Why I Am Not a Feminist

So the fact that I feel compelled to include this post is mostly a result of the way in which many people have come to understand intelligent womanhood in general, and intelligent motherhood in particular. More specifically, it stems from the incarnation (in-web-ation?) of both in the "mommyblog." (Slogans like "thinking + motherhood = feminist" come to mind.) Don't get me wrong: I appreciate these women. I am grateful for their spunk, their commitment to natural, gentle parenting, their willingness to question what they see as the prevailing assumptions about gender and (in)equality. But I am also often saddened by the tone taken in such blogs. And a little baffled. I'm an intelligent woman (or so I like to think...) Why can't I relate?


Before I begin to explain why I can't and don't call myself a feminist, I need to come up with a working definition of the word. Yeah, I know: easier said than done. But what exactly is it that I'm refusing to call myself? I'm very much aware that I may get to the end of this post, and still get comments from people insisting that I am, in fact, a feminist, in my own way, etc., etc. (Honestly, this seems about as patronizing to me as it would likely seem to a self-proclaimed atheist or agnostic were I to insist that really, truly, they were a Christian "in their own way." But if you feel the need to do this, PLEASE include some kind of working definition of "feminist," so that we at least know what we are talking about!)


Back in the day, my undergraduate "Feminism and Philosophy" class was defining feminism as the belief that women have been and continue to be systematically, deliberately and seriously discriminated against in various ways. I know self-proclaimed feminists who would take issue with aspects of this definition (deliberate discrimination, for instance), but in general it seems like a pretty good one to me. Maybe another way of saying it is that a feminist believes that women must fight not to get the short end of the stick.


 The first problem I have with this view is that it seems to undervalue the unique joys of being female. In order to think that women are being gypped, I have to look at what women have, compare it to what men have, and come to the conclusion that men have more, women have less. Aside from the near impossibility of such a task, which seems to require a kind of omniscience, there is the problem that such a judgment must have as a presupposition that the particular things that are unique to men or that men tend to have more of are better than those things that are unique to women or that women tend to have in abundance. I look at my children and I think of the unspeakable joy of carrying them, birthing them and nursing them, and I cannot believe this. Another way to explain this is my reaction to popular attitude t-shirts for young girls that say things like "Play like a girl: Beat the boys." I don't want my daughters to believe that "beating the boys" is the standard of excellence. In my mind, a fight like this defeats its own purpose by setting up what boys or men can do as the pinnacle of human achievement, and forgetting that women have their own unique gifts and vocations.

Another problem with such a view, as I see it, is that it is primarily reactionary: we've been harmed, we've been injured, we've been discriminated against, so we must fight back to ensure that it stops happening. I guess from my perspective, fighting back IS the short end of the stick. It takes up too much energy, and keeps us from living. If I'm spending all my time trying to "beat the boys" instead of kicking the ball (or whatnot), I'm missing out on the game. What's to stop us from just living, as women, doing what we do, exercising our wills with whatever freedoms our current position in life offers us? Must we be so quick to jump to those odious comparisons?