How to relieve tension: A list.
I feel like today is a list day. The past few days (weeks?) have been trying ones around here. I have an almost 7 year old son who wishes he was a grown up so he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants, who thinks he KNOWS everything and who likes to speak at a volume that most people reserve for the front row of an ACDC concert.
So because of all the yelling that I have been doing, all the frustrations I am feeling, all the tension in my upper back, I give you the following:
The top 15 reasons my kid is the BEST EVER!
1. He gives full body hugs. Arms, legs, all of him is in it.
2. Regardless of how crappy our day is, he tells me how much he loves me before he goes to sleep at night. Most of the time it is "more than all the grains of sand on all the beaches in all the world".
3. He knows more about dinosaurs than any other person I know, big or little!
4. He still crawls into bed with me every morning for a snuggle and sleeps in my arms exactly like he did when he was an infant.
5. He has the core strength of an Olympic gymnast and could likely shame a grown man with his plank and one handed push ups!
6. He has some MAD illustrating skills and can draw a wicked Godzilla (circa 1998).
7. When he laughs, he does so with his whole body and soul!
8. He bugs her mercilessly every day, but on the playground, NO ONE messes with his baby sister.
9. He can climb anything. And scares the SHIT out of me doing so!
10. He wears his heart on his sleeve and is not afraid of his emotions or of showing them. It's the part of him I know he got from me.
11. We have a secret mom and kid handshake that means "I love you".
12. He will eat almost anything at least once!
13. He calls me on my bad language or when I break any of our house rules.
14. He is not fearless, but will push himself to face his fears and overcome them.
15. He is and always will be my baby boy!
I do love this kid!
natasha~
~~~~~~~~~~
Summer Blog Challenge: Updated List Here!
first instincts
As you may or may not know, my first foray into motherhood was not a smooth road. It was more like the Dakar Rally to be honest. At twenty-six weeks pregnant I was diagnosed with gestational hypertension and immediately admitted to hospital. And what followed for the next nine weeks was an uphill battle to grow a healthy baby, while flat on my back. Did I mention that we were building a house at the same time too? Yeah, this time in our lives was quite the opposite of stress-free and relaxed.
At our 35 week ultrasound we heard the words we had been preparing for, "It is time." Our baby was the size of a 30-week fetus and my body just wasn't giving him enough sustenance anymore and he needed to be delivered. On the evening of December 11, 2006, after a surprisingly fast induction, our tiny, fuzzy, 3 lb, 13 oz, skinny little baby, quite literally flopped his way into the world and onto the delivery room bed. I gave him one kiss and he disappeared with his father and a brigade of nurses and residents into the bowels of the NICU.
Our days and nights blurred and became about life in the neanatal intensive care unit. Wires, tubes, beeps, blips and alarms, blue lights, an emergency transfer to another hospital to see a specialist and back again the next day. I honestly can't remember much of those first few weeks of my child's life. I spent about 18 hours a day at the hospital and Christmas 2006 didn't really happen that year. I had one focus, and one focus alone; feed my baby, help him grow and bring him home.
I was a tired, stressed, on edge, first-time mother, with a tiny baby, who needed so much of me and from me and once we got him home, this did not change. He needed to be held constantly (or I needed to hold him constantly) and fed almost every hour. I did not sleep, I am sure I forgot to eat most days and I spent countless nights with tears streaming down my face and onto my sore nipples every time I got up and moved to another room to feed him, so as not to wake my husband.
I have the pictures from this time in our lives and in most of them I am smiling, but for the life of me, right at this moment, I can't remember half of what happened in those first 4-5 months. I know that at least once a day I would be breastfeeding him in our chair and then wake up 20 to 30 minutes later, with a kink in my neck, not able to remember falling asleep or knowing how long we had been there and thankful that I hadn't dropped the baby.
I was obsessed with my little preemie's weight and became a regular weekly fixture at the public health clinic. I charted his pees and poops and I timed how long he fed on each breast and the intervals between feedings. I scheduled his naps like a drill sergeant and I had a three ring binder to house all my colour-coded charts. My poor baby was slowly becoming a set of numbers that somehow I had to make sure all added up.
And then, probably around the same time that I was about to lose my mind and a friend suggested I attend a La Leche League meeting, something clicked. I realized that I was reading too many books and blogs and forums about how to do this mothering thing. I was listening to the advice and good intentions of everyone around me and I had not even considered listening to myself or to my child.
