In Which I Try to Explain My Feminism in Under a Gazillion Words

MommyTime — Tue, 13 May 2008 10:44:21 -0500

It has been brought to my attention that my disparaging comments about The Man in my post about loving Kirtsy may be perceived as general man-bashing, so I'd like to set things right.

In
terms of this particular controversy, I am sure there are plenty of men
in the blogosphere, and the Internet more generally, who would be
horrified over the actions Skirt! took and the means its
representatives employed. And there are also certainly women who would
think I am making a mountain out of a molehill and enough already with
the feminist mommy stuff (though I suspect they don't read this blog).

In more general terms, it is because I feel so strongly that it is important to resist gender
stereotypes that I chose "The Man" as a useful phrase to indicate a
subset of the human species, the subset that believes deeply in
hierarchies of power based on money and ruthlessness and the silencing
of dissenting opinion -- a subset, I might add, that is not exclusively
populated by males. Historically, resisting "The Man" (with capital
letters, like a title) has not meant belittling all men, but rather
resisting people who exploit positions of power...people who have
traditionally been male, as masculinity was long a prerequisite for
socio-political power in this country.

That is changing. Slowly.
But I still think that there are a lot of ways in which the authority
to speak, the right to assert the value of one's labor, the right to
make choices about how publicly (or not) to live one's life are not
granted fully equally to women. The recent ubiquitous discussions about
whether or not mommy blogging is exploiting children is just one
example. In everything from a scathing set of commentary on a
not-so-nice article in Canada's Globe and Mail,
to a somewhat snarky interview with Dooce on the Today Show, to a whole
series of high- and low-profile blog responses to the accusations that
women who blog are pimping their children to make a buck, the Internet
has been ablaze lately with conversations about whether women have the
moral right to write about their children online. I could write reams
on this issue, but I will restrain myself to the following observations:

*
When autobiographies first gained real popularity in the Victorian
period, there was tremendous controversy over whether it was
un-gentlemanly (women, of course, would not have dared enter such an
indiscreet public forum as to "tell all" about their private lives) to
reveal one's personal life in public. Male autobiographers resolved
this issue by focusing largely on their career and personal
development, and leaving domestic life out of the picture.

*
When women started publishing autobiographies later in the 19th
century, they tended to focus either exclusively on their domestic
lives (as appropriate subject matter for women) or solely on their
professional lives (if they were someone like Florence Nightingale,
say), so that there was no untoward intermixing of personal and public
personae.

* Although it's been 150 years or so since then, there
is apparently still a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of many
people's stomachs when they consider that one's personal life and one's
professional life might, in fact, overlap.

Blogging is new
terrain. Making money from blogging, even newer. It is normal, I think,
for people to question and challenge what is new, normal to resent
those who took the risk first and saw a big payoff, normal to rethink
things that might have been done without due consideration for the
consequences. But I feel that there is a certain level of vitriol that
is sometimes aimed at women and that men in similar circumstances do
not always suffer. Not a critical soul I've encountered,
in this controversy I've followed, has mentioned Daddy Bloggers. And
while they are certainly a much smaller number, there are plenty of
them whose sites contain kid photos and potty training stories -- and who run ads and make a buck in the process.
Dads who blog seem to get props for being involved in their kids lives
("look at that awesome story about a dad-and-me activity!") while moms
who blog are being slammed all over the Internet for being exploitive
when they should just be spending time with their kids already.

I'm
not saying everyone slams moms who blog. I'm certainly not saying all
the critics of those moms are male (a giant proportion of them are
women, in fact). I'm not saying I don't like Dad blogs. (In fact, shout
out to Jim at BusyDad and Jeremy at Discovering Dad for being awesome dad bloggers!) What I am saying
is that it is still all too common to take women to task for putting
themselves in a public spotlight or for not being "appropriately"
domestic (where appropriate = some impossible June Cleaver ideal,
which, by the way, was staged in a TV studio).

While
there are certainly many issues to weigh and many things to consider
carefully before choosing to post pictures and potty training stories
of one's child online, lumping all mothers who blog into the category
of "exploitative women who care more about buying new shoes than about
their own offspring" is as irresponsible and ridiculous as it would be
of me to say "all men wish Sk*rt would just go away and are annoyed
that the rebranding as Kirtsy might make those uppity women even more
successful."

And so, to get back to Sk*rt vs. Skirt!, I think it
is still common for women to get the short end of the stick when it
comes to power and litigation and rudeness. That doesn't mean all men
are rude power-mongers, or even that all rude power-mongers are men.
But it does mean that The Man is a thing (not a person) worth resisting
-- whether you yourself are male or female.

I am not sorry for choosing that phrase which, even on carefully rereading my previous post,
I think works in that context to describe accurately what was
happening. (And, by the way, this was a series of events spearheaded by
a magazine started by some women, who in this particular instance
happen to be acting like The Man.) But I am deeply sorry if I caused
offense.

And I hope if you've gotten to the end of these
gazillion words, you understand that my definition of my own feminism
is that I try to instill in my children, and to respond to the world
around me, as if gender is not a fixed construct but a flexible one. As
if our own masculinity and femininity are things we must work
constantly to shape and define. As if we must embrace what feels right
and true for our own gendered selves, and resist what feels imposed
upon us by someone else's standards that--much like someone else's
shoes--just do not fit us. Or, in terms that my Son might understand:
Girls can be pirate captains, and some boys do like pink. And all of them should be smiled upon for making those choices for themselves.

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In Which I Try to Explain My Feminism in Under a Gazillion Words