurance are a collective, that men and women contribute to, if that option is available to you.
I think this is such a capitalist, American way of thinking. Of course there should be equal pay for equal work, but no, your worth as a person is not determined by how much money your work brings on the marketplace. We are all dependent creatures, from birth to death, and there is no shame in that. What we need are more support systems and to help each other, instead of promoting this sort of stand-up-on-your-own-two-feet, pull-yourself-up-by-your -bootstraps sort of philosophy towards life.
This was interesting.
At first I thought being financially independent obviously allows women to make their own choices (being a working class woman I know the very real lack of choice that I had until I started earning and stopped putting up with abuse from male partners – get your drunken, woman-beating ass out of my house!!!), then I thought, hang on – that means we are fighting to buy into the very system that does us down, and then I thought well at least fighting for financial equality is a concrete feminist ‘hook’ and once we are in, we can change things for others not so financially successful, and then I thought (again)but I don’t want to buy into that system and then I thought but how can we, without financial power, fight a system predicated on financial power and then I thought – well I thought this IS feminism – muddled, contradictory, peopled by women from every social strata, full of ideas, and in essence, finding our way through via DEBATE. Thank you, that brightened my afternoon up after struggling with an Excel spreadsheet. I know what I would much rather be spending my time on.
I agree with this article.
Why?
I definitely don’t buy into the argument that economic independence is the only mark of true feminism. However, I admit sometimes that I do wonder about the effects of opting out due to the escalating costs of colleges. Would parents ever have to make the choice to pay more for their sons’ college educations over daughters, because men in general tend to work longer and support families? Obviously every case is different but I’m talking about generalizations here.
I’m an American and feel that all this “debate” about opting out is a FALSE choice. RIght now, we make that decision to stay or quit when we’re most sleep-deprived, trying to breasfeed, and watching a very helpless 3month old. Until American women can make a choice AFTER a decent maternity leave, this isn’t a real choice.