This is going to be a little bit of a disjointed ramble, as it's pieced together from a conversation I was having on facebook.
The problem is that people outside of the movement think of it from the view of Patriarchy, as they think feminism is about women wanting to become men. I know this because I was basically trying to be a man before I discovered feminism and realized just how misogynistic my futile attempt at assimilation was. It's left me so confused though, analyzing every aspect of my life to reevaluate each decision to make sure I'm making the choices true to myself, and not being influenced by any of the societal trends that pushed and pulled me before.
I think it's also a lot to do with how we are as a society. I honestly think the 90s were pretty ideal to grow up a girl, because there were a lot of tomboys in the media. Growing up with three brothers, no one ever told me that I was wrong or that I should prefer girly things. I did or played with girly things on occassion, as a coy sort of game, but it was never a big issue. Girls could do boy things, boys could do girl things and anyone could do anything or be anything. Or so I thought, perhaps I was just raised more or less the right way.
Sometime around the turn of the century though, femininity became synonymous with frivolity. Masculinism started to rise up, although I don't know if that term or MRAs had started to identify themselves or not. For the 2010s though, MRAs are holding themselves up as a courageous underdog, decrying all that 'useless' Politically Correctness of the 90s. I've heard a lot of jokes about how our country felt emasculated by the 9/11 attacks, and the following wars in the Middle East have contributed further to a sense of cynicism and despair, and so those who were once complacent have started attacking anything and everything that might be vulnerable.
The bright point is that Feminism has woken back up, and we have our own fangs and claws, and we're realizing that the complacency of the 90s was a false dream, we've woken up to the fact that our battles are still being fought, and more importantly, that there are other people who never got the chance to be complacent.
Entrenched in the Great Recession, we are in a place where everyone is feeling the pinch. Unfortunately those who were in positions of greatest privilege have no idea what it means to be under privileged, and so in an ironic bout of hypocrisy they blame those who have been suffering as underprivileged individuals. I acknowledge now, in a way I couldn't before, that I am a person of privilege. I have always been poor, I'm mentally ill, I have been homeless, and of course I'm a woman who has been sexually abused. But I'm a white woman, which I'm sure has helped grease the gears of the machine so that even a broken cog like me can pass for a little while. In a lot of ways, my comparatively minor trials and tribulations have been a gift in preparing me to recognize the resources I have at my disposal.
I don't fool myself into thinking that I know anything about what People of Color or Physically Disabled people are going through, even when I was homeless, I went through it in a situation of relative comfort, safe in a women's shelter. Even at my lowest point, I still mused to myself daily that I wasn't being treated the same as the other women on the streets with me, especially not the women of color whom in reflection I might very well have disadvantaged simply by being there. I had passing privilege even then, rather than being identified as homeless, I think anyone who saw me simply considered me a tourist with all my bags. I chose to be homeless, as much as any person can call it a choice, because although I never asked and didn't need to, I knew my mom would come and save me if I called on her.
I have been incredibly fortunate, and even this has been a self-indulgent post of navel-gazing from a white working class feminist coming to grips with intersectionality, but more on that later, because the #1 rule of ally club, is not to talk over the people less privileged than yourself. They are out there screaming at the top of their lungs, and the rest of us are too absorbed in our own worlds that we don't even hear it.
