Standing on the edge
Does anyone else feel like we are at the point in human history where revolution just seems inevitable? Where the systems and constructs that we've so carefully crafted to have order in our world and our societies just don't seem to be cutting it anymore. How much more can we take of the tired rhetoric of "this is the way the world works" and "this is simply the way it has always been" and all the other variations on the status quo? Are we not supposed to evolve as a species? As a society? Please don't hate me internet, but as the boys in Nickelback are saying these days, "We're standing on the edge of a revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
The shooting of Michael Brown was a tipping point. It has brought the ugly truth of racism in North America right to the front lines of our news feeds, Twitter streams and viral, live-streaming world. It showed us what happens when we question the system. It showed us the levels at which authoritarian governments will go to maintain "the peace"and what happens when you step out of line. How they will try to control the narrative of events and the status-quo of a world where everyone needs to know their place in it.
I've had a few conversations over the past month with people who have said to "wait for all the facts" and "let the courts and those in charge figure this out" and THEN, I can make an "informed" decision about what happened. For me, and for many others too, this line of thinking falls apart when it's the very people in charge who are the ones that are working within a system that fails to recognize it's own ingrained biases. What this says to me, is "Let us figure this out, and then we'll TELL you what to think" and I, for one, am just not down with that.
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
Anita Sarkeesian was forced to leave her own house last week because of threats made against her and her family on social media. What terrible thing did she do to bring on this level of abuse you ask? She released the most recent of her series of videos on "Tropes vs Women in Video Games." and by pointing out and discussing the way that the rape, maiming and murder of women is uniquely used as background narrative or character development in video games, she was subsequently threatened by members of the gaming community with all of these very things. I am not sure how much more her point needs to be hammered into someone's head when the very thing she is criticizing about video games, ie, violence against women, plays out in real life. That certain individuals (men) believe that this level of violence against women is just a NORMAL part of video games and somehow integral to the gaming experience is a problem people. A BIG one. Sarkeesian says that when these games are critiqued for their levels of violence against women it further perpetuates these beliefs and frames the "misogyny and sexual exploitation as an everlasting fact of life and as something inescapable and unchangeable." It is NOT and we do NOT have to accept these narratives "as some kind of necessary cultural background for our media stories."
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
Now on the "Ladies Master List of Things NOT to do to Avoid Being Violated" you can include taking racy photos of yourself with your smart phone. Add that to, don't get drunk, don't wear short skirts/low cut tops, don't walk alone in a dark back alley/parkade, and don't ever, EVER, leave your drink unattended - unless you have your special nail polish on that is - and it's just becoming a bit (read: A LOT) ridiculous. The level to which rape culture/victim-blaming is alive and well in our world is so insidious that it takes a couple of minutes (days) for people to register that the rape-drug detecting nail polish is actually NOT a great idea/invention or that saying, "Well, in this digital age, people (ei: WOMEN) should know better than to put naked pictures of themselves on their phones." is tantamount to saying that the VICTIMS of this CRIME are somehow partially to blame for said CRIME. In case I am not making myself clear, all of those pictures circulating on the internet are not a LEAK, and this is not a celebrity SCANDAL. This was a planned and deliberate crime, perpetrated by pathetic individuals who violated personal property, STOLE personal images and distributed them to the world for consumption at will. And EVERY SINGLE PERSON who downloaded them and got a nice good look at them is equally at fault for continuing to violate the privacy and personhood of these women. Take a stand people! Tell your friends that Googling the pictures is wrong. Tell Perez Hilton that he is a major ass creep for posting them. Unfriend /Unfollow anyone on FB or Twitter sharing them and let them know WHY. If you need some more info to convince them, Deb Rox at Blogher says it all right here: "We can start by calling this "leak" by its real name: sexual harassment via theft and publication."
