Equal =/= Same
There is a small debate going on over in the comments to my recent post on feminism. This post is a clarification of my original manifesto. After reading the comments it became clear that I needed to clarify some definitions.
Equal does not mean the same. Same is identical and human beings are fundamentally different from each other. Women and men are not the same, we are different in our biology and are culturally raised with differing norms. Society is a complex organization; not just my society but every society.
I am what I am and no one is the same as me.
I can do things other individuals cannot – sometimes this is relevant to my gender, sometimes it is relevant to my society and sometimes it is relevant to nothing.
Equal means having the same status, rights and opportunities. If a million dollars is spent on exploring men’s health issues than a million dollars is also spent on women’s health issues. If I want to work in construction (despite my supposed lack of upper body strength) than I am allowed to work in construction. If a man wants to work with the elderly (despite his supposed lack of care-giving genes) than he is allowed to work with the elderly.
Equal means expending the same amount of money and resources to explore gendered issues.
Equal means getting the same wage for the same experience and/or education. I don’t care who has a family to support. As a single person, it was a historical precedence that I would earn less because the assumption was that someone (my father) was supporting me. Thinking like this is out-dated. How much one earns should be based on skills, experience or education. What my earnings go to support is no ones’ business but my own!
I have been an avowed feminist for 40 yrs, since age thirteen when I discovered the very first issue of Ms magazine on the newsstand of my very small traditional town.
I’ve done a lot of thinking in those forty years. My views have not been static. I’ve been able to study and clarify definitions and thoughts. I don’t like how my society is stigmatizing/commercializing men either. I want us all to be equal and able to access basic human rights and opportunities.
Let men stay home raising children. Let women work construction. Let us all do what makes us happy; keeping in mind, of course, the precedence “As it harm none, do what you will.”
I started my post on feminism thus:
As I trudged to work Monday morning through four inches of newly fallen, hard packed snow I yearned (once again) for someone to take care of me, to say “no dear, you stay in that warm bed, I’ll trudge out to earn a living and keep you in books and raspberries.”
I don’t necessarily want a man (I just want someone) to occasionally take care of me! I’m tired of being alone. I’m tired of having to do it all alone. I could easily envision a large, communal space – like this – where I have others to rely on when I need to. Sometimes, I think my quest for independence has limited me too much. I worry that this makes me a bad feminist even as I know it does not. We define our own lives within our own terms.
Our lives change. Our definitions change. I recall my grandfather, my mother’s father, stepping up and having to change his life view many times.
As a young father, he came to a new country alone to work for a farmer from the old country who sponsored him. His wife and children followed later. One of the tasks at his new job was to milk the cows in the morning. He had never done this before because in the old country milking cows was women’s work. He sucked it up and asked his wife to teach him how to milk a cow even though it hurt his pride. He did what he had to do. He redefined what his society said was the norm.
This was a skill (this ability to redefine) that would serve my grandfather in his twilight years as well. When my grandmother was ill and they were both in their seventies he learned to cook and do laundry because my grandmother was no longer able to do these (traditionally women’s) tasks.
This tale is not just about feminism and equality, it is also about connection.
What am I willing to do?
What am I willing to re-learn?
What am I willing to re-define?
Equal does not mean same.
Equal does not mean that I take something away from someone else.
Equal means that we all have access to the same rights and opportunities no matter our gender, race, or creed.
Yes, I am a feminist.
Yes, I Am A Feminist
As I trudged to work Monday morning through four inches of newly fallen, hard packed snow I yearned (once again) for someone to take care of me, to say “no dear, you stay in that warm bed, I’ll trudge out to earn a living and keep you in books and raspberries.”
Today, Friday March 8th, is International Women’s Day.
I’ve always called myself a feminist? Even though it sometimes seems that Feminism is a bad word, whether we like it or not. Feminists are constantly portrayed as being hysterical, trivial, man-hating, and just generally insane. I regularly get accused of being a radical feminist (me, me radical – you’d have to know me to know how absolutely insane that statement is. I don’t march. I don’t elucidate excessively. I spend 90% of my time reading, working in a library, and/or hiding my opinions. And then I write. I write it all down. I bear witness. I read. I force books (by women, about women) on my friends and relatives. Maybe, I am radical after all. I am a quiet determined radical feminist!).