I threw away all the charts and the ugly binder. I got rid of the timers and gadgets to remind me which breast was up next and I let go of trying to control every aspect of our new life. I came to realize that doing so just meant that I ended up frustrated and depressed that I couldn't actually control any of it.
I looked at my baby and not the charts that I had assumed he had to measure up to. I listened to him. I fed him when he wanted to be fed. More often than not, in bed, lying down with him. We slept together. Better than we both had in MONTHS. I wore him in our favourite sling and we found our comfort zone with nursing in public. We started to go out more, made new friends and I continued to let go of my need to control and schedule every moment of his life.
I started to worry less and relaxed into motherhood more and a natural rhythm to our days and nights started to emerge. I admit that sleep was still our most difficult hurdle. My husband wanted our baby to sleep in his own room and my son wanted none of that! I believe that had we not pushed back on this so much and just let him continue to sleep with us (as we ended up doing most nights anyhow), we might have avoided all the nights of trying all the different no-cry-gentle-shushing-sleeping-on-the-floor-sleep solutions and whatever other tactics suggested in the sleep-book-du-jour we happened to be reading. Yet despite this, I finally felt like I was doing motherhood the way I was meant to.
Why all this reminiscing about early motherhood you ask?
I wrote this with a friend in mind. I think she may be struggling a bit with being a new mom and trying to figure it all out and get it right. The sleep, the breastfeeding, all the other stuff that still needs doing, all of it is overwhelming. I want to remind her, and all new mamas, that motherhood is in us. It is written in our mitochondrial DNA from our grandmothers, grandmothers, grandmothers and we just need to trust in our nature, our instincts, to access it.
Think of a mama cat who has her first litter of kittens. She has never done this before, but she makes a nest, she births her babies all by herself, she licks them out of their caul, chews off the umbilical cords, starts nursing the first one even before the next one is delivered and will eventually eat the afterbirth and placenta. No one taught her to do these things and she didn't read "What to Expect when you are Expecting a Litter of Kittens." She is following her instincts and doing what in in her nature to do and what her babies need her to do.
Perhaps, for some, the charts and the books and the schedules help to make the transition to motherhood easier. It makes sense to want an Operations Manual or Policy and Procedures binder for a new job, and in this regard, there is no lack of written material out there to read and use as our manuals for motherhood.
I would like to propose that we look deeper within ourselves for our own motherhood manual. It is there, just waiting to be accessed. And what I have learned is that the best way to access it, is to throw away all the other books, focus on your baby and listen to what your heart, your body and your mind are telling you do to.
If your child is crying and "the book" says don't pick him/her up, but your gut is twisting up with anxiety and the cries are like knives in your brain... LISTEN TO YOUR GUT and hold your child!
If you know what your baby does when he/she is hungry, but "the book" says to wait 3 hours between feedings to get a good schedule going... throw away that book, watch for these hunger cues and FEED YOUR BABY!
If you know that the only way your baby is going to sleep is safe and warm in your arms and against your chest and beating heart... then establish a safe place to co-sleep and SLEEP WITH YOUR CHILD! ( I am almost certain that you will get more sleep too!)
Trust your instincts mamas. They are there for a reason. And as it was for our grandmothers, grandmothers grandmothers, it is and always will be about survival. These days it may not be a saber-toothed tiger that is the main threat, but the constant bombardment of images and information about 'how to be the good mother" can be just as devastating to us!
Take a deep breath and relax.
You got this one, Mama!
[youtube]http://youtu.be/Vw4KVoEVcr0[/youtube]
natasha~
~~~~~~~~~~~
I took a teeny little hiatus from the Summer Blog Challenge these past few days. I am sorry, but life trumps blogging and really, if I have no life, I have nothing to write about, so it is actually a win-win for everyone!
Be sure to check out the other fine #summerblogchallenge writers who have no lives... JUST kidding! Liam, Zita, MagzD, Peter, Christine, Cliff, Hethr, April, Karen, and Kim all have wonderful lives that you can go read all about on their blogs!
Feminist Fare Fridays: Edition #2.