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
I watched a documentary the other night called "L Word Mississipi: Hate the Sin" about the lives of lesbians living in the deep south, deeply Christian bible belt of America. It was a tough film to watch as these women tried to navigate living their lives and loving their partners surrounded by family members who openly told them they were going to burn in hell, strangers comparing them to child molesters and living lives denying their true selves for the sake of the church. I cried as I watched these women struggle with coming out to their deeply religious parents and the especially difficult story of the one woman who was "reformed" and trying to reform her gay son. At one point, my husband came in the room and asked me why I was watching such a depressing show? I was crying too much to answer him, but here is why. Because I wanted to bear witness to these women's lives, to their pain and struggle. And while that pain is not mine, I felt a profound allyship with these women. I felt loss when one woman's family left all of her childhood belongings on the doorstep of her house, as if to say, you no longer exist in our lives. If God is Love, then why can't Love be Godly? In all it's forms? Hating the sin is simply HATE folks. And that just has to stop.
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
The thing is, revolution is never pretty. It's not quiet. It is not NOT angry. It is not always orderly and it doesn't happen with all parties coming to the table for a "civilized" conversation and leaving happy. Revolution is by it's very definition an overthrowing of a social order in favour of a new system. Revolutions are emotional, they are fuelled by passion and anger and that stuck in your craw feeling that enough is finally, and absolutely ENOUGH! It takes strength to not back down. To not retreat to the way things have always been and just live out a mediocre existence in a world full of overt or not so overt oppression. You've got to get in some people's faces and keep doing it over and over and over and over again. Revolution happens when someone takes a stand, plants themselves there and refuses to sit down. And then someone else joins them. And then another person. And another. And another. And, well, you get the point right?
I do believe that in a lot of ways our world is indeed on the edge of a revolution. The question is, are we willing to step off that edge?
n~
Nickelback just released the new video for Edge of a Revolution yesterday.
You are welcome/I am sorry.
the list
I've been quiet here lately. But not in my head. In my head it is loud and full. The words and thoughts are bouncing back and forth and I am getting to the point where I can write/type them again.
In the mean time, please watch this. Because Jay Smooth is my Youtube boyfriend and because he speaks TRUTH in ways that I just can't get enough of. (You could just go subscribe to his channel too and see more of what I am talking about).
But seriously folks. Watch, Share, Repeat.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/MlNUIIyDA_w[/youtube]
Be back soon...
n~
Curves and Edges
There I was. Going about my day, taking one kid to camp and the other to his therapy appointments and I stopped for a minute to check my email. And there it was, right in the subject line:
"You're beautiful underneath it all."
Huh?
The email is from Lolë, a Canadian lifestyle company that I quite like and whose products I buy regularly (and therefore why I get their emails). It is an ad for their new "delicate, feminine underpinnings" line of products and I assume they are trying to say that what you wear under your clothes can be beautiful too. The problem is, that is NOT really what they are saying.
They are saying that *YOU* are beautiful underneath *IT* all. And maybe I am overly sensitive to this kind of thinking/speaking/messaging, but then again, maybe I am not.
"There is a skinny person in there just trying to get out."
"You've got lots of muscle tone, it's just covered up with that extra layer."
"Once you lose X amount of weight, you'll look and feel so much better."
These are all things that have been said to me in my lifetime.
Women are bombarded every day with these kinds of messages and with clothing options to cover our flaws, that use "slimming" technologies and push up or pull in various parts of our bodies to fit the styles and trends of the times and the ever present single layer version of beauty. We have to worry about muffin top, back fat, waving underarms, and the dreaded thigh gap. We are told over and over to love ourselves, no matter what size, shape, or colour we are, and then companies fill magazines and commercials and store shelves full of products and messages that are meant to help us change all of those things.
Love your skin, but here, make sure you remove all that hair, cover up/lighten those spots, and please! do something to smooth over all that cellulite.
Love your face, but don't let it get all wrinkly and *gasp* OLD!
Love your hair, but maybe it should be shinier, fuller, longer, and have more volume.
Love your body and go on and wear that bathing suit, but make sure it pushes up the girls, slims out your belly and here's a great video with 77 ways to use a sarong cover up, because really, no one wants to actually see that.
But don't worry, because you are beautiful underneath it all.
And we buy it. I buy it. I wear clothes strategically to cover my "flaws". I have a drawer FULL of anti-aging products to reduce fine lines, not so fine ones and everything in-between. And I have a love/hate... mostly hate relationship with my bathroom scale and what I think it tells me about me and my body.
I love this line from John Legend's song, All of Me.
