by Ellen Francis
R.E.S.P.E.C.T, find out what it means to me...
I want men to be men and women to be women. I want a man to give up his seat for me on the Tube, open the door for me, and take out the bins. I'll wipe his brow when he's had a hard day's work, give birth to the babies, and do the hoovering. So far, so unfeminist one might think. But I also want equal pay for equal work, not to be told I'm "asking for it" if I wear a short skirt, and the right to drive
without my father's permission. Hmmm, that's more like it.
I think that actually all these things are compatible because they are about asking for mutual respect; they are about give and take; they are about recognising our differences and supporting rather than
exploiting them. I want women to be respected, and if that makes me a "feminist" so be it. And I want men to be respected, but I'm not sure what label you'd stick on that.
I'm afraid if a man calls himself a "feminist" I'll assume he's being a man, using it as a lever to get into my pants; or that what he really means is, urrrrgh, "I love women" (but I couldn't eat a whole
one?); or that he means what many women might assume it means ie a demand for more rights for women, and I don't really like that as it sounds like it's to the detriment of the rights of men.
But if what he really means is "I believe in respect for you because you're another human being and your gender is irrelevant to that respect", then yes he's as much a "feminist" as I am.
Ellen is a Londoner. She prefers buses to the Tube. You can't follow her on Twitter, but you can offer to take out the recycling box.
I love it, Ellen. It's very nicely put. I think that sometimes what is forgotten in the 'feminist' debate is that equality shouldn't mean that women get to act like men. We're different and so we should be; only women get to have the babies. I want a world in which our femininity and our different approach to things is respected and considered legitimate. We want to kill the patriarchy, and that's not done by mimicking it. As for the bins, my best friend and I have had our biggest fights of our lives over taking out the bins when we lived together, so I don't think it's necessarily a gender role, but the role that nobody wants! (I was always the one who had to take them out, by the way!)
ReplyDeleteEllen's post makes me think about specialisation. It's generally the way we build careers - we become specialists at something. Finance, marketing, sales, leadership, market research, training etc. Generally it's a good thing. The better we get, the more we earn, or the more interesting the work and rewards become. And then we pass on our specialist skills to our teams and the people we hire. But as soon as we shift conversation to gender roles and relationships we leave the concept of specialisation behind. Interesting. I'm in a camp of scientists who say there's little difference in the male and female brain. Hormones and bodies yes, but brains, no. I can work the lawnmower (both of them), but I prefer to organise dinner than mow the lawn. Both take about the same amount of time, but I find cooking more interesting (nicer to eat too). So I specialise in cooking rather than mowing the lawn. It's got nothing to do with being a woman, it's just about finding what you like to do, and doing that.
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