Summer is winding down at our house and the kids and I are trying to squeeze in the last of our city's summer festivals, beautiful weather and lazy days of doing whatever we want before school starts and schedules and routines take over. I have been spending more time away from the internet because of this, but don't worry, I still managed to curate some of this past week's feminist fare for you!
~~~~~~~~~~
1. I like the Onion. Satire makes us look at our world and realize how incredibly worked up we all get over a lot of silly things. And I will admit that a few times I have been almost fooled by their articles....almost. Last week though, they crossed the line with a post titled, "Adolescent Girl Reaching Age Where She Starts Exploring Stepfather's Body". I don't care if it is supposed to be satire, this was NOT FUNNY. As a survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of a trusted neighbour when I was 12 years old, this post made me sick to my stomach and was incredibly triggering. How many times does this need to be said? Sexual Assault is not funny, RAPE is not funny, ABUSE is NOT FUNNY!!! Please stop trying to make it funny. It is never going to work. {Sigh}
~~~~~
2. Do you know what the Bechdel Test (for movies/TV/literature) is? I actually didn't until early this month. In a nutshell it goes like this:
To pass the test your movie must have the following:
1) there are at least two named female characters, who
2) talk to each other about
3) something other than a man.
Think about it for a bit. Pick your top five favourite movies and see if they pass. NONE of my favourites pass (Sound of Music, Dirty Dancing, Highlander-don't ask!, Breakfast Club and Shawshank Redemption). And it seems that there is a reason for that. This is an older post, written in 2008 by Jennifer Kesler, but as you can see, writing male leads FOR a target male audience with female roles serving only as props for these men, seems to be the norm in Hollywood. And as far as I can see from the last few movies/television series I have watched, (with the exception of breakthrough series like Netflix's Orange Is the New Black which feature a mainly female cast) not much has changed in the past five years. Definitely something to think about next time you are spending your life's savings to go see a movie at the fancy new theatre.
~~~~~
3. Blogger Nate Pyle wrote an incredibly compelling post about a future conversation he is going to have with his young son. I think it is a good reminder to all of us about how we 'see' those around us; man or woman, black or white, gay or straight and everything in between...
"Humans objectify the things they love in effort to control them. If you truly love a person, do not reduce them to an object. The moment you objectify another human – woman or man, you give up your humanity."
~~~~~
4. My wonderful online friend, fellow fabulous feminist and all around really cool chick, Avital Norman Nathman has complied an incredible list of essays from mothers of all walks of life and written a book called "The Good Mother Myth:Redefining Motherhood to Fit Reality". As of this week, the book is available for pre-sale on Amazon.com. Go ahead, be one of the first ones to get this book in your hands and maybe, just maybe we can all stop trying to live up to some great mythological deity of perfection!
'till tomorrow my lovelies,
Natasha~
A different kind of home birth
I haven't written a post about our Natural Urban Home in over a year. Which corresponds to the approximate amount of time it has taken me to get it to the point where I feel as if our home is almost, practically, kind of, mostly 'done'. One of the DIY projects that I have been asked about the most is our home's living wall. Having a wall of plants, a "green" wall in our green home was something that my husband REALLY wanted from day one of planning our dream home. I was leery of this given the fact that I have two thumbs that are about 4 shades darker than the colour of a moonless night and little to no gardening experience to brag about. Yet, the benefits of having a lot of plants are well known for improving indoor air quality and having a beautiful green wall to look at during our long winter months here in Alberta was in and of itself VERY appealing to me and so the project got underway.
It started with a frame for the wall. We wanted it to look like a piece of living art and so I had our amazing contractor/cabinet maker build and install a 6 foot by 4 foot wooden panel of rift-cut oak for the wall behind our sofa. The wood matches the rest of our custom cabinetry in the house.
We then attached our "containers" to the wood panel. B did all the research and figured that the easiest way for us to get the desired look we wanted and the simplest system to install and care for would be Woolly Pockets. I'll let the following video do all the explaining of how brilliant they are and how exactly they work.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/61138204[/vimeo]
Then it was time to shop for plants. I went to The Enjoy Centre for some inspiration (they have a gorgeous 20 foot tall living wall) and some advice from the experts. I then went home with a car full of lush beautiful plants. I will admit that there was some learning to be done with regards to how much soil to use (more than you think) and how big your plants should be when you first plant them. I thought 4 inch plants would be fine and figured they would eventually grow and fill up the space just fine. I was wrong. Bigger is better, and if you want your living wall to look nice and lush from the get go, as I did, then I suggest going with 6-8 inch or bigger plants.
