feminist theory

When women took over Rat press in 1970 Robin Morgan sat down to write an editorial that would resonate way beyond that time. In it she took on and dispatched quickly with "female chauvinist pigs" and hypocrtical men who called themselves revolutionaries.

"Goodbye to all that shit that sets women apart from women; shit that covers the face of any Weatherwoman which is the face of any Manson Slave which is the face of Sharon Tate which is the face of Mary Jo Kopechne which is the face of Beulah Saunders, which is the face of me which is the face of Pat Nixon which is the face of Pat Swinton."

Coming into my own admirance of feminism, I started seeing this pattern in everything that I did, saw and studied. That is, the more I became involved with feminist theory, the more I saw the interconnectedness of well…literally everything. And the more I was able to define this interconnectedness, the more I was able to clear some things up for myself. I came to the conclusion that the problems that people face are like puzzle pieces, and they’ll only be solved when the puzzle is first identified, and then put together…correctly.

I find that the best way to start a puzzle is to look at the picture on the front of the box – the ideal photo that I’m working towards. After that, I start with the border, picking out the edges which frame the photo, providing limits and a strong boundary. From there it’s usually easy to build from the border, putting each piece in its comfy place, which ultimately leads to the ideal photo I was looking forward to all along.

I’ve been reading The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, and tonight I finished Chapter four. It’s only about a hundred pages into the book, and even though this was first published in 1963, it surprises me that it’s still so freaking relevant.

Friedan basically correlates the psychological, and physical ruts that women find themselves in with this mysterious, unspoken repression – the Feminine Mystique. She was also one of the first women to publicly note that women were (are?) commonly considered a means to reproduce, and nothing more – and that raising successful men to propogate the events of the world was (is?) considered the penultimate triumph of women. Now I know that You know that this is inherently flawed. Because if this is the ultimate triumph of women, then where is woman’s place in the real world? Is she simply a biological backdrop to the achievements of human beings? Well, duh…of course we’re not, for the ultimate reason that we have brains, dreams and profound ideas, too, that can’t and shouldn’t be stifled no matter what history has told us what role we are better fit for, and no matter what obstacles this same history has created for us.