'Cause all of me Loves all of you Love your curves and all your edges All your perfect imperfections
I realize that this is a love song about and sung to someone else, but sometimes when I am alone in my car and it comes on the radio, I'll turn up the volume really loud and sing it TO MYSELF. To remind myself that I have curves and edges and a lot of perfect imperfections. And that I love ALL of me. That all of me, JUST AS I AM, is worthy of love and happiness and that I am beautiful.
Not underneath anything.
Not despite anything.
Not when I am tucked in, slimmed down, covered up and/or made up.
And the same goes for you too.
You are beautiful. FULL STOP.
XO,
n~
R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
Tonight's post was going to be about respect. Respect for people. Respect for our world. Respect for another person's piece of it.
And yet somehow, going off on a rant about my dumb-ass neighbours who let their giant dogs run willy-nilly all over the neighbourhood, peeing all over everyones shrubs doesn't seem right.
It doesn't seem right when in a small town in America, a man was shot six times and it is not called murder. Where the people of this town are living in a police state with a curfew in place and folks are getting tear-gassed and arrested for peacefully protesting.
My dog issues are nothing compared to the fact that in Gaza tonight, even the animals at the zoo are not safe from the crossfire of the Israel-Hamas conflict and the cease-fire deadline is approaching with no clear resolution in sight.
When a whole country is essentially on lock-down because of an Ebola epidemic, my privileged little first world problems becoming glaringly apparent as such and petty.
So, no, I won't get on my "be a responsible dog owner/neighbour" soap box tonight.
But I will say something about respect.
It's a common conversation in and around our house right now (and always). Respect for ourselves and how we talk about ourselves, respect for our possessions and the home that we have built for our family, and respect for others, in how we speak to them and about them and how we want to be spoken to as well. We talk about how we can be more respectful to Mother Earth and my kids are big into recycling, not wasting energy or water and thanks to the Kratt brothers, are all up to date on animal conservation as well. The concept and application of respect is truly a daily topic in our house. As it should be.
I came across this quote from Dwight D. Eisenhower and it seems to fit tonight.
"This world of ours...
must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead,
a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect."
The problem as I see it right now, is that in this world of ours, the pendulum has swung so far over to the fear and hate side of things, that we can't figure out how to get back to the mutual trust and respect side.
I don't know how exactly to swing that pendulum back, but I'll start small. At home, and in my neighbourhood, and in my communities both online and off. I will listen, I will speak with respect, I will not let hate into my mind or my heart and I will teach and model this behaviour for my children. Maybe if we all started small, we would eventually overpower all of that fear and drown out the hate.
Maybe...
n~
The clothes that you wear
A few days ago I was in our neighbourhood cafe around dismissal time for the local junior high school. The cafe is frequented by a lot of the neighbourhood kids and that day was no exception. It was one of our first VERY hot days of the summer and slushy drink sales were at an all time high! I was in line behind two teenage girls ordering said slushy drinks and I couldn't help but notice what they were wearing. One had on a tank top and the typical short shorts that one wears when your hips are still narrow and you are mostly legs and the other was wearing a very loose black tank top that had very wide arm openings that went all the way down to her waist and cropped black leggings. Underneath her tank top, she was wearing a sheer black bra. And in my head, two voices started battling it out. One was saying, "OMG! I can totally see ALL of her bra! That is so inappropriate! Why would her mother let her wear that! Stop staring at her bra!"
The other was saying, "Shut up already. It's hot outside and she is obviously very comfortable in what she is wearing. YOU are the only one who seems to have an issue here, get over yourself. You are not the fashion/modesty/appropriateness police, so just get your coffee and move on lady."
You see, I am a product of my society, the culture that I grew up in and in that culture, a woman's body (regardless of her age), and how she dresses it, are for others to comment on, to admire, to admonish, to assess and to judge. As much as I hate to admit this, a part of me did judge and I felt uncomfortable that I could see so much of this girl's underthings and went to that familiar, ingrained place of "has she no shame??".
I then hung my head in my own shame.
..........
This week my Facebook and Twitter feeds have been filled with story after story of young girls being shamed and punished for what they are wearing. Tank tops seem to be causing the most issues, because of those terribly distracting bra straps. Last week, 28 girls (and two boys - just so no one feels the need to point this out and then tell me this was not about gender discrimination) were sent home from a high school in Newfoundland because they wore tank tops to school on a hot day and this was distracting to some of the male students and teachers. A 17-year old was kicked out of her senior prom because her dress-code conforming fingertip length sparkly dress was making a bunch of 40-something dad chaperones feel uncomfortable and a Utah High school decided to arbitrarily photoshop year-book photos of female students who were showing too much skin.
