Meditations on Feminism

I am a feminist, but that word has been claimed by so many people that it approaches meaninglessness. I take as a definition of feminism that:



There are structural objects, mechanisms, and individual behaviors, that deny women the ability to receive treatment that comports with justice in a way that differs from how those objects, mechanisms and behaviors relate to men. Feminism is dedicated to removing or minimizing the differences between how these objects, mechanisms and behaviors affect women and how they affect men.



So I get frustrated by certain veins of the feminist movement, particularly in the blogosphere, that seem to be non-ideological, and that favor political movements on the basis of affiliation rather than being consistent in their advocacy on an issue basis. I am particularly frustrated by feminists who make other '-isms' a part of feminism rather than acknowledging that the feminists themselves are making non-feminist moral choices that are valid without needing to be integrated as a part of feminism. A prime example is the tendency of certain circles in feminism to take anti-colonialism to be a feminist force, such that opposition to neo-colonial forces is more important than advocating for the end of policies within colonized societies that are explicitly anti-woman or anti-feminist.


An example of this would be laws that compel cultural integration by immigrants, particularly in European countries with large muslim populations. The experience in Europe has been that in Muslim communities that do not assimilate into the surrounding culture, practices like honor killing, casual domestic violence, female genital mutilation and forced marriage are all much more common. Feminist opposition to racist laws is, in this case, anti-feminist, whether or not it's right.


I also get frustrated by the conflation of things that are anti-woman and anti-feminist. While I think it is true that anything that is anti-woman is also anti-feminist, I also think that certain things may be anti-feminist without being anti-woman. An example is certain strains of anti-choice advocacy, which, when sincere, acknowledge the problem of opposing a woman's control over her own body, but balance it against what they perceive as human life. Such positions, when they demonstrate serious moral confrontation and balancing, are anti-feminist without being anti-woman.



Finally, it drives me up the goddamn wall when male incompetence at things like cleaning is taken as an anti-woman or anti-feminist position. There are messy people in the world. The messy people tend to be men, but they aren't all men. If a man doesn't particularly care about having things be organized or neat, then he probably hasn't developed the skill. He certainly doesn't need to have develoepd the skill at the level his partner may want for their shared space. Under such circumstances, it is not anti-feminist to acknowledge that two partners, regardless of gender, may have strengths and weaknesses and that when such strengths and weaknesses exist, they should focus on what they're good at. While this may provide opportunities for the reinforcement of traditional gender roles, it can be handled with a particular sensitivity to feminist principles if the actual desires of the parties are examined. To wit, a man may be equally entitled to complain about his girlfriend not being able to help install speaker systems. If a woman wants complicated speakers, she should be able to help put them together. If a man wants a clean home, he should be able to clean.



However, if a man does not care about having a clean home, then his claims of incompetence or blindness are not anti-feminist. If a woman is not obsessed with having high-quality sound on her computer, there is no reason for her to know how to install speakers. These things are not of different levels of overall importance. Social judgments on women for having unclean homes are similar to social judgments on men for not having achievements in traditionally male spheres, and as a result, the anxieties that either partner in a heterosexual relationship feel about the separate spheres are equally valid, and the disparity between having a home that is simply not at a hazardous level of mess versus having a genuinely clean home is the same as having a computer that only has an internal speaker versus having a set of high-quality speakers.



Obviously I'm invested in this last point. I just moved, and my girlfriend did much more of the unpacking than I did, and a good bit more packing than I did as well. I, meanwhile, arranged the movers, the cable, the internet, the electricity, switched over the mail, handled the finances of the change, bought a bed, had the TV installed on the wall, set up the computer, and am in the process of setting up the kitchen (the dishwasher's on the fritz). We have different priorities and different strengths; it doesn't mean I was anti-feminist for being a little hopeless with the packing/unpacking. I would have thrown everything in boxes indiscriminately, and then laid it all out on the floor of the new place once we got there and taken a few weeks to put things away. It just wasn't that important to me.



Of course, in any relationship, you have to make your partner's priorities your own. I should have done more. But I'll make it up by focusing on things I'm good at that I can do for her, going forward.