There was some more trial and error as I experimented with placement of the plants and decided whether or not to make one of the pockets my herb garden, something I ended up kiboshing at the last minute. It took me a good two to three weeks to get it all just right and I had to make at least two more trips to the greenhouse for more soil, more plants and more advice!
I am still working on the wall and as with anything that is living and breathing, I am sure it will continue to grow and change as it matures, as some plants do better than others in our environment and as I get better at knowing which plants works best together and endeavour to green up my thumbs some more.
For now though, here is my baby! (And yes, I say MY baby, because for all his desire to have this feature in our house, my husband did diddly-squat to help install and maintain it. He has now been assigned the weekly task of 'feeding' the baby!)
Yes, that's right, I {home} birthed a Living Wall in our Natural Urban Home.
What did you do today?
Natasha~
~~~~~~~~~
This post is part of the #SummerBlogChallenge. Please check out some of the other daily contributions from the following writers: Liam, Zita, Magz, Peter, Christine, April, Cliff, Hethr, and Karen. And for goodness sake, give them some comment-y and sharing love, it takes a lot to write for 30 days straight!
Dinos and darlings
I had a lovely, but long day. I just dragged my fully dressed and almost fully asleep butt out of my daughter's organic, all-natural, 2 inches of wool topper, ridiculously comfortable bed just so I can write something.
I barely have the strength for this, but a #summerblogchallenge is a summer blog CHALLENGE damn it!
We spent the first part of today exploring prehistoric times at our local, uber-cool, full-sized-mechanical-dinosaurs theme park/forest and the afternoon playing at my sister's acreage.
The kids roared and stomped and climbed and dug for fossils and hatched out of giant eggs, all while Lil' C schooled us with the details of his favourite dinosaurs. At my sister's place, they caught frogs and grasshoppers and made gobble-y noises at the not-so-baby-anymore turkey babies.
After a quick car-nap on the drive home, a change of clothes and a hastily made salad, we headed over to our old neighbours place for a BBQ. It was nice to sit and visit with our friends and watch the kids bounce and collide and take turns injuring each other in the trusty old backyard jumpy castle. No permanent damage was done and a wonderful time was had by all.
Sometimes it is helpful to see that other seemingly normal people have kids that are just as crazy as yours are and that you are not the only one dealing with tiny little shitheads darlings who are constantly testing their (and your) boundaries. I am POSITIVE our neighbours felt the same way!
Back home, the poor dog wondering where on earth everyone has been all day and now completely glued to my side, it was bath and bedtime for the darlings.
And alas, it is that time for me too!
Bonne nuit tout le monde et à demain.
Natasha~
P.S. I am a dolt. Last night's post was my Day 1 for the #summerblogchallenge although TODAY is the official first day of the challenge (I don't read instructions well). There are quite a few others joining in on the fun and I encourage you to check them all out as there is a little bit of something for everyone in our eclectic group of writers (Liam, Zita, Magz, Peter, Christine, April, Cliff, Hethr, and Karen).
P.P.S Also... The UPS man brought me my new booties!
P.P.P.S. This post is shit. I am sorry. Let's call it a poem and chalk it up to artistic license (or something like that)!
P.P.P.P.S. I did say that I was tired, right?
Back to School Worries
School brings out the scared, picked-on, not very popular, always in hand-me down clothes, gap-toothed, insecure, child of a broken home, 12 year old in me. In my mind I time travel back almost 30 years and walk down that long lonely hallway lined with army green lockers and ridiculous construction paper themed bulletin boards feeling the eyes of the more popular kids looking at me and judging, pointing, laughing. It's never a fun trip, I assure you.
So you can imagine my apprehension as the start of a new school year approaches. My oldest is entering grade 1 and my baby is going to kindergarten and I am a bit of a basket case right now.
Now, I am not a basket case in the unprepared and procrastinating kind of way. Nope. All school supplies are purchased, backpacks procured, new outfits and indoor shoe needs are all taken care of. I am instead worried about who their teachers are, who they are going to be in their classes with, how they are going to mesh with their friends, new and old, if anyone is going to pick on them, and how they are going to navigate the big bad world of life away from me and the sometimes brutal 'Game of Thrones' that is the playground at recess.
