Skip to main content

International Women's Day

I've always somewhat prided myself on being a feminist (despite the rather unappealing picture that this word brings to mind for many). Of course this made me happy to discover that there is an International Women's Day, but also slightly disturbed that I was not aware of this beforehand. Not knowing this and not knowing much about the history behind the ideology that I've taken as my own made me realize how easy I've had things. I've never really had my belief in the equality of men and women tested.

It's scary being reminded that the rights and freedoms that I take for granted every day would not have been available to me if I was born just 60 years ago, or, for that matter, right now in many other nations. If someone was working to take away these rights would I fight for them? Would I be willing to pay the price that those who've gone before have paid? Some of them likely paid a very high price.

I guess all of us eventually see our beliefs tested and refined by lifes bumps and curves much like the father in the movie "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" who's liberal views were tested by the realization of the effect his view had on his own life and family. Sure it was okay to believe that black people were equal to white people until his daughter fell in love with a black man in a time were that was still not considered acceptable by the majority of society.

I find myself often longing for simplicity and demanding more from myself as a feminist, but what I'm discovering about feminism is that the point is not to create a world where all women do what women could not when freedom to do so was not available, but where we can choose what matters to us...home, family, education, work, etc.

I may complain about the difficulties that having choices causes, but I would not have things any other way.

Comments

  1. ~mMarch 9, 2010 at 2:23 PM

    remember that the black housekeeper also had a problem with the inter-racial marriage and took sidney poitier to task for it! in the same way, women themselves can often slow progress by second-guessing their equality with men.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AmandaMarch 9, 2010 at 2:38 PM

    It's scarily true! I remember sitting in the "Journey's of Women in Christian Tradition" class listening to a discussion on the different views on the roles of gender. I noted that the people who took the more tradional view of men having headship in the family were all women themselves. I think feminism in its extremes and the dirty tricks of those who oppose it have given it a very negative face (feminists are lesbians who hate men, etc). When I was trying to find a picture on the subject to go with the post it took me 20 minutes to find one that didn't seem negative, sexually explicit, or just plain old creepy.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Excursions in beautiful Riviera Nayarit!

Well it's been just over a week now since I got back from my vacation. When I look back it's clear that outside of the normal bumps of any vacation, it was a very pleasant one! My parents and I flew into Puerto Vallarta at around 4pm on Friday July 1. As we stumbled into the crowded airport and attempted to manuever our way through the throngs of sales people, the kissy faces of a number of Mexican men made me suddenly all too conscious of my "Kiss me I'm Canadian" shirt. Oh well, like anyone would dare try with my Mom nearby (she gives off very protective Mom vibes...I think it may be because she's very protective). Anyway after a run in with a sales man who had briefly convinced us he was our Sun Wing Rep, we managed to slump into a nice air conditioned bus that took us the 20 minutes or so to Riviera Nayarit and up to our Resort "Riu Jalisco". It took me a good part of the trip to realize that the "j" is Jalisco is pronounced "h...
1 comment
Read more

Redemption

I spent some of this weekend thinking about the word redemption and what it means. Not necessarily the religious context of it, but the taking a wrong and making it right idea. I think this stuck with me because I watched a few movies over the weekend in which the themes were about making things right and using your pain to help others. Like everyone I have had some painful things happen to me and have struggled with the anger and despair that often accompanies being hurt. In the book The Shack the author calls his main character's pain (due to the murder of his youngest daughter) "the Great Sadness." This makes sense to me because some of the bad things that can happen in life seem so consuming that they haunt you no matter how hard you try to ignore them. I am often reminded of this fact when something new in my life causes me pain (a conflict. a death, etc). All of a sudden the floodgate of old pain re-opens and I find myself back at the beginning of my pain...
2 comments
Read more

Community Theatre is Failing Women

I have grown decidedly more Feminist in my thinking over the years which has made enjoying theatre harder to enjoy lately. There are, of course, excellent shows with diverse and interesting female casts but more often then not, the female characters are flat and uninteresting. It seems like Theatre show creators, performers, and viewers are often more liberal than the average community of people but strangely, despite this, sexism is still rampant. Something I often think about when viewing TV shows and Movies is whether or not what I am viewing would pass the Bechdel Test. The Bechdel Test, for those who are not familiar, was created by Alison Bechdel in her 1985 comic, “Dykes to Watch Out For” and has become a well-known measurement of gender bias in movies. Basically to pass the test the movie must have three things: Two female characters (preferably named), Who talk to each other, About something other than a man. When I first learned about this test...
Post a Comment
Read more