All of this is happening in the wake of Elliot Rodger and the UCSB shooting and numerous posts being written about the insidious levels of sexism and misogyny that exist in our world. We've spent the last few weeks trying to come to grips with this tragedy and the very real fears that #yesallwomen have for themselves in this world that continues to want to make sure that women know their place in it and know how to dress and behave appropriately in that place, and now this. This shaming of teenaged girls. For what?
Having boobs?
And legs?
And skin?
The message here is loud and clear. YOU, oh girls and women of the world, must be ever conscious of your evil, tempting, womanly ways of instilling lustful thoughts in the minds of others (mainly men), by merely existing in this world. You must do this by covering your bodies, because otherwise, what is presented to the world is obviously meant for the taking. Or the judging, or the leering, or the cat-calling, or the grabbing, or the assaulting.
All these dress-code issues are really just thinly-veiled perpetuations of the kind of culture that we live in that blames girls and women for the thoughts and actions of other people. We have a name for that you know. It is called rape culture. It's the line we often hear that goes... "well, if she didn't want people to look at her like that/touch her like that/make rude comments to her like that, she shouldn't dress like that." It's the cop-out that many people default to when they say, "In an ideal world, it wouldn't matter, but we don't live in that world, so just be smarter about what you wear/where you walk/how much you drink, and those things won't happen to you."
The thing is, we are not talking about dangerous alleys in the dead of night here, we are talking about supposedly safe places like the hallways of high schools and parent-chaperoned prom dances and the pages of school yearbooks. And the people who are having issues and condemning these teens for their attire are the grown-ups in these situations. People who are having all kinds of "uncomfortable" feels because they are being turned on by, or disgusted by teenaged girls bodies. So, who exactly is the problem here??
One particular quote from a school board administrator in the Newfoundland case really made me ponder this issue. He said,
"Our focus would be around wearing clothes that's appropriate for a learning environment, making sure that we help students learn that as you transition through school and onto the workplace that the clothes that you wear respects the values of people around you, respects the diversity of the community that we live in ... so it's really about respecting others, as well as respecting yourself," said Pike. {emphasis is mine}
The clothes that you wear must respect the values of the people around you. Hmmmm....
I can see where this statement is true to a certain degree. When my husband and I visited Zanzibar in 2005, I was well aware that the area we were visiting was primarily Muslim. Out of respect for the customs and norms of the local people, I did not go out without covering my arms and legs and with a scarf on hand if I needed it to cover my hair, even when it was well above 30 degrees Celsius. So yes, I admit that there are situations that call for a certain kind of dress code, but the above statement also made me wonder. At what point do people around you respect you as a person, REGARDLESS of what you are wearing? Or is it as Mark Twain said, "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."?
Personally, I have to disagree with Mr. Twain on this one. I think that naked people, or naked women to be more exact, have had a big influence on our society. Pick up a magazine, watch TV commercials or browse online for a bit and you will find images of naked women, or parts of a naked woman (because it's not like women are ever portrayed as whole human beings), being used to try to sell you something.
{image credit: Suit Supply}
A constant barrage of images and messages constantly showing us and telling us that any or all of a woman's body is primarily a sexual "thing", makes it hard for society at large to see women as anything else. It is the reason that Facebook and now Instagram too, consider breastfeeding photos nudity and pornography and routinely remove them and ban the users posting them, yet will leave pages like "Big Boobs", which contains photo after photo of breasts in all states of undress, well enough alone. It is blog post after blog post telling women that leggings are not pants, and tumblr and Pinterest sites shaming women with people posting pictures of strangers to illustrate their arbitrary policing of others bodies. It's Robin Thicke thinking it would be "fun" to objectify women in his Blurred Lines video and not understanding why people were upset about that. While so much of this kind of thinking may be commonplace in our world, none of it is OK or acceptable and we should be doing all we can to challenge and change this status quo.
..........