The problem is that while I am internally freaking out about this, externally, I am exhibiting all of these issues that are completely mine as frustration and exasperation with my children. I am yelling more, I am not actually being present for them RIGHT NOW, as I am too worried about what will be happening a month from now. This in turn is making them incredibly sensitive to everything I say or do. My poor girl thinks that every time I tell her something or correct her about anything that she is in deep trouble and then there are tears, lots and lots of tears. 'Not so Little Anymore' C just goes straight to tuning out almost anything I say, in what I assume is a pre-emptive move before he hears me try to say something that he just doesn't want to hear or tell him to do something that he doesn't want to do. If I had a SASS-o-Meter for that one, it would be out the roof right now!
What I am essentially saying is that the level of communication I have with my children at the moment is seriously lacking. I don't really have an excuse for it either, aside from the incessant worrying and my own internal bullies that keep threatening to drag me back to that hallway to be slammed into a locker once again. I worried back then that I was never good enough for anything or anyone, that I was unlovable (yes, yes, I know, I have abandonment issues), and that I would never have any friends who liked me for who I really was. And now, I am afraid I am projecting these fears onto my kids.
I worry that my behaviour as of late, is making them worried that I don't love and accept them for who and what they are. C is always seeking my approval and asking me if I am proud of him, and L worries that if I say I love you to someone other than her that I don't love her anymore. Somehow I have neglected to let them know or tell them the following. I am ridiculously proud of my son. He amazes me everyday with his artwork and illustrations and his incredible grasp of numbers and the basic physics of his world. I love that he is such a sensitive kid and is not afraid to show his emotions, it's the part of him that I know he got from me. And my daughter? She is so much me that sometimes it is a bit scary. She is a goof, has her own incredible sense of style, is carefree and easy with her love and blows me away with her daily silliness and her imagination. I am not sure I could love her more if I tried.
All this worrying and the worrying about worrying going on around here over has everyone functioning at such a heightened level of tension that it really doesn't take much for any one of us to snap. And trust me, you'd think this was a house full of crocodiles with the amount of snapping going on and it is high time for it all to stop.
And I am the only one who can actually do that. (Being a grown-up sucks!)
My kids are not me. They won't have the same experiences that I did growing up and no amount of me worrying about what happened 30 years ago is going to A) make it go away and B) make my relationships with my children any better today. I need to focus all of that energy that I am wasting on worrying, on letting them know all of the ways that I love them and on ensuring that they are secure, confident, kind human beings, who will be able to navigate their worlds better than I was ever able to do way back when. It's time for a good heart to heart with my children and for us to hit the reset button before school starts and I COMPLETELY lose my shit!
Natasha~
If only the people who worry about their liabilities would think about the riches they do possess,
they would stop worrying.
~Dale Carnegie
Photo Credit: abbmona on Flickr
P.S. ...this may or may not be the first post for the 2013 #SummerBlogChallenge.
Feminist Fare Fridays
The internet loves alliterations. Or maybe it is just me. Either way, I needed a way to share some of the writing, posts, videos and general feminist happenings of the week all in one place and on a regular basis for all of you to enjoy. So as of this day, Fridays on the blog shall be known as Feminist Fare Fridays.
I will share with you a small collection of the weeks best (and sometimes worst) feminist musings and a short commentary on each one. And depending on how you look at it, a quick perusal of my twitter timeline tells me that I picked a good week to start.
1. #solidarityisforwhitewomen I am sure you have seen this hashtag on Twitter at some point this past week and wondered what it was all about. If looking at that timeline makes you feel even a bit uncomfortable at all, you gotta let that feeling sink in. THAT is the point of it. For a more in-depth look at what the catalyst was for this particular conversation and what is evolving from it, please check out this post from the hashtag creator, Mikki Kendall and follow her on Twitter at @karnythia. My hope is that one day #solidarity can truly be for ALL, but first, we need to really listen to each other and perhaps lean in to that uncomfortable feeling and acknowledge what exactly that means.
2. I found this video through my daily Upworthiest emails. It is a TEdX talk given by renowned Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie earlier this year and while she is talking about feminism in Africa, her message about what we teach our children and our expectations based on their genders, really hit home for me. We really should all be feminists!
