I am not a very feminine female. Even as a child, I was never a girly girl. I never played with baby dolls or had any desire to wear frilly pink dresses and sit quietly. Later, I never really got the fascination with clothes and makeup. I spent plenty of time trying out makeup and getting perms and longing for clothes we couldn't afford-- but it was never because I cared about that stuff. It was because I cared (desperately) about fitting in, and that was how I thought you did it.
I had a few moments of proto-feminism while growing up, but it wasn't until I went off to the second half of undergrad on the west coast and fell under the sway of a bunch of second wave feminists that I was all in. It made perfect and complete sense to me. There were a lot of problems with second wave feminism, and it's easy to criticize forty-five years later. But at the time, when feminism was still new, it was a like a life raft for those of us who didn't fit the female mold, a promise of a better future.
I understood at a gut level what those feminists were telling me about the patriarchy, and the suffocating box that was the role a middle-class white female could expect in adulthood. But 45 years later, I can tell you something that is equally clear, the mistake we newly liberated women made: we thought that was how all women felt.
We were out there pushing boundaries, taking jobs and demanding careers, being competent and professional, proving that we were capable of doing anything that men could do, and loving every minute of it. Every single little advance that inched us "forward," that took us away from diapers and vacuuming and cooking three meals a day and sewing your own prom dress and downing a couple of valium to get through the day. We were so into it that we were sure all women felt that way. The ones who said they didn't just hadn't realized it yet, we assured ourselves. We thought all those poor deluded females were looking to us to lead the way into a new future.
You know what we missed? We missed the women who loved the traditional feminine life. Who loved every minute of cuddling up with an infant, even if it meant sleepless nights and endless inexplicable crying. (I love my kids, but to me, the infant stage was just something you had to get through in order to have kids who could walk and talk.) The women who found fulfillment in cooking delicious meals for their family. The ones who were expert seamstresses and knitters and weavers, who had more expertise in their craft than I've ever had in any of my professional skills. The women who took great pride in creating a comfortable, beautiful home where their family felt cared for and they could host their friends and relatives.
I still can't do any of that, and the things I have to do (like cooking), I don't do particularly well. It gives me the heebie-jeebies to think about a world where that's all a woman is allowed to do. But I understand now what I didn't understand then, because I've seen it in women of all ages and all backgrounds-- there are millions of women out there who would be perfectly happy and content to be married and spend their lives taking care of their kids and their house and their extended family and their entire neighborhood. (There are a probably a bunch of men who would like that, too.) There's nothing wrong with them. They don't need to be enlightened or have their consciousness raised. They are just wired differently than me. The same way I felt that I didn't fit in the mid-century housewife mold, they felt they didn't fit in the 80s career woman mold.
I can make all the standard arguments that my feminist mentors have made before me-- the traditional model only works if the husband wants the same thing, has a good job, doesn't gamble or drink or drug the money away, and doesn't run off with his 24-year-old secretary when he hits forty. It only works if the husband doesn't die in a car accident while the kids are still in diapers. Because in those scenarios, you've got a woman with a family to support and no job skills. And there's no question, all of that is true.
But it still doesn't mean that all women want the same thing, and we were wrong to think they did. But you know what? We had good intentions. We were trying to help, and I genuinely thought we were. I thought we were making the world a better place for all women. The newfound excitement of our exit from the homefront was so fresh, I couldn't imagine that other women wouldn't want the same. It would be a dozen years before I figured out that not only did I not understand the women who loved the traditional roles, I knew nothing about how black women felt, or lesbians, or second generation immigrant women, or any number of other women.
Why is this so hard for us? Why do we so deeply, deeply believe that what is best for me is what is best for you? It happens all around us, in different ways. Parents who think since I loved college, it's the right thing for my children, too. Exvangelicals like me who think, since I found freedom and fulfillment in leaving the faith I was raised in, everyone should leave their native faith. Men whose greatest joy in life is a friendly, competitive game of golf or basketball with their buddies, and assume their children just need a little push to find the same joy in athletics. How do we curb that first, almost unconscious impulse to assume that what works for me is what’s best for you, too?
There's no easy way. but I guess it starts with just seeing the people around you, really seeing them, and trusting them to know what they want, or if they don't, to be able to figure it out. Which sounds pretty obvious now that I've typed that out, but it's also hard. Sometimes really hard.
There are some obvious directions I could go from here, but I would very quickly be out of my depth. I guess I just wanted to make the point that sometimes when you think you're being supportive, if you're telling someone else what they should want or how they should act, really you're being coercive--even if your intentions are good. Even if you think you're making the world a better place. And that's not good for anyone. (And also, eventually it will backfire.)
And that's enough about that from me.
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