Let's talk about feminism -- Eighty Eighth Post

It's time to make this blog serious business and tackle some serious issues. I'll probably switch back to our regularly scheduled programming, also known as "whatever random crap crosses my mind," soon, though.

Rights are belong to glnicol on The Lilith Effect, as far as I know.

I have a problem where, when I try to talk coherently and rationally about something that I really care about, I can’t. I set out to be logical, and it turns into a stream of consciousness thing that really only makes sense to me. And it doesn’t usually make that much sense to me if I come back a few weeks later.

This is a problem because when I get really passionate about something political or human rights-ish or why you should study abroad or what have you, I have a really hard time conveying that passion. Examples that make sense in my head don’t translate well onto paper or into spoken word. For instance, a real train of thought I had: I am a feminist. Also a normal person. Well, actually I’m kind of a dork, but it’s okay! I like karate, so this is clearly valid. Women can like karate and it’s okay! I also like baking and am still a feminist!!

Wut.

If I don’t care about something, I can write really logically and dispassionately. I can argue both sides with total abandon, which is really helpful in discussion-based classes. I can really get into the motives behind why people think the way they do, indicating that I have chosen the wrong profession. However, as soon as I try to really persuasively argue for a side, it all goes to hell. I become fervent, passionate, and incoherent. I can’t understand why anyone would ever believe anything else. It’s a major failing, indicating that maybe science is for me after all.

So when I set out to make a post about feminism, I sat on it for a while. I edited it three times. I used the example from earlier, then took it out, then put it back in, edited, in another place. I still didn’t click the “publish” button. Now, I’m going to try to collate the ideas from that post, which shall remain unpublished in its current form, into something coherent.

Outline

1. My experience with feminism.

            a. Pre-college

            b. College - present

2. Feminism is not one-size-fits-all

            a. Differences between me and some straw feminists

            b. Gender roles

3. Activism

I had zero experience with feminism until I hit college. It seemed unnecessary to me, honestly. Growing up, I was very lucky to have lots of positive, supportive, encouraging female role models, and my mom and dad were both really great at letting me do my own thing most of the time and holding me to high academic standards. I vaguely knew that women hadn’t always had the vote or the right to work outside the home not as secretaries or the right to wear trousers, but that seemed like it must have been a long, long time ago. Anyway, I can wear whatever I want, to the point of ridiculousness, so that’s sorted. Feminism is dead.

The entire science department at my high school was female. My chemistry teacher had worked in power plants and in research at PNNL before she taught high school and middle school science, and I still think of her as pretty much the coolest person ever. She really inspired me to do science and seek opportunities in that field.

Also, the entire lab group where I interned in high school was female. My mentor was female, her boss was female, the other interns' mentors were female. Half the post-docs in my office area were females from various ethnic backgrounds. Who needs feminism when we’ve come so far?

Once I got to college, 5 out of 6 of the chemistry professors were female. They had PhDs and families and reasonably-paying careers. I lived on a hall with girls who are going on to start businesses, translate plays from French to English, and work for change in the education, judicial, and foster systems in America. It never occurred to me that people still believe that women should limit their dreams because we are women.

I had never personally encountered nasty sexism, either. No one made “sandwich” jokes at me or told me I belonged in the kitchen. I had been encouraged by male and female role models alike to reach for the stars and pursue a career in science. I also benefited from being a woman in the form of lower car insurance rates as a teenager and better odds of getting a job via equal opportunity than my male friends. Feminism seemed like it was done. The only encounters I’d had with “feminism” was with caricatures of radical, man-hating feminists who get mad when a man holds the door for them. I didn’t want to be like those women. I like my male friends, and I have no problem with door-holding. Heck, I try to hold the door when I see someone walking in close behind me. It’s called common courtesy.

Then, spring semester of freshman year, I took a class called “Women Writers” to get my “American Diversity” credits out of the way or whatever. Remember, my experience with feminism was with straw feminists, so I was pretty pessimistic about the class and expected it to be pretty much a time-suck from my three lab classes.

It was pretty easy. I breezed through the coursework, got an A, and then went back and re-read the books I’d skimmed and analyzed at a pretty superficial level. My favorite books were The Story of Avis and Reading Lolita in Tehran. Avis is fictional, but it sparked a question in my mind about how I was expected to live as a woman in modern society, and what people give up. Reading Lolita is a memoir by a female professor of English literature at the University of Tehran during the overthrow of the Shah and the rise of a Muslim government, and it opened my eyes to how women in other cultures are treated. I began to realize how privileged I am to have choices in how I live my life.

Around this time, I also learned about the discrepancy in pay. If learning about the plights of women in more oppressive cultures tugged my heartstrings, the wage gap  really brought it home to me that women are still not considered equal to men. Even though, as my grades routinely demonstrated, I was at least as competent as the average male college student. I graduated at the top of my class in high school, beating every male in the class in GPA while working a part-time job. I took AP classes and did as well as or better than the boys in those classes. College was proceeding in a similar manner; I’m about average for the courses I take. I’m not that fantastic, but I’m not stupid, either. I got into graduate school. It logically makes no sense to me that I should do the same work as a man with the same qualifications and get paid less. This is where I get really incoherent in my arguments, because I have a hard time moving past “that’s STUPID.” as my opening point, rebuttal to all points, and closing argument. It makes no sense to me why anyone would support that.