[youtube]http://youtu.be/hg3umXU_qWc[/youtube]
3. And why exactly should we all be feminists? If the video above has not convinced you, please let this one do it.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/3pdbnzFUsXI[/youtube]
Granted this is a small sampling of random people off the street, but that gives this video even more punch. And by punch, I mean to the gut of every woman who has fought long and hard to be treated with respect, and dignity, and equality not just for herself, but for all women! Next time someone asks you if you consider yourself a feminist, especially if you are a woman, think about why you even have the right to speak up and answer that question!
4. The most ridiculous reason I have ever heard to not want to breastfeed was written this past week by a professor of Gender Studies. It is no surprise to anyone who is a regular reader that I am a staunch breastfeeding advocate or that I nursed both my children for 3 and 4.5 years respectively. Is breastfeeding a gender dividing act? Yes, it is. My husband, along with most men, does not produce milk from his mammary tissue, I do. Does this one act, this one aspect of parenting, help to reinforce the social differences between men and women and moms and dads? NO. I do not think it does. Social biases and gender differences and how you address these in your family go far beyond breastfeeding. Come up with a better reason to not breastfeed, Professor, cause I am not buying this one! And seriously, by your own logic, perhaps we should do a "runaround of our bodies to ensure equity" when it comes to the great gender dividing act of pregnancy too. Sheesh!
5. I like Craig Ferguson. There, I said it. And I like this. He's figured out WHY EVERYTHING SUCKS! And while this may not be a particularly feminist topic, perhaps in some way, it is. Media and advertisers still show us and tell us what and who we should aspire to be like...
[youtube]http://youtu.be/ROJKEwYEx8Q[/youtube]
I for one will not bow down to the Gods of youth and stupidity!
Have a great weekend everyone!
natasha~
Feminism: A myriad of differences.
I was about to write "it's a tough time to be a feminist" as the opening line to this post and then I realized where I am, WHO I am, what year it is and I gave my head a good shake. In the past few months and weeks it has become very apparent to me what it means to wear the moniker of 'feminist' and truly embrace what this means in our modern society. And to be perfectly honest, it is not an easy road, or a pretty one, and more often than not, my heart and my mind hurt from the things that I read about or see in my daily life. It is enough that some days, I just have to turn off my phone/internet and remove myself from the hate that exists towards women and retreat back to my easy, pretty, and yes, fully-acknowledged, privileged, bubble of a life.
My bigger problem though is that I am a born 'fixer'. Not on the scale of say, an Oliva Pope mind you, but ask around and you'll know that in a crisis or in the face of problems, I am the level-head, the straight talker, the reality-checker and the one looking for a solution, having the tough conversations and trying to find actionable items that move everyone forward. So when I see a problem, big or small, and when I think I can somehow make a difference, I will more often then not try to fix it.
This explains why I get very invested in causes and peoples stories that may or may not have anything to do with where I live (ex: American politics), what colour my skin is (racism in North America) or whom I choose to love (equal rights for same sex couples). These issues may not be as prominent (or publicized) in my privileged middle class backyard here in Canada, but they are issues that in some way, shape or form, affect the greater world that I live in. Standing idle while these marginalized groups fight for rights so many of us take for granted just doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like I am working at making this world a better one for my children and it doesn't feel right to be an example of complacency in the face of injustice.
I tell my kids all the time that if someone is doing something that they know is wrong or mean, to step up and say, "Hey, that's not nice, please stop doing that'. I also tell them that more often than not, they can accomplish much more when they are working together, than when they are fighting over the semantics of whose turn it is to do this or that.
Which brings me back to feminism.
I've said it before; having children was the turning point for my acknowledgment of my own feminism and the realization that yes, by golly, I am a FEMINIST. But I do understand that for a lot of women, young and old, even saying that out loud can be a tough thing to do. A quick google image search of the word feminist and you come up with four subcategories, Women, Angry, Stereotypes and Anti-Feminist, as well as image after image of protest signs, angry women and memes of "Man-hating, ball-breaking, hairy-legged feminists." I can see how that can be a hard pill for some to swallow. Feminism isn't portrayed as being all that pretty and of course, as we all know, girls and women are supposed to be pretty and feminine and sugar and spice and all that NICE bullshit... RIGHT?
According to who? (That may be the bigger question here.)