What is feminism?
A feminist is an equal, strong, independent woman who doesn’t need anybody to validate herself.
Feminism is Wonder Woman posing heroically on the very first issue and the current 40th anniversary issue of Ms magazine. Even though I’m conflicted over calling Wonder Woman a feminist. She seems too often to be working more for the benefit of a man-made military system. I want her to have more agency; I want her to observe and defeat crime all by herself.
There is all the ruckus in the media of late about what a feminist actually is, whether we’re allowed to wear heels and stockings, whether we’re allowed to be funny, whether we should do nothing but march and protest, our armpit hair blowing in the breeze. Am I a feminist or a real women? Can I not be both feminist and sexy, feminist and nurturing, or feminist and business orientated?
What if I’m not a real feminist? What if I’m not a real woman? (OMG, I am a fake woman).
As a feminist elder, a de facto member of the Grand High Feminist Council do I turn around and sneer at other women’s bald legs and made up faces? Thank the stars that feminism has solved all the big issues like sexual harassment, victim blaming and the glass ceiling. Now we’re free to alienate one another by proclaiming ourselves to be feminist-ier than thou.
There’s no such thing as a “real” feminist. Even us older (ancient) feminists may not have a vast working knowledge of classical feminist theory; some of us have taken classes and attended lectures while many others have gained their knowledge through life experiences. My sisters (all five of them) have more life experience than me while I’ve concentrated on the book learning. My eldest sister wants to read the literature but has had little time to do so while raising her children and grand-children. My youngest sister knows more about life then I ever will. My mother, grandmothers, great-grandmothers were feminists because of their life experiences.
I am a spinster. I have too much time to think and ruminate.
He travels fastest who travels alone, and that goes double for she. Real feminism is spinsterhood.
Florence King, “Spinsterhood Is Powerful,” Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye
None of my ancestors marched. None were suffragettes. They named themselves women not feminists. But the word meant the same. It meant I have a voice. It meant I count. It meant I have a role. It meant I am equal.
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.To Be Of Use by Marge Piercy
How many waves of feminism have there been? What right do I have to call myself an elder? The theories keep flowing, like waves upon the beach. 1st wave…2nd wave…3rd wave. The women keep marching.
I march beside Mary Shelley and her mother and worry over how much of the manifesto Vindication on the rights of women still holds true.
I march beside Susan B. still declaring:
“We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.”
—Susan B. Anthony, Declaration of Rights for Women, July 1876
I agree with Betty that men should not be the enemy (the system should be). It worries me that (maybe) we can’t be strong together. It seems that as women get stronger/more independent, men get less capable.
Men weren’t really the enemy - they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill. ~Betty Friedan
I stand in solidarity with Rebecca.
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a door mat or a prostitute.
Rebecca West, “Mr Chesterton in Hysterics: A Study in Prejudice,” The Clarion, 14 Nov 1913, reprinted in The Young Rebecca, 1982
I stand with these five women from Alberta declaring we are persons also! They are why Canada celebrates Women’s History Month in October rather than March.
I march beside and stand with the women of the future and the past. (1902 Postcard link).
Yes, I am a feminist.
Je me Souviens
This time of year, as the environment around me starts to get all bright & sparkly, I ruminate too much on death.
As I write this it is December 1st, World AIDS Day – a day set aside for education and awareness. I came of age when this epidemic was still a mystery. A recent read, set in 1987, Tell the Wolves I’m Home, took me right back there.
Thursday is December 6th, National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. Twenty-three years ago on Wednesday, December 6, 1989, 14 women were killed because they were women.
The YWCA’s Rose campaign has ideas for advocacy and commemoration.
23 years is – what – a quarter of a lifetime. These 14 young women would now be in their forties and fifties. What did we lose? What would they have contributed to society?
What did they not get to do? They never got to decide whether or not to have children. They’ll never feel the aches and pains of an aging heart or body.
