Radical    RATIONAL Feminism, please

Back in the day, there was a definitive need for radical feminist arguments on dress. We needed to burn our bras, bust out of the corsets, and fight to get out of the dress and wear pants. It was a good thing, a thing needed to enforce the very correct idea that we didn't need to costume our womanly bodies to conform to societies dictated acceptable appearance of a woman. I support it fully.

Do I support the current fight to be able to wear skin tight, see through, crop tops and super short in school? Not so much. Further, in my opinion, anyone who does see this as a 'feminist' issue is hindering the feminist movement.

Allow me to explain.

First, this is a ridiculous argument from the start. If you don't agree with that, consider sending your middle school aged boy to school in a see through crop top and shorts that stop at the crotch. Go ahead. Or leggings and a flowy top that shows his bra. Do you think he would be sent home? Yes, he would, because his attire in not appropriate. He looks ridiculous. He's showing too much skin, and it's socially unacceptable.

You might argue that it's only socially unacceptable because of gender-dress roles and how fashion is sexed. Boys simply don't wear things like that, it's not designed or marketed to the male consumers. To this, I say you're on to something. Let's think a little more on that.

The real question here shouldn't be whether the girls can wear whatever revealing outfit they choose- but why do the want to? Why are these revealing clothes only marketed to females, only sold to the female portion of consumers as cute, cool, style?

And why are we, feminists, buying into it hook, line, and sinker, drawing lines in the sand and supporting our children's right to flaunt their bodies, when the only result will be further objectification of women's bodies? Why are we teaching our young girls that it's ok to be revealing, and blame the observer for having a reaction? " It's not MY fault you couldn't concentrate on Math because my shorts are cut to my hiney and my bra was showing through my shirt. I'm not ashamed of my body, it's your problem."

As evidenced by pop culture, women 'owning' their own sexuality has morphed into the rationale that it's ok to flaunt it and blame others if they can't see past it. We are grooming our children to be walking advertisements of sexuality. When little girls go to the mall and buy revealing clothes to look like the hyper-sexualized twelve year old on the ad, and mom pulls out the credit card to fund such and endeavor, it's a failure all around.

And while yes, I agree there is nothing overtly sexual about a leg, an arm, or any given body part, the basic rules of society stand. A male can not chair a board meeting in hot pants and a tank top. He can't even do it in surf shorts and a tee shirt. The idea of teaching children socially appropriate dress isn't a bad thing, so let's stop vilifying it.

The initial feminist backlash against gender dress rules was that society shouldn't dictate a woman's appearance. By conforming to an overly sexualized and revealing standard of appearance, we are taking that feminist stance away, and by fighting for the right to conform to those standards, betraying ourselves as women.

 As for the young girls coming up in the world, I have advice:If you don't want to be judged by your hiney, put it away. Your words, your mind, your ideas and your brillance  will be recognized far more when you cover your ass. Like it or not, no one can really take a half naked person seriously, of any gender. Think about why you want to reveal so much of your bodies you're at risk of wardrobe malfunctions and indecent exposure before you put those clothes on. Do these clothes really illustrate who you are, or do they highlight the body you have instead? Women and girls deserve to be able to dress like people, not anatomy.

Oh, The Demanding Vagina, and Why It Deserves Non-Prescription Contraception

" I'm tired of hearing about your rights. Just because you have a vagina you think it's fair for me to pay for your birth control when you don't want kids, and for your kids when you have them through programs and child care. It's not fair. Get a job and be responsible for yourself."

How many times has this argument been stated? It's priceless in it's inaccuracy. It marginalizes a public health concern and removes it from the public sphere entirely. It's singular in it's responsibility. It's YOUR vagina. They're YOUR kids. It's YOUR decision to have kids.

One might ask, where is the man who had sex with the woman, who created these kids?  Let him bear some responsibility as well, and leave the rest of us alone. That's a less common counter argument, but it's still made. While there are millions spent yearly to attempt to force men who may not be inclined to participate in the responsibility of the children born of sex, that's not really the point either.

Imagine, rather, for a moment, the amount of money that can be saved if those cases didn't exist, because women, at the onset of puberty, were given free access to birth control? If those cases never occurred, how much money could be saved annually from government programs to help struggling parents, food subsidy programs, medical and dental programs for children of low income parents?

Think about this, and then hopefully you can start to see how our vaginas ( actually, our uterus, but you can only get there via the vagina, so that stays. In matters of sex, no one wants the uterus. No one sings about the uterus, no one flashes the uterus, no one talks about wanting to touch the uterus. The uterus and what occurs in those dark recesses of the woman's reproductive system are almost an afterthought to sex, in today's Western society.) are a public health concern.