Since the beginning of time, women have been portrayed in writing (and therefore in media) as the lesser of the sexes. I mean geez, according to some theologies, GOD even got it wrong the first time and had to replace Lilith (created from the earth as Adam's equal) with Eve, who was then created FROM Adam. And then Eve went and used her brain to question her surroundings and supposedly effed up that perfect utopia for all of us! Seriously ladies, our struggle for equality goes back way farther than we can even imagine!
And we continue to struggle. Only lately, there is something about feminism, especially within the online community that has me concerned. I have seen it before with the dreaded "mommy wars" and the "Breastfeeding vs. Formula-feeding" battles that erupt online and in the media. These so-called (and much baited) wars and battles serve only one purpose. They take attention away from the REAL problems in our society, they deflect any kind of blame or responsibility from the corporate or political culprits who in turn only benefit from this continued in-fighting. These word battles within our communities that are often fraught with emotion and personal investment rarely further any kind of real conversation about the issues at hand and become fodder for trolling and contribute to divisiveness amongst those that are seeking to make positive changes for the good of all.
We all come to our feminism through different paths and from different backgrounds, just as we do to all aspects of our lives. I can not, nor would I presume to understand the journey of a woman of colour on her feminist path, nor would I think I could know the thoughts of a lesbian or trans* woman on her path, nor for that matter, even the journey of the white, cis-gendered, heterosexual woman down the street from me. We are all different people, with different lives, loves and histories. I won't presume to say who has it rougher than anyone else. I also won't dismiss our differences, our histories, nor the inherent privilege that exists on my own journey.
What I also can't dismiss anymore is the fighting that is happening within the feminist movement. Especially within the online feminist community. I appreciate different points of view and I appreciate the education that I have received in the past few weeks, especially from and about WOC and feminism (Please go and read, Audre Lorde's essay, Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference, RIGHT NOW!). I have a backlog of blog posts and articles that I am reading every day and I while I have read some very awful, racist, anti-feminist writing, I have read even more incredibly insightful and beautiful posts, by some of the internet's best feminist writers. I have to say that I have also seen a little too much of the "Bitch Please!" kind of post where the point of our battle is lost in the mire of checking or unchecking one's privilege or lack thereof or lamenting how someone is not doing feminism 'right'. Isn't the point of intersectionality to acknowledge our differences and not judge them?
Late last year, my friend Zita had a line in a wonderful post that I feel once again, fits this situation to a T.
The greatest trick patriarchy ever pulled was convincing women that we are each other’s enemies.
Maybe I am naive in my activism. Maybe I myself am not doing feminism "right" and I'm too idealistic. The thing is, I am not sure we are winning anything right now. Audre Lorde's essay was written in 1980 (have you read it yet?) and it may as well have been written last week. In America, women's rights to bodily autonomy are being revoked in a dangerous state by state game of falling dominos. In the UK, a woman received death and rape threats because she successfully campaigned to have a woman's face on a banknote, in a country that has a QUEEN as head of state. There is a brutal and appalling thing called 'corrective rape' that happens to girls in Africa who are gay and in my own city, we have a men's rights group, with members who truly think that feminists are "the monster that has had so much power and say in our laws, government, and culture."
We have to stop fighting each other. As you can see from the examples above, there are so many other things we have to combat. We have to embrace our differences and stand together. Black, white, asian, Latina, bi-racial, lesbian, gay, queer, trans, straight, and whatever else you want to add to that list... We are all in this together and our voices have more meaning and more impact when they are raised in unison and not against each other. Look at what happened when Wendy Davis stood up (literally) not just for the women of Texas, but for ALL OF US. Never in all my time on the internet did I feel so much a part of such a powerful, positive, and inspiring movement as I did that night! THAT is the kind of feeling and rallying and unity that is going to affect change in our world. If I could have bottled that feeling of hope and solidarity from that night and mass produced it, I would have!
Feminism is not going anywhere anytime soon. We still have a lot of work to do. I will continue to use my own 'fixer' skills as best I can from my end. I will stand up for the women in my community and beyond. I will do everything in my power to see that this world is a better one for my daughter and my son. I will work harder to see feminism from all its myriad of differences and perspectives. For as Audre Lorde said more than 30 years ago:
"The future of our earth may depend upon the ability of all women to identify and develop new definitions of power and new patterns of relating across difference."
Honouring our differences and in solidarity with all,
Natasha~