Recently media has highlighted the campaign
of (Western?) women loudly proclaiming “I am not a feminist.”
I am a little amused.
Isn’t the right to stay at home, to not
burn your bra, and to be a mother, the right of the femininity of choice?
As Joan Scott reminds us in The question of Gender:
“In the age of democratic revolutions,
‘women’ came into being as political outsiders through the discourse of sexual
difference.
Feminism was a protest against women’s political exclusion; its goal
was to eliminate ‘sexual difference’ in politics, but it had to make its claims
on behalf of ‘women’ (who were discursively produced through ‘sexual
difference’). To the extent that it acted for ‘women’, feminism produced the
‘sexual difference’ it sought to eliminate. This paradox-the need both to
accept and refuse ‘sexual difference’-was the constitutive condition of
feminism as a political movement through its long history.”
In other words ,feminism acted in terms not
of its own choosing, but in response to the discrimination of the time.
Women have come along way. Now, at least
more woman can choose how they exercise their power, their bodies and their
sexuality.
Some may comfortably choose the traditional
role, especially if they feel their partners treats them as equal partners. Especially if they glorify in the roll they adore.
However, I wonder if we can go back and learn from some more
feminine tribal experience. The Kibbutzes of earlier modern Israel often saw
children raised by a sig le mother figure, and in some tribal cultures men are
often away, leaving children to a group of women, each supporting each other.
The feminine collective should be
encouraged. A place where women can be feminine without response too the gaze,
attentions of, or politics of men. Here they can refresh themselves of their
feminine energies, recreated and refreshed, when once again they re-engage –
hopefully as equals – with men.
