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Misogyny entails dismissing that which has traditionally been associated with women as frivolous and meaningless. And one of the risks feminists run in counteracting patriarchy is of accepting the idea that what have traditionally been women’s things are frivolous and meaningless. Paid work, or holding your own with the boys, or whathaveyou, are considered the serious ways to go.
This does everyone a disservice. I’m of the firm opinion that the pursuit of social justice ought to be about expanding ways of living, not dismissing the ones that have been considered embarrassing or valueless. This is why one of my pet peeves is making masculine clothing unisex and leaving it at that, with masculinity and men as the default, while femininity is shoved off into the corner. Maybe it’d be an idea to open up masculine and feminine expression to everybody, rather than, in the name of expanded gender expression, reinforcing the idea that women and femininity are the special exception?
Some of the main joys in my life that get shoved aside in this boo women’s work narrative are nurturing and creating. I’m not yet a mother, but I’m loving having the charge of my little pets. Caring for another being strengthens something in me, and I’m feeling the connection of this benefit my soul. Fulfilling needs, building relationships, filling yourself up? This is the kind of thing everyone should have access to if they want it. And being creative with traditionally female crafts is helping me to engage with production and giving in ever more conscious ways. I’m spending a lot of time thinking about and showing I care for the people I’m knitting for, I’m avoiding supporting exploitative producers, and I’m expanding my skillset in ways that hark back to my foremothers, from whose work I derive so much use and pleasure.
For all that, I’m finding my project of consciously practicing femininity a little difficult because it takes effort. And, as much as compulsory femininity has been a way of sapping women’s money and time, actively choosing to perform it is throwing up a different kind of challenge for me. It’s requiring me to put some effort into how I present and feel. And learning that I can take time and effort on myself is a valuable lesson to learn for a woman to learn, and one that I’ll hopefully take with me well beyond my experimentations in the feminine.
Where I find a lot of ways of challenging misogyny hurtful and something from which I need space for self-care, finding my way through traditional women’s domains is something I’m finding healing.
Thank you for sharing this! I feel similarly about cooking, and sewing, which are both coded as feminine (though cooking is perhaps more neutral with the whole celebrity-chef phenomenon). I love cooking for other people in particular, which makes me feel connected to people.
I also think, like you, that masculine/feminine behaviours should be open to everyone. I have an uneasy relationship with science in this respect: especially those studies tha show up again and again about how certain behaviours are seen predominantly in one sex or the other, based on brain wiring and all that sort of stuff – on one hand I don’t want to reject the scientific basis, but on the other, I find myself questioning if this society needs that sort of research to become more progressive. What do you think?
Mm! I wonder about cooking shows. It is telling that largely men get to be chefs and women get to be cooks.
My thoughts are similar to nominatissima’s thoughts.
It’s one of the ongoing problems with threads at I Blame TP: because requiring women to perform femininity is a tool of the patriarchy, and because successfully performing femininity will, in the grand sum of things, make life harder for women who can’t or won’t do the same, the only acceptable option is to perform it as far as it is absolutely necessary for one’s survival, and NEVER for pleasure. Frankly, there is just too much good stuff that gets jettisoned thinking that way. I’m keeping my baking and my Wheels & Doll Baby cardigan.
Yes, so much yes. This reminds me of a newspaper article I read the other day about our PM knitting a cardy for Penny and Sophie’s baby and people asking how she had time to do it, given she’s supposed to be so busy being PM. So the Opp leader can do marathons and triathlons and the like and that is okay, but not the PM doing some knitting in her downtime – a baby cardigan FFS not like she knitted jumpers for the entire Cabinet and even if she did whose business is that? Maybe it was a ‘Rudd worked 18 hrs a day’ jibe. Obviously the writer didn’t realise how relaxing knitting and following a pattern can be and how your mind can wander once you are in the rhythm.
Mindy, I didn’t see that article, but I must say I find that idea pretty damn adorable.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-diary/gillard-shows-her-crafty-side-20120208-1rf3m.html
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She runs the country, keeps house for Our Tim and apparently Julia Gillard is also a knitter.” I suspect only two of these things are actually true.
Feminism is inherently based on freedom. Ergo, the best approach is to counter patriarchy and sexism while conceding to them a freedom of choice in matters pertaining to gender. For instance, feminists should strive to eliminate the sexist idea that women should be confined to the household, but not the choice of being a stay-at-home wife or mother. Of course, an arrangement which involves nearly identical roles is ideal, but we shouldn’t go around and tell people to stop being stay-at-home spouses/parents because we say so.
We don’t have to see women’s things as frivolous, nor must we emphasize them so as to maintain a patriarchal mentality.
Another way of saying all of this is that feminism should be based on individual liberty.
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Beautiful thoughts Chally. I have a lot of people I need to forward this to…
I find it exhausting when some people imply that other women are anti-feminist because they are nurturing their femininity. It’s is a thin line between that sort of criticism and misogyny.
Keep crafting, keep nurturing. x