Why I'm a Feminist.

International Women's Day/Blog Against Sexism was yesterday, and alas, I have been too tired and busy to blog about it. I am still tired- I had a long shift at work today. But here I am, sitting in front of the computer with aching feet, trying to get all my thoughts together so I can tell you all how I came to the point I'm at now.

So. Why Blessi is a Feminist:

Funnily enough, I didn't start really identifying as a feminist until about midway through 2005. I was 19, in my second year of uni. Prior to that, I had been feminist in my beliefs, but had not really claimed the name as my own- I'd been exposed to feminism in high school (thanks in part to going to an all-girls' school). I believed that women should get equal pay for equal work, that we should have an equal say in government. I wasn't sure I wanted to get married and have children. I wanted to be respected own my own terms, for my own merits, not because I was female and happened to have breasts and a vagina.

But my feminist beliefs weren't quite so articulated as they are now- it's thanks to a lot of consciousness raising via blogs such as Feministe, Pandagon, I Blame the Patriarchy, Bitch Ph.D, and Punkassblog. I don't really remember how it was that I stumbled onto them. I think, perhaps, that I had googled for feminist blogs, and started reading Feministe, and then found the others through six degrees of blogrolls. These blogs, the bloggers who are and have been on them, and the enlightening posts they've written have played a huge part in my feminist education.

Ben's also played a critical part; he and I have often had lengthy discussions on various issues (mostly what comes up in my perusal of the blogs). I'm lucky to have found an intellectual equal in him, and an equal in all ways. He too, is a feminist.

I probably wouldn't have taken this particular direction into feminism had it not been for some of my actual life experiences. Small things, that accumulate, like people patronising you because you're a girl, not a woman. Like random men (always men), exhorting you to 'Smile!', people assuming you'll get married some day, that you're so good with kids because, hey, you have breasts and a vagina. Being afraid to walk home at night for fear of getting assaulted and raped. Dirty old men leering at you, regardless of your dress, reminding you that to you you're not human, you're just another walking hole to fuck. Getting wolf-whistled and yelled at by Shire boys or truckies on the walk home. The everyday things, that remind me that I'm still a second-class citizen because of my genitals.

And the big things, like two and a half years of being emotionally abused. Of naively wanting new experiences, and being exploited for someone else's pleasure. Of having your sexuality co-opted, of being coerced into sex when sometimes you didn't want it. Of feeling that there wasn't a way out that didn't involve something drastic. Of cutting yourself, because there was no other way to articulate your anger and resentment at the difference between what you wanted to be, and what you ended up being. Of having your self-worth and self-esteem stripped from you, of being invalidated and minimised. Of not existing to someone you loved and cared about unless he needed you for something.

There's also the part my religious upbringing played. Most of you probably know I left my old church around 2004. A few months before then, I'd been half-heartedly going to church on Sundays and youth group on Fridays, mouthing the words to the worship songs because I felt horrible singing them. I'd been feeling inauthentic for a good couple of months. During Black Stump '03, I ended having a bit of a fight with Belinda, and that led me to further question why I was in the Church in the first place. (Belinda, I don't resent you at all, so please don't feel bad about it. If anything, you did me a favour :D) So I stopped going to church, stopped going to youth group. Part of the reason was because I didn't feel like I really believed in God. Praying just felt like talking to myself, like there was a resounding silence in my head instead of feeling some kind of response. But mostly I left the Church because I didn't agree with the Church's stance on key issues like abortion, sexuality (things like sex before marriage, as well as homosexuality), and marriage (gay marriage as well as het marriage). I just couldn't reconcile my actual beliefs on these issues with what I was supposed to believe as a Christian. So I left, a somewhat agnostic/atheistic goat, and found feminism instead.

So I've said why and how I got to this point, but not what I believe. Bits and pieces will probably change in the coming years, but here it is for now. It's a bit of a ramble, because it covers a fair bit of territory.

I'm a feminist. I'm strongly pro-choice, and believe that women have the right to choose to do what they want with their own bodies. So if you want to have an abortion, have one. If you want to continue the pregnancy, whether you give the baby up for adoption or keep it, by all means, go ahead. I want all these options to always be available, not just for me, but for everyone. If ever the situation called for it, I would gladly have an abortion. I want better options for mothers, whether it's better and more affordable childcare, better conditions for paid maternity/paternity leave, or even the option for there to be more stay-at-home dads. I believe gender roles as they are now are still too restrictive, and that the patriarchy hurts men as well as women.

I'm sick of people calling girls and women 'sluts' or 'skanks' or 'whores'. I used to engage in that sort of thing, I try not to do it as much as possible now, though I'm still not perfect. It's so easy to slut-shame, even though what someone's wearing, and what they do is none of my damn business. It's another thing though, to question and criticise the way patriarchal notions of female sexuality influence them. I may not understand the urge to have children, and am planning not to have children of my own (I'm enough of a stressmonkey as it is, I don't need a daily heart attack.). But I'll damn well support you if you want to have kids (though I probably won't offer to babysit too much.).

I believe gay, lesbian and transgender people should have the same rights to get married as het people do. It's ridiculous that fundamentalists of all sorts (my parents included), believe in denying civil rights to specific sectors of the community, yet have the gall to call themselves Christians. Me, I don't plan on getting married. And if I do, it will be a civil ceremony, no church wedding, no getting trussed up in white. I'm skeptical of het marriage as an institution, I don't want to be someone's little wife. I will keep my name, because as far as I'm concerned I don't want to be absolved into another family, and I intend to practice artistically under my own name. If I marry, it will be for logical reasons, like because we both want the legal privileges conferred on married couples, not because of love, because that would already be given.I refuse to do the lion's share of emotional work in a relationship. I've done it before, and it's bloody ridiculous. I refuse to come home and do the second shift. (Ben, you are so helping out.)

I believe in placing the responsibility of rape on rapists, not victims. The only difference between a woman who has been raped and one who hasn't is the presence of a rapist, not what she wore, or where she went, or what she did. I'm sick of people comparing women to valuable possessions like wallets, watches, money, etc. and saying that it was her own fault she got herself raped. Listen, assholes: women cannot possibly rape themselves. Rapists can, and do. Blame them. Ditto for sexual assault. And no freaking well means no. It doesn't mean it after the third time it's been repeated, it means it at the first. A woman is not a damn possession to be taken, she is a person.

I'm sick of entitled guys. I have guy friends who are decent people, who respect women as human beings. My partner is one. But there are some guys who believe because women are lesser by virtue of being women, and that as they are clearly not-women, they are entitled to comment on a woman's appearance, behaviour or personality, stare and leer openly, and harass women in public and private, to varying degrees. I'm sick of the guys who yell comments at me from cars, in bars, or who mutter comments as I pass, a lone young woman on her way home, because I possess tits and ass which are somehow, ridiculously, owned by them, or because I don't have the physical strength to fight them, or a man to chaperone me around.

So there you have it, a basic primer on what and why I believe what I do. It's by no means a complete picture, I've no doubt left things out, and I haven't touched the intersections with my views on racism, as a small brown Filipina in a supposedly 'multicultural' society, and to some extent, my existentialism. But that's a whole 'nother story.

Crossposted at i | like | dirt.