When I was younger, my mom refused to let me watch two Disney movies: Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. I asked her years later about what I thought was a strange prejudice against the delightful animated fairytales, and she explained that she didn’t want me growing up absorbing stories of women being saved by a white knight.
Don’t get me wrong, I did watch those movies when I was little, just at friends’ houses, keeping it a secret from my mom. I had a sense then that she disapproved of the movies, but little idea as to why.Â
I understand better now. It was the same reason why my Barbie doll collection was so much smaller than my peers’, why she never bought me an Easy Bake Oven, and why most of the books I read centered around strong female protagonists. My mother was raising me to be a feminist and I hardly realized it.
Being a feminist now, when I’m 22 years old and on the brink of real-world decisions, is a lot more complex than when I ran around to the Annie Oakley-inspired mantra, “anything you can do, I can do better.” It’s not just that I have a more nuanced view of the world than I did as a preschooler. It’s also that the term “feminism” is more complicated now. Some call the 2000s the beginning of a “post-feminist” era, others say we’re in the “third wave.” Either way you spin it, feminism now comes down to the freedom of personal choice. Whether or not that choice comes with a social stigma, however, is a persistent problem modern feminism still hasn’t fully addressed.
A beneficiary of Title IX, my mom knew feminism as an outgrowth of Betty Freidan, whose success was manifested in the legal accomplishments of the 1960s and 1970s, otherwise called feminism’s “second wave” (the first being the women’s suffrage movement back in the first few decades of the century). But now the movement is in murkier waters. Historically, feminism ebbs and flows in the United States; once women’s right to vote was ratified in 1920, there was little action until 1963, when Friedan published the Feminine Mystique and Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, setting off two decades of legal victories for American women.Â
However successful feminists may have been in legal battles, they’ve paid for it in less tangible ways. The 19th Amendment gave us the right to vote, but the relative complacency that followed led to the 1950s housewife. Sure, there was Rosie the Riveter, that icon of female strength during World War II, but she existed solely because of the workforce vacuum created by the draft. When the men returned home, the women were more than happy to do the same.Â
Except they weren’t, as Friedan pointed out, and now women make up 47 percent of America’s workforce, according to a report released by the Pew Research Center last month. We’re also outpacing males as college graduates 53.5 to 46.5 percent. In 2007, 22 percent of married women had higher incomes than their husbands, compared to just four percent in 1970.Â
This sounds pretty good—and compared to 1970, it is—with gains for women in pretty much every category. Granted, the marriage rate has declined, but I wouldn’t necessarily call that a problem—more earning power equals more independence, which is a good thing, right?
This is where modern-day feminism gets complicated. Men were fine with giving us the vote, but 22 percent of women out-earning their husbands? Median household incomes may have risen, but what about the men? And what about their masculinity?Â
In most popular writing about women challenging gender structures, men and their presumed emasculation are at least an aspect, if not a central concern, of the story. If they’re not getting divorced, the career women profiled in newspaper trend stories who dare to have more successful careers than their husbands seem to be preoccupied with making sure their spouses can cope with their success, to the same extent that they are concerned with their own careers. When The New York Times Style section recently wrote about the rise in female college enrollment, the main take-away was that it’s now much harder for women to find boyfriends in college who won’t cheat on them, and women resort to sluttier behavior as a result.
While the feminist movement may have provided women with more access to the “man’s world,” it did little to overturn the pervasive patriarchy in our culture. We became really good at enacting laws to protect women. Granted, these laws are necessary to protect women’s rights within the dominant male order, but they can also create the illusion that feminism has made more progress than it actually has. Congress may have passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act over 30 years ago, for example, but it’s more than naïve to think that a woman’s potential or actual motherhood does not affect employment decisions. Creating a law to address a problem does not necessarily solve it, especially when the issue is as culturally entrenched as gender bias. We degrade their legacy by declaring this era “post-feminist,” as if gender inequality is a thing of the past.
Speaking for us men, we’re afraid to get married – in a divorce (initiated 70% of the time by the woman in the relationship) we might lose our kids, income, homes and freedom if you decide you are a victim of “domestic violence”.
You can molest young boys without fear of a significant prison sentence – you go girl!
You can hit a man, shoot him in his sleep, or run him over with your car, and the press and society overall will endorse your course of action.
NOW and other groups lobby against changes in domestic violence policy and family law – thanks a heap, women of America.
If we do get married, it’s not going to be to someone from a group who gloats over our jobless situation and rapes us in family court. American women provide great risk and little benefit in a marriage to a man.
You’ve come a long way, baby.
Hey Kerry–please don’t knock feminism. It’s a great thing. Thanks to feminism, the Pill, and Game, I can get all the sex I want from women without the penitentiary of marriage. This never would have been possible if it weren’t for feminism. In order to have sex 40 years ago you had to do things the hard way. First, you had to do a whole lot of courting, have a good job, then get married. But thanks to feminism, men can get all the milk for free without buying the cow without really trying.
And Nelson went “HAHAW!”
Feminism is good for so many things because it taught women to act more slutty, pay for their own way, and to be less discriminating with their womanly wares. 40 years ago, that never would have been possible because they wouldn’t put out as readily as they do now. Thanks to feminism the divorce rate is now at 50%, and with that, boys are now being raised by pathetic, single mothers who tell their wimpy sons to be “nice to girls.” Nothing wrong with that, but when they grow up to be socially inadequate wussy beta males who can’t attract a feminine woman, they will have to settle for either (barf!) bedraggled cougars, career women, or fatties. This eliminates my competition significantly to get more hotties.
ADDENDUM
Marriage is for losers. If you’re a guy who is thinking about it, I suggest moving to eastern or central Europe where women are more feminine, slim and traditional. Getting married to a western women particularly to an American constitutes a raw deal for men and makes no sense unless you want to lose your house, hair, wallet and sanity. The choice is yours.
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I hope you troglodytes are the same person.
I love your writing and point of view here. Wonderful stuff and I would love to link to it from one of our places at http://www.motherhoodmuseum.org
Thanks for the very REAL perspective. As a mother of four and a wife, who’s far from the 50’s housewife syndrome, I can tell you things actually haven’t changed that much in the home.
All the more reason for MATERNAL FEMINISM.
Warmly,
Joy