In my lifetime, the Western world has always held the promise to females that you can choose to pursue any path you are inclined towards whether that be a more traditional conservative path involving being a wife and mother or as an individual dedicated to career or by finding a way to combine both. I have been taught that feminism is a right, and that as a woman I deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, in every capacity an equal to males. What this story demonstrates, however, is that though feminism occurred ages ago, society continues to be dominated by chauvinistic and, let's face it, archaic ideas that men are better than women and deserve to be treated as such.
In my opinion, this is fucking stupid.
Let's look back to history to demonstrate just how fucking stupid this idea is.
Religion: Mother Theresa, Juno, Eve, all women who took control of their lives and the lives of others in an attempt to enrich the world (ok, Juno was maybe not the best example as she was the wife of Zeus who was a notorious sexist and pig, but she did manage to hold her own in this difficult relationship and was known to take a lover or two of her own).
Politics: Angela Merkel. Hey, she scares the hell out of me too, but this is a woman who knows how to get things accomplished. She has a vision for the EU, and she will get shit done.
Literature: Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, J.K. Rowling, need I go on? Women have proven to be as creative and insightful as men for centuries.
Activism: Elizabeth Cady, Rosa Parks, once again, Mother Theresa.
Are you beginning to notice a pattern here? Women have never been inferior to men in anything except perhaps physical size, which is genetic and really has nothing to do with a person's worth unless you are a professional athlete or a bodyguard or something. Why does this outdated myth continue to infiltrate society?
***Answer: Because it is easier that way.
Let's look to literature for an eloquent demonstration:
Exhibit A: Michael Cunningham's The Hours
"Here is the brilliant spirit, the woman of sorrows, the woman of transcendent joys, who would rather be elsewhere, who has consented to perform simple and essentially foolish tasks, to examine tomatoes, to sit under a hair dryer, because it is her art and her duty. Because the war is over, the world has survived, and we are here, all of us, making homes, having and raising children, creating not just books or paintings but a whole world - a world of order and harmony where children are safe (if not happy), where men who have seen horrors beyond imagining, who have acted bravely and well, come home to lighted windows, to perfume, to plates and napkins.
What a lark! What a plunge!"
"She has caught up with herself. She has worked so long, so hard, in such good faith, and now she's gotten the knack of living happily, as herself, the way a child learns at a particular moment to balance on a two-wheel bicycle. She will not lose hope. She will not mourn her lost possibilities, her unexplored talents (what if she has no talents, after all?). She will remain devoted to her son, her husband, her home and duties, all her gifts."
The woman described in these passages later attempts to commit suicide. She is not happy. She did not have a choice. Perhaps given the choice she would have chosen the life she was given and been perfectly happy with it, but that opportunity never arose for her.
The women fighting for compensation were given a choice, and they chose to work for the public, to attempt to enrich the world, and they were discriminated against for choosing a "feminine" profession, for acting as women "should", for being physical specimens of woman. Though it is good to see that an issue such as this is receiving coverage on the national news, it still saddens me that this is an issue at all.
While on this topic, I have one final anecdote to share relating to the sexism that continues to run rampant in our society despite the facade of equality we present to other, more "backwards" countries. This past weekend while I was out with my friends, I was treated like a piece of meat (or a piece of ass, if you will) by a very unsavoury fellow who followed me around a night club even after I had repeated several times "no, I have a boyfriend" and "no, I am not interested - please don't kiss me" merely because he could. I felt violated, dirty, disgusting, used, among many other things. Though most of my friends were supportive, I could tell there were a few who were thinking, "Yeah, but did you flirt with him?", as if being flirtatious would justify borderline sexual assault. Again, this attitude cannot be allowed to perpetuate in modern culture.
Exhibit B: A Food Analogy
If you come over to someone's house and they offer you a glass of juice, do you immediately assume it's alright to help yourself to everything else in the fridge without even asking?
As you are a reasonable humand (I assume), I don't think you would ever engage in such a behaviour. Then... why do we still think it's acceptable for a man to violate a woman if she is dressed provocatively or behaving in a flirtaciour manner? Why do we continue to allow the phrase "asking for it" to be used at all? I was not "asking for" anything, and I doubt that any woman ever would ask to be put in a situation such as that.
We need to reevaluate our standards of behaviour, people, because feminism is not over. We have not moved on to post-feminism as easily as we have to post-modernism. The world has not changed, and it will never change if we continue to allow women to be underpaid and men in bars to be pigs.
CURRENTLY READING: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Speaking of men who take advantage of women...
