SOME NOTES ON FEMINISM

Your Favourite Position Isn't CEO

Lauren Bacall, source Pinterest

Once, in a gray season, I wrote in a journal that identity begins when one is liberated of the desire to belong. Although now I wonder how a mind at war with itself could have meticulously tracked its every quiver, I recall with perfect clarity the taste of those particular embers. It was a matter of becoming a woman.

And to become a woman is to develop an individuality, a character so to speak –something that, nowadays, is exceeded by our other, more political agendas. In short, the issue of modern womanhood is a very complicated mixture of plenty presumptions and not enough premises. It is at this intersection that our very existence begins.

Let me tell you what I mean. The modern woman – more often than not – emerges as a modern feminist. Her friends give her no choice. She is either that, or a washing machine. Perhaps this interval alone illustrates the immense unpopulated space in her personal file. It is true, ideology can save your life, but only when you have none of your own. 

And one might say: “But so many strong, independent women are feminists.”

As it so happens, I think strong is a relative term I would urge one use lightly, as I also marvel how many eons might pass before we normalise holding a job. And regrettably, no one talks about the fact that to constrain oneself – with all one’s contradictions, subtleties, and subjectivities alike – in the small, dogmatic perimeter of a feministic ethos, is to foolishly, and dangerously, oversimplify the world.

Nevertheless, the saddest part is yet to come. Over the years, women have gained a sense of vanity, of competition and existential despair that were once specific to men. And yet, we rarely do anything interesting and original with these. We get to ask ourselves for the first time in history: 

“Who am I?” 

“Who do I want to become?”

The answer does not waver. You can see it in the change in habits, the thorough reproduction of masculine attributes. And by the time we get around to reforming the world, we also get to be proud of our selfishness, our impatience, our gaudiness, our insensitivity, our promiscuity, and lack of tact, and of course, our liberated clumsiness around a kitchen. Because at the end of the day, none of us have access to the strong attributes of the opposite sex. In the sense that the sophisticated, genuine, profound privileges of being a woman or being a man are non-transferable. But exactly this incommensurability that defies – how else? – the principle of equality was the basis of the principle of attraction.

Yes, women today want nothing more than to be lousy men. And lousy they are since the moral nerve that men exhibit in their deviations – the very nerve that absolves them all too quickly – is precisely what women lack. It concerns a certain private reconciliation, a sort of interior peace that only one content with their own destiny is capable of. Make no mistake, gone are the days of social theory. The modern feminist wants to operate like a man, whilst still luxuriating in all the assets and favours that come along with being a woman. It is then, as I stated from the start, a problem of emitting too many pretensions on flimsy premises, an art that she has escalated to the heights of perfection.

She wants to transcend her biology, yet she talks about it everywhere. She wants sexual liberation, yet will not stand to be objectified. She wants equality, yet brags about his money to her girlfriends.

The conclusion follows swiftly. You cannot successfully be a feminist unless you have some strong premises, unless it aligns with your deepest and truest motivations (which come from personal experiences). In lack of those premises, of course you cannot let him be a gentleman, or open a door, or finish a sentence. After all, what better way to reconcile your hatred of men with your admiration of men, than to go out with them, and give them a good ol' naggin'?

When all is said and done, the world really has no shortage of “strong, independent women.” In fact, there is a frightful similarity in the thought and aesthetics of such women that – I promise you – has nothing to do with real solidarity. Alternatively, they would not speak in glamourised sexual innuendos such as: “My favourite position is CEO” and expect to be taken seriously. Or they would have based their personality on something more enduring than Beyonce music videos. Perhaps the world could use more interesting women – and dare I say it – happy women, women of character – concrete and substantial, freed from abstractions – that will simply let themselves be, and in doing so, perhaps find a bit of peace.

And truly, I think there is no amount of socio-political theory, pop-feminism, or cosmo-philosophy that will give you what you yourself do not embody. Not on this side of the world. As there is no army of men that can make one feel inferior, as long as she retains a well-earned individuality, the right books in her arsenal, and a pinch of character in her heart. It is what my mother told me – once in a gray season – and it is certainly what I hope to one day tell my daughter.