… you think assimilation is the path to equality.
Much like midwives who become medwives, doing everything they can to become accepted by the medical establishment that they virtually become doctors themselves (thus losing the craft in the process), fear of persecution transforms people. Make sure in the fight for equality that you don’t merely blend in to those with whom you desired equality.
Besides, how equal can you be when you’ve eliminated all differences? That’s not equality, it’s removing diversity.
Men and women are equal, but they are not the same. Women have every right to be whoever they want to be, but their biological role containing the ability of creation, and the process through which that is carried out, is their own. An innate and maybe timeless ability that maybe escapes human knowledge and understanding in completion is at work and to be respected– not to be owned, or dominated, so turn a blind eye to a patriarchal system if you must, but do not label it “feminism”. That’s only misogyny with a vagina.
A recent comment I received on my post Feminism and Overcompensating:
(by “Seriously?”, who was too much of a coward to leave their real name and e-mail address)
Seriously? (02:13:23) :
As a feminist, I’m surprised to see other women calling themselves as such being so blatantly anti-science. The idea that there’s some mystical goddess being waiting to be released through extreme pain is pure fantasy – It’s biological essentialism and it takes some special rhetorical gymnastics to spin that as feminism. there’s nothing special or noble about labour pain.
Science is fact, whether you find it inconvenient or not. Science is not male, and implying that there’s some viable, magical alternative to it created by womym and squashed by the patriarchy is a huge insult to female scientists and feminists in general. Stop making us look like idiots – mainstream society already thinks that we are deluded and out of touch with reality.
This sort of thinking needs to be put down along with creationism, the people who think 9/11 was an inside job, and all the other conspiracy theories.
Right, because you don’t look like an idiot. *eyeroll*
My response:
You can label yourself a “feminist” all you want, but when you ignore the history of the medical field and specifically maternity, specifically in America, over the last couple of centuries, you aren’t doing women any favors. To you, feminist simply means holding the same jobs and wearing the same coats. I don’t care who can play a part. That’s for puppets. My idea of what feminist is transcends that.
If you want to think that there is nothing mystical in life, or that we don’t have any “magical” qualities, that is your CHOICE. Science fact is stranger than fiction, so I don’t need to fabricate or embellish. The truth is, we don’t know everything there is to know about science. What we DO know is the beginning of how the brain and body work together. Those things aren’t “magical”, they’re science. The primal mind during labor is science. Mammalian physiology is science. 2/3 of OB/GYN guidelines are NOT based on science… and you dare to align yourself with current authority in the name of Science? That’s science “blasphemy”.
Our nature in labor is what I am interested in others acknowledging. It calls back to something in our ancestral past, which is also history. You are an animal, I am an animal. Asking us to forsake that in lieu of man-made “science”, as if technology helped us rise above our own animal needs and nature… THAT is the magical thinking. You’d rather believe some shiny pill has everything you need to escape the condition you are in, rather than finding a way to cooperate with nature. It’s about ownership.
Real feminists have open minds. Real feminists know their power is beyond 21st century habits. In 200 years no one will give a shit that you were “just like them” (men) in whatever position, if that position was wrong. What you spout is closed, final, absolute, and thinks it is advanced. And it blindly follows. It ignores the animal science behind what we are and where we come from. That’s more akin to creationism than my beliefs. It’s denial. You can have religious denial, or you can have occupational/professional denial, or societal and cultural denial… but if you are ignoring history and science for status, it’s still Denial.
Feminists concerned with status over fact are sellouts.
Thanks to my husband; in conversation on the matter he used the word “assimilation”, which inspired me.
This is what a feminist looks like.
theperfectbirth 