I now consider myself a staunch feminist, or “women’s rights activist/supporter” if you prefer. Supporter is probably more accurate because my only activism has taken place on facebook, really. I don’t think that should count.

Feminism is not one-size-fits-all. Remember that shirt from the beginning of the post? I know it was a long time ago. Anyway, I found that on a google search, which brings up a lot of different images including men and women and groups of kids and trolls. Much as there are a lot of differences between people in real life, there are a lot of differences between people who support women’s rights. That doesn’t mean that we don’t agree on big things, like women should be treated equally under the law, just that we have some religious and/or philosophical differences. A main platform of the feminist movement is abortion rights. I’m not sure where I stand on that matter. Many feminists are not particularly fond of men (man-haters); this is often because they have been personally victimized or abused by men. I’m rather fond of the sex as a whole, even if individual members can be exasperating and even worthy of hate. Then again, I’ve never suffered sexual harassment or abuse or rape. I can’t, literally cannot, bring myself to judge anyone who’s suffered horrible abuses for hating anyone who reminds them of that abuse. This holds true for anyone victimized by anyone, including (but not limited to) women victimized by men and men victimized by women (oh, yes, I believe they exist). The closest I can come is that I have a really hard time eating canned green beans because I once opened a can that had gone rancid and it was a terrible, disgusting experience. Note: this is not to compare rape and various abuses to rancid green beans. Rape and abuse are much worse. I’m just saying that I’ve been lucky so far.

This is the part about gender roles now. I’m leery of getting in too deep here because all I have to go on is some light internet reading and my own experience. My parents had pretty fluid roles in their marriage, with both working from home and sharing cooking, cleaning, and other duties based on who was less likely to fall asleep while working, who was allergic to what, and who was doing something else at the time rather than on who had lady parts and therefore belonged in the kitchen. My mom went back into the workplace before my dad did, and she makes more money than him. As far as I know, this was only tough on them when my dad got laid off, which would be tough on anyone with two kids.

I expect that I’ll do a lot of cooking in my future, but that’s because I love cooking. Something about making cookies is really appealing when doing homework. In addition, I vastly prefer to cook my own food rather than spend lots of money to eat junk food. For me, cooking is like science you can eat. I also anticipate keeping up my habit of knitting. I really like knitting. It’s relaxing and useful. I mostly make scarves; my neck will never be cold. I don’t have a problem doing “traditionally feminine” things, but it bugs me when people expect that because someone is female, she will do the housework and housewifely things and that because someone is male, he will do tough manly things. I think women who want to stay home and raise families should absolutely do that. Raising kids is a full time job, and I have nothing but respect for women who devote their lives to that. They are at least as important as women who go out and get in the news for being awesome. I just also think that I shouldn’t be required to do that simply because I have a uterus.

Speaking of “traditionally gendered” things, I love science. While science does have a long tradition of fantastic women, it also has a longer tradition of being peopled by jerk faces. People I actively dislike include Watson and Crick because they were jerk faces who screwed over other scientists and stole their results. Still, I love it. I occasionally freak myself when I think too much about how incredibly tiny atoms are (but what’s in the space between air and water molecules?!) or about how I’m a system of biochemical processes happening all the time including right now and here I am studying biochemical processes while they’re happening in my body. I am following in the footsteps of some of the coolest, most awesome people in history (see: Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, Dorothy Crowfood Hodgkin, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and company) just by being interested in this stuff and pursuing a career in science. And maybe, just by being me, I can help push the scientific community to stop screwing people over.

What I’m getting at with all this is that it’s time for people to stop marginalizing women simply because we’re not male. It’s also time for people to stop telling women what we can and cannot do with our lives. I should be free to stay home or go to work as I see fit; I am not a delicate little flower who will get broken if someone doesn’t tell her what risks she's allowed to take. We are all of us capable of genius and strength.

This "all of us" I speak of includes everyone, by the way. Not just women, not just white people, not just heterosexuals, not just English-speakers, not just persons raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition. All. Of. Us. Humans.

This leads me to my next point, activism. My version is currently limited to facebook and, more recently, twitter. However, I tend to feel simultaneously inspired and guilty when I hear a feminist message (see: Miss Representation, a movie that has the opinions of some of my favorite actresses and politicians and people as well as some of my least favorite, which makes none of their ideas less valid). I’m inspired to go into political or social work, and I feel guilty because I know full well that I won’t be going into those fields. I’d be a terrible politician and a worse social worker. My passion lies in science, and I remember that after the glow of righteous indignation wears off. I still wish I was suited to politics because lord knows something needs to change there, but I’m really not. Right now, my life is headed in a laboratory direction, and I think I can do good from there. I might have a high school intern who sees a woman doing science and thinks to herself, I can do that too. Or I could have an intern who sees a woman doing science and thinks to himself, women can do science. I might have a niece who sees her aunt living her own life and thinks to herself, I can be whatever I want to be. I will for sure have undergrad lab students who see a female grad student teaching and being generally awesome, who think to themselves, women can do what they want. I don’t think you have to go out and march in the streets or be highly visible in the public eye to be a women’s rights activist; I think you just have to be the best you possible and share your beliefs with anyone who asks. 

Also, "eighth" is a weird word.