Blast from the past

I’ve been writing about feminism for a while it seems. This is a post from my previous (now-defunct) attempt at a blog, from three years ago, pre-Boychick (pre-pregnancy, for that matter). I don’t think this is what I would write on this topic now, but I think it still fundamentally reflects a part of my truth.

(Yup, this is a post about a post about a post on a message board, ’cause I’m slick like that.)

I was in a discussion on mothering and feminism with a woman who calls herself a “liberal individualist” who rejects “the idea of feminism” and is insulted by the suggestion that, although each woman may have freedom of choice (which is the entirety of her view), they are also heavily influenced by social pressures into conforming with a patriarchal, still misogynistic society. Feminism is insulting to women, she said, because it denies that they are choosing to conform to society and therefore are powerful because they have made a choice, and have not been “forced” by “social pressures” (although there apparently exists no such thing as “social pressure”). This was my response.

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Everyone has full freedom and personal choice and free will, all the time, and no one is coerced into anything (ever – there is always a choice, even if the choice is to die rather than do what their oppressors want). That is completely true.

It is also true that everything everyone does and every choice anyone ever makes is influenced and often restricted profoundly by the society they live in and the assumptions and beliefs (often contradictory) of that society, and that what each person does and the “choices” each person makes is almost always predictable by knowing the social and psychological forces they live with.

Both are true.

I’m not trying to be annoyingly zen here or anything – both are completely true. To acknowledge one of the above statements and think the other is wrong is to deny something fundamental about what it is to be human and alive in this world. We have full freedom of choice in each moment, and we live our lives in largely predictable ways based on the pressures of the society we live in.

One of the strong points of feminism, although (as with every strength) it is sometimes made a weakness by going too far, is the acknowledgment and exploration of the second idea. I am heavily influenced here by my familial history with Al-Alon and buddhist-influenced psychotherapy, and their belief that power and personal autonomy exist only when one admits one’s powerlessness in the face of disease/social pressure. I come from a background where admitting and acknowledging one’s powerlessness is the only path to power. So no, I don’t think it’s insulting to women to say that every choice a woman makes (and a man – I don’t exempt them, so I guess I’m insulting them and calling them weak also?) is influenced, and often restricted, by the society she lives in – I think it’s empowering.

By acknowledging that every choice I make is being influenced and often restricted by the world I live in, I can examine those influences and restrictions and assumptions and choose to accept them or reject them. I am made more powerful, and my choices are made more free, by that knowledge. That, in my view, is the power and the gift of feminism – it helps me to be on the look out for, to see, to acknowledge, to deconstruct, and finally to accept or reject the patriarchal and misogynistic influences that surround me, and I am freer for it.