Obama's health care mandate rules that women should have access to prescription contraception without a co pay. Is this a great step for women? Yes, it really is. Is it enough? No, not by far. The biggest and most public battle at the moment is the right for employers to not cover methods they  don't 'agree' with, specific measures as they MAY inhibit the proper attachment of a fertilized egg by altering the lining of the uterus, technically creating an environment so hostile for a newly fertilized egg that it can't attach, and therefore, causing the earliest possible abortion. 

Is it fair to allow companies to have an opt-out button on whether they'll cover birth control based on religion? Sure, we have to respect other's religious beliefs, by all means. But it's also not fair, for imagine if you applied the same logic on a broader scale- imagine if the president disagreed with abortion and outlawed all abortion clinics or potentially abortive drugs. Would that be fair?

Now imagine a company is looking at insurance plans, and the one that covers birth control is more expensive than the one that doesn't. Will they use the opt out button, even if it's not a particularly strong belief of the founder and major shareholders that abortion is wrong? Who could resist the temptation, when confronted with hundreds of thousands of potential savings a year? In this aspect, is it a financial incentive for the company to deny birth control coverage to their employees?

Back to the real life U.S. situation at hand- statistics have long shown that women who have children later in life are more economically sound, use less aid programs, have fewer children, and there's anecdotal evidence that the children born are likely to follow their parent's life and also have children later, pursue careers and have an economically sound base in which to raise their own children.

Statistics also show that children raised in poverty, with a myriad of home lives and poor education opportunities, tend to have children younger, have more children, and live less economically stable lives, utilizing the full range of government aid from food stamps to childcare programs. Their children also tend to follow the same paths, having children younger and attaining lower levels of education and income through their lives.

In other words, it's far harder to climb out of a hole then if you never fall into one. Which is the entire point of this blog post:

Imagine if birth control was free, non-prescription, and funded by the government, to all women of child bearing age. No more legal wrangling between contraception rights and religious freedom. No more wrangling between parental rights to know and minor's rights to choose in birth control. No more having to take the time off work to refill your prescription every month.

How many 'unintended' births would go unconceived? How many women would be able to break the cycle of poverty and poor education before bringing a child into the struggle with them? How many children's lives would be saved from lack of nutrition, proper medical care, or uneducated parenting?

What if instead of trying to fix the problem from the end that's over run with the outcome of a broken system, we stem the flow from the origin and simply give women free, unfettered access over their rights to reproduce on their terms?

As to the question as to whether it's safe to supply a previously prescription only product over the counter, not only did the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists officially recommend doing so in December of 2012,  a journal Contraception studied birth control access in 147 countries and found that oral contraception was legally available without a prescription in 62% of the countries studied, and only around 1/3 of the studied countries required both a prescription and a physical screening.

When women can walk into the local drugstore and leave with a month supply of birth control pills as easily as they can a box of condoms, then that's fair. That's enough, that's total reproductive freedom, and that's what's right.

The Problem with the #Women Against Feminism Movement

I took the time to read a few pages of this blog/tumblr/FB page today. I feel fairly comfortable in saying that the problem with this blog is not what these women are saying, but with the basis for which their opinions are formed upon. This blog demonstrates so clearly the failure of education, in that outside of a pitiful few comments, the majority of the views expressed seem to be based on social media reporting and a few extremist arguments. The key points that popped up over and over center around the following statements-

" I don't hate men/my spouse,brother,father,friend respects me"

Being feminist doesn't mean hating men. By the same token, it doesn't mean all men hate women. It does mean recognizing that there is a societal differing in how the genders are raised, presented, and culturally groomed, and that there is a problem with that grooming. More on that later. But, to this statement, it's no different that the racial argument that states "Racism doesn't exist because there are anti-discrimination laws. I know XXX African American/Hispanic/Non white people who are successful"

The fact that there remains a cultural bias that operates under the protection of those laws is undeniable. That it effects children from the very beginning of their lives has been studied, reported on, and spans everything from their public school education opportunities to the broader aspects of life such as medical care and even customer service received in business is also undeniable. The fact that you may know a person who doesn't fit the mold is anecdotal evidence. It doesn't negate the fact that it exists.

"There is no rape culture"

This one burns. If there is no rape culture, then tell me, when the last time you saw a boy who looks twelve posing suggestively in underwear for a major retailer ad campaign? When is the last time you saw a man get cat called, ass slapped, or ostracized for not fitting a societal ideal image? Yes there were a few commercials of women ooggling construction workers or the Fed Ex man, but the gimmick in those commercials was that it was unexpected.

The problem with this statement is a misunderstanding on what 'rape culture' means. Rape culture is not the idea that every man is out to rape, and views every woman walking by a prey. It is not that every woman is a victim waiting to happen. It is not as base as that.

