Op-Ed
The New F-Word
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Don’t Kill the Messenger
Feminism is dead. Long live feminism. It all started when I watched an astonishing documentary about a pregnant Austrian man. The poignant piece detailed the novel scientific procedure that now enables men to be implanted with embryos, and carry them to term. The message of this magnum opus: say goodbye to the concept of gender as we know it.
OK. So it wasn’t a cinematographic masterpiece. And I may have used the term ‘documentary’ rather loosely.
In fact, I was speaking of 1994’s Junior, a perky family comedy staring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Though the performance of Mr. Maria Shriver left something to be desired, the medically-inconceivable, 109 minute plotline sure made me giggle. But that’s because I laugh when I’m nervous. [I’m told it’s disconcerting]. In fact, I was overwhelmed by a potent sense of… frustration.
Screw you, anatomy.
My grandmotherwhatever, a monkey-like creature I’ll call Agnes, was a child-bearer. All her daughters and their daughters since have been the same. And now, that beautiful, life-generating potential is stored within me. But I still can’t help thinking there’s something unfair about it.
Women of all backgrounds, regardless of their tastes and intentions, are united in a daily, communal struggle against one painfully undeniable fact: we are womb-laden creatures.
If we aren’t already mothers, we’re potential mothers. Without being asked whether we actually plan on poppin ‘em out, we’re viewed as maternity-leave takers, mommy-track pursuers, and family-comes-first liabilities. Employers look at me and assume I’d rather hear an offspring butcher Bach at a piano recital than high-tail it to a late-night meeting. They tiptoe around the hazy hodgepodge of hormones I apparently have bubbling to the surface at every moment; they anticipate an attack of the elusive PMS monster.
Yeah, lady. Your breasts are a burden.
But that idea probably makes you uncomfortable, right? Sure, the fact that I have mammary glands probably means I will earn less money doing the same job as my brother. But still, it seems folks today just don’t feel like talking about it.
Fine. Maybe feminism’s not dead. But it sure has changed. Our mothers’ feminism was visible. It was loud, and it got ugly. Off came the bras and the make-up. Out came the leg hair and the lesbians.
But we’ve come a long way from our boycotting bubbes. Our generation has embraced a ‘Sex and the City’ feminism. It’s not that we can’t handle strong women. In fact, they’re status quo. But being a strong woman today means working hard, caring for the family…and doing it all with manicured nails and a hair-do. Yes, we’re proud of being female, but still careful to appear feminine.
‘Feminists’ used to just be gals fighting for equal opportunity. Really, female and feminist should go hand in hand. Instead, ‘feminist’ has become another f-word. It’s an insult, hurled, without a scintilla of hesitation at women who show more strength than we’re used to. And the strong women out there? They’ve become wary of each other, fearful of the reaction that displays of gender solidarity could provoke.
A lot of these struggles came to the fore during Senator Hillary Clinton’s presidential run. If American women voiced support for Hillary, critics reduced it to apolitical, gendered calculations. [She wears lipstick. I wear lipstick. Me vote Hillary]. If American women didn’t like Hillary, it was dismissed as some deeply psychological women-hating-women feline bickering.
And when Lady C. finally fell, women pounced on the chance to endow her campaign with a feminist legacy. [Ed. That’s why I’m starting a new club at Cornell. “Chelsea in 2020”. E-board positions available.]
The hype has gone up again since Governor Sarah Palin’s Vice Presidential nomination. Palin thrust herself onto the national stage with a Hillary-esque speech about the glass ceiling. But while political commentators can’t seem to get over her XX factor and what it could do to the female vote, there’s really nothing about Palin’s record to suggest that she has any kind of uniquely female agenda.
Her nomination — and the claims about its importance — are a slap in the face to women, especially Hillary supporters. The suggestion that women would be so blind-sighted by Palin’s stilettos that they would overlook her blatant lack of political experience is offensive. Sure, she has a disabled child who, the Republicans like to remind us, she might have aborted — and didn’t. So? Most of the male candidates being considered share Palin’s views on abortion. In the end, no number of un-aborted Palin babies is going to convince me that Lady Alaska’s on my side.
But the general obsession with the ‘women’s question’ that has defined this election goes far beyond either Palin or Clinton. “A woman on the ballot,” we cheered! “What on earth will the world think about a Commander in Chief who wears blush?”
What I found most amusing this election season was this pervasive sense Americans have that running a female candidate somehow makes them cutting-edge.
Cutting edge my ass.
Ireland, New Zealand, Britain, Israel, Germany, Mozambique, Chile and India are just some of the countries already on the presidential lady-loving bandwagon. Many of these countries have quotas which mandate female participation in government.
It blows my mind that a country that envisions itself as the vanguard of ‘Progress’ pats itself on the back just for having a chick almost make it to the DNC. But maybe that’s just part of the new trend of congratulating ourselves on mediocre accomplishments … like having fifth-graders who can read.
The problem amounts to this: while today’s feminism may be sexier than it once was, a lot of the problems are still the same. Many lucrative fields remain bastions of misogyny; the boys’ club mentality still has a stronghold in the workplace and the White House.
I have hunch that The Terminator had these great social concerns in mind when he signed on to do a film about a pregnant man.
That’s why I’ll forever have Herr Arnold in mind when I’m considering Governor Palin’s future in politics.
Hasta la vista, baby!
Katie Engelhart is a senior editor at The Sun. She can be reached at kengelhart@cornellsun.com. Don’t Kill the Messenger will appear alternate Thursdays this semester.
American feminism
As a foreigner in America, it blows my mind that the media keeps reminding everybody that Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin are in fact, above else, women. No other place have I seen such a sexist coverage of a political process. This is not to say that it is easy for women in other countries, just that it is not such a new, exciting, happening thing to have women political leaders.