This past weekend in my city it was the 4th Annual Slutwalk, an event that since it's inception in 2009 following remarks from a Toronto law enforcement official that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized", is pushing out the message that there’s nothing a person can ever do to deserve sexual violence. I did not attend the walk this year, but heard from the organizers about a group of angry teenaged girls walking who got all up in the face of a member of a men's rights group protesting the event. I can't help but feel a bit of hope when I hear about things like that or watch videos from the young, bold, and super smart Laci Green, or read Claire's story about her prom experience, or know what Malala Yousafzai is doing for girls all over the world. Girls are speaking up, are saying ENOUGH and fighting back against a culture that is so reluctant to change the status quo. This new generation of young women, of young feminists, are giving me hope and teaching me a few things as well.
Back at the cafe, once the voices in my head had finally had it out with each other and there was a clear winner - I realized how much I still have to learn and UNlearn in this life. My thoughts were my own and I had to own that and admit my own shortcomings in this regard. And I know I have to do something about that. I have to do it for my children, because they are watching me and like the tiny little sponges they are, they are absorbing all the messages I am sending. What I say and do matters more now than it ever has before. And today's message is this: NO, clothes do NOT make the {wo}man, the person she {he} is does.
Now, go ahead, tell me that my bra strap is too distracting for you.... I dare you!
natasha~
For future reference.
If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I do a weekly round-up of what I like to call "Feminsit Fare" on Fridays. I post interesting and thought provoking articles I have read, videos I have seen, and information I think you will like or that will further our conversations about feminism and motherhood and life. Today, I am collecting posts together in this space for another reason. These pieces are about feminism, misogyny, terrorism, murder, derailing important conversations, and hashtag activism. I have been sharing most of these posts on my Facebook pages and if you haven't figured it out already, they are pieces that have been written or recorded in response to the murderous attack planned and executed by Elliot Rodger in the Isla Vista community in Santa Barbara, California.
And I am saving them all here, because here is the hard truth...
We will need to refer to them again in the future.
Violence against women is a systematic problem in our world and until and unless a MUCH larger majority of us are willing to DRASTICALLY change that system, this violence will continue. I hate to write this, but there are other Elliot Rodgers out there, just like Elliot Rodger was another George Sodini and George Sodini was another Marc Lepine. Young men growing up in a world of toxic masculinity believing that they are entitled to their prize - a hot woman to have sex with. And denied this prize, they resort to violence to "prove themselves" to the world or to exhort a kind of retribution for being slighted.
Today in a separate Twitter conversation with another young man on the topic of breastfeeding in public, I was called a "relentless feminist". I am 100% sure he meant it as an insult. I did not take it as one.
Because I AM relentless in this. I will never stop trying to change this system. I will never be quiet in the face of oppression and misogyny and violence against women and women's rights. I will amplify the voices of my peers, female and male, who are speaking larger truths that we all need to really listen to and I will keep a chronicle of them all here...
For future reference.
----------
Jessica Valenti writing for The Guardian about how yes, misogyny does indeed kill.
Jenni Chui writing at Mommy Nani Booboo about the #YESALLWOMEN hashtag.
Chuck Wendig writing at terribleminds that while it is of course, not all men, it still if far too many.
Harris O'Malley writing at Paging Dr. Nerdlove about the price of toxic masculinity.
Laci Green's video about this culture of angry, entitled men is quite powerful and worth a watch.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPFcspwbrq8&feature=share&list=PLTXiNEUzXWKTfNYKThSk-kmJdf7AJRP5K[/youtube]
Phil Plate writing at Slate discussing how and why derailing this potentially system-changing conversation occurs and how unhelpful it is.
Lindsay Beyerstein writing at Duly Noted about why Elliot Rodger is in fact a terrorist fighting a War on Women.
(updated on May 29, 2014)
Jeopardy Champion Arthur Chu writing at The Daily Beast discussing the "script" that most nerdy boys grow up with.
Madeleine Davies at Jezebel writing about being not an angry feminist, but a furious one.
(updated, June 1, 2014)
Melissa McEwan at Shakesville writing about "the geek guys Elliot Rodgers think pieces" and how they are still getting it wrong.
----------
I know more will be written about this in the days to come and I will continue to add to this list. If you have read something that you think needs to be here please post the link in the comments.
