I have been told by many of my feminist friends that it's my fault that women are unequal in the workplace. I am referring to my wish to be a stay at home mom. I attempt to point out that I was raised by my father, whom, for all intents and purposes, was a stay at home dad. I volunteer, not for women empowerment groups, but for domestic violence, gay rights, transgender rights, historical accuracy, paganism and urban violence groups. When volunteering for domestic violence groups, I almost always focus on men whom have been abused by their partners or women abused by other women. I speak AAVE quite well and fit in with my black friends more seamlessly than with my white ones.
I really have no idea what this white feminism concept is. Perhaps because I don't consider myself a feminist. I am more likely to work for marginalized lifestyle rights than scream that women deserve equal pay. I'd rather raised minimum wage than worry about the glass ceiling I've hit in a number of areas. You're right, I'm a chicken shit because i should be some sort of science major and instead of fighting my way to a mediocre position, I'll tweak a "women's job" to suit me. I'm going to be an english/math major, I'm going to write technical manuals and fix readability issues on websites. I'll let someone else play with glass cutters and get hurt.
Keep in mind, if someone bugs me I don't call the police. I don't worry about someone stalking me or following me home. I'm fully prepared to defend myself, and for the most part won't bother the police with something I can take care of myself. Feminism should stop focusing on making people give women more rights or women "taking rights" and focus more on self reliance. Use acts, not words. If you feel that you don't need man's money to support you, good, then the best thing you can do is support yourself.
Yes, I wish women were paid equally to men, but then, pretty tall people are more likely to be hired than short and marginally attractive, it's a matter of how people's mind think. Men as a rule are taller than women. Men as a rule get paid higher than women. Height and "attractiveness was a stronger correlate of recruiter evaluation of firm specific fit than the objective characteristics of the applicants such as GPA, sex, business experience, major and extracurricular activites." (Dipboye 237) According to Gladwell's book Blink, "Of the tens of millions of American men below 5'6", a grand total of ten--in my sample--have reached the level of CEO, which says that being short is probably as much, or more, of a handicap to corporate success as being a woman or an African-American...Not long ago, researchers went back and analyzed the data from four large research studies, that had followed thousands of people from birth to adulthood, and calculated that when corrected for variables like age and gender and weight, an inch of height is worth $789 a year in salary." The fact that women are shorter and are paid less may be attributed to this, at least partially.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that feminism, to an extent, is an outmoded movement, which needs to be reevaulated before attempting to move forward in any sense, already the repercussions have been more violent than expected, with an increases in spousal abuse, especially in marriages where the women makes more money than the man. Perhaps, the feminist movement will die away, or become more rabid. However, let me point out that nowhere in feminist theory does it say a women MUST have a job, the entire point of feminism was to make it so women COULD have jobs, if they chose, not be badgered into one.
Cited Works
Discrimination at Work: The Psychological and Organizational Bases. Ed. Dipboye, Robert and Colella, Adrienne. Mahwah, NJ: Routledge, 2005.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink. New York, NY: Little Brown, 2005.
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