The idea of rape culture is that women are highly pressured to fit an image, and that image is whatever is deemed appealing to men. If a woman doesn't fit that image, she is ridiculed and taken as less than. It is the idea that regardless of a woman's accomplishments, she must do them WHILE maintaining a socially acceptable image, and that image is to be confined to something men want to see, that women are conditioned to expect from other women.  It is the base stamp of ownership over a woman's very existence, and the idea that at the core, the woman is there to please.

Again, if you take offense to this, reflect for a moment on when the last time you were subjected to headlines regarding a man's hairstyle choice, clothing choice, or even, in the case of several successful lawyers, doctors, political activists, authors and educators in the last few years- blogs and social media dedicated to outright lamblasting and insults over their unattractive appearance?

" I already have equal rights. Women make less money  because of their own choices"

If this isn't a perfect illustration of the chicken or the egg argument I can't think of a better example. Women don't already  have equal rights. Period. As for the pay gap debate, yes, women make less perhaps because of the fields we are in, and the fact that we are the sex to take maternity leave and stay home more often. Now, imagine if we taught the sexes the same, and didn't encourage girls to pursue certain fields, instead encouraging them to pursue higher paying fields. Imagine if corporations supplied men with the same amount of paternity leave as they do women maternity leave. Wouldn't it be reasonable to expect a shift in the social paradigm of which sex stays with the children in the tender years? Yet, girls are steered to 'acceptable' fields, and man are not given the same leave as women, so the status quo remains.

" I am not a rabid, hysterical, man hating, extremist woman out to destroy society and family."

This is the very core of the feminist movement. The hysterical label has been used since the dawn of time to suppress and discredit feminist arguments, and I think the history of that deserves it's own post. To this, I'd like to quote Hillary Clinton, in her interview with Glamour editor in Chief Cindi Leive, reported on 8/7/2014:

"I have generally not responded if it's about me. And I have responded if it's about somebody else, because if women in general are being degraded, are being dismissed, then I can respond in a way that demonstrates I'm not taking it personally but I'm really serious about rejecting that kind of behavior. Now, sometimes, when it's about me...you have to not just remain silent but try to figure out a proper response. Again, though, not going to the place of anger and feeling sorry for yourself, because that kind of plays into the hands of the sexists."

I can't express how much I love this quote and the full thought behind it. Recognizing that the hysterical label has been used to debase real arguments, and the aversion to the potential of being labeled as such as a control method, is priceless. By adopting it's usage and labeling eachother as hysterical, women are aiding the anti-feminist movement and becoming key players in the suppression of women.

What is the feminine Condition?

This blog is intended to explore and encourage commentary on the feminine condition. What, exactly, do I mean by the feminine condition? 

A myriad of things. Being female in a modern world is fraught with as many pitfalls and rabbit holes politically, religiously, and socially as it is exalting victories and achievements. In the 1800's, women had dictated roles and expectations. These were overturned, gradually, and while women enjoy a greater freedom in all aspects such as dress, sexuality, career, whether to have children or not, whether to marry or not- women also face many more issues today related to the choices to explore that freedom. And while in the 1800's we would have been the one whispered about in the quilt circle for being unconventional, today's society is speaking loudly about women's 'places' and applying personal standards to laws designed to enforce them on daily freedoms. 

I have often lamented the disappearance of feminists from our society. Not to say that there aren't feminists still active and outspoken in the public eye, championing women's rights, but the entire women's right's movement seems to disintegrate into bickering over any number of hot button topics while the issue as a whole is ignored, very much the elephant in the room. In my opinion, the elephant is that women are very much in their own class, legally and socially, a gender specific 'separate but equal.'. 

Talk of reproductive rights, birth control and abortion, choices in child rearing, are all foremost in the political sphere at the moment. Activists give speeches, bills are proposed, battles are won and lost over the right of a woman to choose. What isn't spoken about is the fact that for better or worse, this is the same animal in another form. The fight seems not to remove the power that dictates what women can and can't do from the arena, but rather transfer that power to a more 'acceptable' power who surely, as outspoken feminists, must have a more acceptable expectation of us and must therefore be vested in creating laws that suit us in our daily life. 

 Women need, for this reason, to remain informed, and open discussion in the home about issues that are affecting us in the legal sphere of life. Nothing should be taken at face value based on a statement made by a lobbyist on their own position. The onus of femininity begins where it ends- in our daily lives. It is all encompassing, and like it or not, our society and the expectations of female behavior are still large factors in how and why specific laws are passes or left as failures.

And, of course, because this is daily life, there will be debates over who does the dishes. After all, what's a feminist without an opinion on that?