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?