Relentlessly,
natasha~
Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #24
Ah! May long weekend! I don't know about you, but for me, this marks start of me feeling the beginnings of summer (even though I live in Alberta and it did briefly snow for a bit last week). It's a weekend of clearing out the closets, figuring out who needs new shoes and rubber boots and finally packing away all of the winter gear and getting the box of summer and outside play things ready for use! Before you get into spring cleaning/gardening/going camping mode, what better way to start your weekend than with some wonderful feminist food for thought.
Enjoy!
~~~~~~~~~~
1. "Why aren't you happier?" "You should smile more?" "What have you got to be unhappy about?"
Ugh, so many questions. So many times directed mainly at women. Jessica Valenti breaks it down for us in this Guardian post about why women seem to be so "unhappy".
~~~~~
2. It is prom time once again. You know, that time when teenage girls all across North America beg their mothers for a custom made red taffeta strapless dress with layers & layers of tulle under it (or was that just me in the late 80's??). Seriously though, it's a special time of year for these students as they celebrate their scholarly achievements and a rather big transition in their young lives. And they get to dress up all fancy-like for it. For some though, what is supposed to be a wonderful night with friends can turn into a complete sexist shit-show, as it did for Clare last week when she was asked to leave her prom because of her non-dress-code violating sparkly dress and a bunch of ogling 45-year old dads who blamed a teenage girl for their own pervy-ness!
~~~~~
3. This week was not a great one for women in positions of power. Which begs the question? Is all this "leaning in" really working out or are we still just telling women to play a {male} role in a world not set up for them? Soraya Chemaly examines this phenomenon in this Ms. Magazine article.
~~~~~
4. The kidnapped Nigerian girls are still missing and the world is still talking about it (although the Solange V Jay-Z Elevator thing seemed to take centre stage this week). What the world needs to know is that Nigerian women, these African women are the reason, and will likely be the main reason, that these girls will eventually be found and rescued. Please read this powerful piece from Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gwobee.
~~~~~
Have a wonderful and restful long weekend everyone. At least that's my plan.
natasha~
A battle within: the stay at home mom vs the feminist.
Confession time. I am not always 100% on board with this whole "Stay at Home Feminist" thing.
I know, I know....
It's the name of my blog/Twitter/Instagram. I have claimed this moniker as ME. It is, as the marketing world calls it, "my personal brand". And yet, while I embrace this label that I have given myself and all the tongue-in-cheeky-ness that it implies, I have to be honest and admit that sometimes there exists within me a kind of battle of the two seemingly opposite sides of myself. As integrated as I think these two parts of me are, the "in-fighting" and negative self-talk that can happen from these two can be downright nasty at times.
The Stay-at-Home mother and housewife goes on and on about how I should DO more with the kids and around the house. More baking, more reading of books to the kids, more cleaning, more timely folding of the laundry, more crafts, less TV and iPads. She's can be a very demanding bitch and has obviously been spending way too much time on Pinterest, comparing all the way I am doing things to some kind of perfectly photoshopped vintage/retro/modern ideal of motherhood and housewifery.
And then there is the Feminist. She seeing things from a different angle and wants so much for a different world for her children. She gets upset that I am not doing more "active" activist work and wants me to find a way to "lean-in" and make some real changes for women in our world beyond just learning to play the game according to the current status quo. I know that there is a part of her that looks at the Stay-at-Home Mom and sneers at the level of privilege that she has and tells her that she just can't - absolutely CAN NOT - speak for other women who do not have it as good as she does.
Some, or all of these thoughts live together in my head at any given time and on any given day. Depending on the circumstances of the day, it can be an ugly battle that leaves me paralyzed with feelings of complete inadequacy in either role, or there can be an arbitrary truce and a certain level of acceptance that exists between the two.
I know what some of you are thinking, "Whoa there Natasha, how could YOU feel like this? You are supposed to be all, "Rah-rah-women can choose to do whatever they want-that's what Feminism is for!" and now your saying this? You are sending some serious mixed messages here! What is up with that?"
Let me try to explain.
A few weeks ago, I saw the CBC documentary "The Motherload". The film takes an in-depth and new look at the subject of working mothers - the current issues, challenges and triumphs that come from trying or having to do it all and that ever elusive utopian world called "work-life-balance". A lot of the film hinges on Anne-Marie Slaughter's 2012 article in The Atlantic in which she pointed out all the reasons "why women still can't have it all". While there were plenty of people who argued and disagreed with her take on this "motherload" phenomenon, I found most of her arguments compelling and very similar to my own.
"I still strongly believe that women can “have it all” (and that men can too). I believe that we can “have it all at the same time.” But not today, not with the way America’s economy and society are currently structured."
Except I do not think it is just America's economy and society, it is our whole world. I have written about this before, about how there is no winning (read: having it all) in a game where one group of players has ALWAYS gotten a head start or where the playing field is always tipped in favour of one side.
One of the most strikingly true lines from the film is one from York University Women's Studies professor Andrea O'Reilly, in which she points out that "motherhood is the unfinished business of feminism." This statement is undoubtedly at the very core of a lot of the issues surrounding modern feminism today. And because most theories of feminism were based on the "unencumbered subject", I believe that this is why there exists this general feeling and misconception that feminism is done, that we've "arrived", and that there is no need for a continued movement towards equality for all women.
I need you to know that whether this is the third or fourth wave of feminism or modern feminism or whatever you want to call it, it is decidedly NOT done. And not just because women are not leaning in to more high profile corporate and political positions, but because we've been sold a version of equality that simply can not exist within the framework of our current society.
In the film, Slaughter says that she receives emails from women all the time who have some version of the same story that goes along the lines of "I had a promising career, I got married, I had children and then LIFE happened. I felt like such a failure, like I had betrayed my younger self." These sentiments gave me great pause while watching the film and made me think that we are doing a major disservice to our daughters and young women when we don't actively talk about motherhood as part of their life plans or career paths. Statements like the one above, obviously felt by many women, actually hurt my heart. And while I know that these women are not necessarily saying that becoming a mother was a failure, in our world that values the primacy of work and what we "do" versus who we are, motherhood just doesn't quite fit the bill of valuable work. Not only does it not compare to our paid work, women who are mothers are often penalized for this 'life happening' as well. In Ann Crittenden's 2001 book The Price of Motherhood, she points out that:
"We talk endlessly about the importance of family, yet the work it takes to make a family is utterly disregarded. This contradiction can be found in every corner of our society.
First, inflexible workplaces guarantee that many women will have to cut back on, if not quit, their employment once they have children. The result is a loss of income that produces a bigger wage gap between mothers and childless women than the wage gap between young men and women. This forgone income, the equivalent of a huge "mommy tax," is typically more than $1 million for a college-educated American woman."
and
"The idea that time spent with one's child is time wasted is embedded in traditional economic thinking. People who are not formally employed may create human capital, but they themselves are said to suffer a deterioration of the stuff, as if they were so many pieces of equipment left out to rust. The extraordinary talents required to do the long-term work of building human character and instilling in young children the ability and desire to learn have no place in the economists' calculations. Economic theory has nothing to say about the acquisition of skills by those who work with children; presumably there are none."
Not much has changed since she wrote that more than 12 years ago, except that now, not only is the pressure on for mothers to "lean in" and have it all at work, they are expected to be doing it all and doing it all FABULOUSLY at home too. If you are a women who had decided to stay at home with your children, it can sometimes feel like the pressure to be the "perfect" mother is just as great as the pressure to climb the corporate ladder and break the glass ceiling. From how to feed your baby, to what to put on their bums, what kind of school or 'un'school you choose, to what are considered 'essential' mommy and me classes, to getting a nanny or to sending them daycare, and for all the major and minor decisions made each and every day, motherhood has become a veritable rat-race in and of itself.
And in both the work and the home front women are paying an increasingly high price for being in these races. In Arianna Huffington's new book Thrive, she points out that,
"... women in highly stressful jobs have a nearly 40% increase risk of heart disease and heart attacks compared to thier less-stressed colleagues, and a 60 % greater risk for type 2 diabetes (a link that does not exist for men, by the way). Women who have heart attacks are almost twice as likely as men to die within a year of the attack, and women in high-stress jobs are more likely to become alcoholics than women in low-stress jobs."
The statistics are not that much brighter for mothers either, with upwards of 20% suffering from postpartum mood disorders. Katherine Stone of Post Partum Progress Inc. reports that,
"...more mothers will suffer from postpartum depression and related illnesses this year than the combined number of new cases for both sexes of tuberculosis, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy. This is not to minimize these other terrible diseases, of course. I simply want to illustrate just how prevalent postpartum mood & anxiety disorders are."
The pressure these days to have it all, be it all, and do it all are too much for our bodies and our minds to handle and it is a no-win situation for everyone involved. And yet, I can't help but wonder, as my two sides battle it out in my own head, how much of this pressure is coming from ourselves? We live in the era of the "cult of busy-ness" and 24/7 connectivity and 10,000 hours to mastery (Ha! I just calculated and I've been a mother for just over 60,000 hours! I am SO the master of this! -insert sarcastic eye roll here-), and putting our lives on display via social media for all to see (and criticize). And then we wonder why, for some reason, it is never, ever, enough? We are a time-starved people living in a world of scarcity that is often of our own doing.
My question is: are we in fact the creators of this scarcity and if so, how do we change that?
Do you know what landed me in the hospital 26 weeks pregnant with my first child with a blood pressure hovering around 200/100 (normal is 110/70)? Because one hour before my OB appointment, I had gotten into an argument with a work colleague about a rather important event that we were planning. My life changed in an instant that day. My blood pressure would not go back down without medications and complete bed rest and I had to take an immediate medical leave from work.
That was my first AHA! moment of motherhood and it was a scary-ass wake up call to the reality that would now be my life. One responsible for the safety and well-being of not only myself, but of this other person I was growing inside of me. In essence, motherhood made me look up. Look up from my self-centred, looking-out-for-Number-One, how-do-I-get-ahead, life and see the world in front of me. One that sadly, as Joan Williams, law professor at the University of California Hastings, says in the Motherload film "was never set up for women."
So what is a woman to do in a world that is not set up for her? How does one reconcile the need to be a valuable, contributing member of our economic society and also one who is nurturing the human capital that will one day be valuable, contributing members of said society?
I don't know that anyone has the answers to this just yet. Slaughter thinks that a woman in the White House will affect changes, but I question this as a blanket solution. Other women have held the highest offices of government in other countries before and still the world has not changed significantly for women. Sheryl Sandberg thinks that women need to lean-in and actively seek the higher paying, higher ranking jobs we want, but she forgets how she got to the place she is in now, in part by hiding the fact that she was sneaking home at 5:30 to have dinner with her children.
In THIS world, one has to make compromises. For me, the decision to stop working was made for me due to medical circumstances, but the decision to STAY at home after my children were born was all mine. This is the compromise I made. My former career, for this new version of my life. It's one that I would likely make again and one that in hindsight, made me realize how much I was trying to play the game of "work/career" with a set of rules that were never going to let me win. So, yeah, I forfeited the game and 'opted out'.
And so the two sides of me sometimes get into a bit of a kerfuffle with each other over this. I strive to be an example for my own children of living a wholehearted life and valuing myself and my work, both as a stay at home mother and as a feminist, but the guilt of not being the ideal or "perfect" version for either of these sometimes still gets to me.
Today I came across this post from Karen Walrond, photographer and blogger extraordinaire, and someone I had the pleasure of both meeting and hearing speak at Mom 2.014 last week. Here's what she had to say about comparison.
"I believe that comparison -- that is, comparing yourself or your work or your art with another person('s) -- is ultimately and almost without exception a waste of time. In my opinion, when you compare yourself with someone, you're comparing all of you -- your work, your thoughts about your own work, the effort behind your work, your thoughts about yourself -- with the appearance of someone else or their work at one instance in time, having no knowledge of its context. In other words, comparing yourself or your work with anyone else or their work is inherently an unfair comparison. It should be avoided. Besides, I do believe that it is patently impossible to create effectively in someone else's voice -- the inevitable result is disappointment. Accepting that you will do what you do differently from everyone else is incredibly freeing, and should be lived whole-heartedly."
This made me think... do you know what I do differently from everyone else?
I do this whole Stay at Home Feminist thing differently than anyone else. I know that in however small the ways may be, I AM affecting change. I am giving a voice, my voice, to other mothers and women in the world of feminism and beyond. And I am going to do my darnedest for the rest of my life to make sure that motherhood does not remain "the unfinished business of feminism".