Je me souviens … Geneviève Bergeron, 21; Hélène Colgan, 23; Nathalie Croteau, 23; Barbara Daigneault, 22; Anne-Marie Edward, 21; Maud Haviernick, 29; Barbara Klucznik Widajewicz, 31; Maryse Laganière, 25; Maryse Leclair, 23; Anne-Marie Lemay, 27; Sonia Pelletier, 23; Michèle Richard, 21; Annie St-Arneault, 23; Annie Turcotte, 21.
My previous words of remembrance are here.
Photo Friday: Floral
I use a point and shoot camera; usually set on automatic with no flash. The first picture is from my trip to Scotland and the second was taken around my neighbourhood.
I am a very amateur photographer.
My advice to the women’s clubs of [the World] is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias.
~James McNeill Whistler
Remember to work for equal rights always and not just on International Womens’ Day, March 8th.
Watching My Grandfather
I wrote the following in the spring of 1996…
I see it in something as simple as how we eat an apple. I go down to the core, biting at the flesh until all that is left are the seeds. He – he takes a bite here, there, leisurely enjoying the taste, leaving a core an inch or two thick. I gnaw at bones, sucking marrow & fat from them. He cuts away the fat. Why this difference? Is it class based? Does my body feel a hunger my mind does not remember? I take a workman’s lunch to school – a piece of bread, a hunk of pepperoni, an apple. He brings sandwiches, yogurt, and an apple.
I slowly process my life through observation and thought.
A week's worth of Apples
My grandfather (my mother’s father) was a traditional man.
In his opinion, there were certain things that men did and certain things that women did.
Men would cut grass, sharpen knifes, and work outside the home.
Women keep house, raise the children, and tend to the farm animals.
When my grandfather immigrated to Canada, one of the most humiliating incidents in his new life as a farm labourer was needing to have my grandmother show him how to milk a cow. In the old country, this was women’s work.
McIntosh Apple - 55 cents
I also think that there were class differences between my grandparents.
My grandmother was a peasant farmer’s daughter, and one of many children. Her father married three times because of various tragedies – one wife died in a fire. I imagine a lifestyle not unlike Tevye’s farm existence in Fiddler on the Roof; though my grandmother’s family was Polish Lutherans not Russian Jews.
My grandfather came (I think) from a classier background. Was his father a store keeper or a tradesman? I don’t know. My grandfather, besides making his living as a farmer, was also a skilled carpenter and furniture maker. Where did he learn these trades?
I think he learned farming, from his brother-in-law, after he immigrated to Canada not before. Canada, at that time, wanted farmers and after getting sponsored to work as a farm labourer eventually my grandfather was able to afford land of his own. He kept farming but also spent time helping to build churches.
From the stories I remember him telling about the old country, he was a learned man and a traveler. He knew four languages (German, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian) before he learned English and could read German before reading English. I know this because his childhood bible was written in German. During WW1, he fought for the Russians – not his choice. He told me he was conscripted. He told my eldest sister that he decided to leave the old country (we assume Poland as this is where his children were born) because he saw a man shot to death on the street in front of him. By who, the police, the state, I do not know. My mother’s parents did not tell a lot of stories or maybe I was too self involved to listen and hear.
Lady Alice Apple - 73 cents
What I remember is that he would not let me cut the grass. I spent my days at his house helping my grandmother in the kitchen and picking raspberries.
What I remember is that he was always brisk and annoyed with me. I had to sit in the front of the car because I got car-sick and this annoyed him.
What I remember is the rocking cradle he crafted and painted for my baby doll. I still have it. It still rocks. He also made us a child’s table and chair. I only remember the one chair. I sat on it, when I was thirteen, and broke it.
What I remember is a tall, strong, brisk man who seldom smiled but always did his duty.
What I remember is a man who sharpened his own knifes but would not teach me how because I was a girl. My knives need sharpening and I wish I knew how to. I wish that my grandfather had seen that I was confident and capable enough to teach how to sharpen knives.
Girls do not, girls did not; things were changing to quick for him when I was a feminist teenager in the 1970s. I wonder what he would think of his great-granddaughters having and being able to use their own tools. My eldest sister gave all of her children – girls & boys – a toolbox of their own when they became teenagers.
Ambrosia Apple - 77 cents
What I remember is watching my grandfather eat an apple. His favourite apple was the McIntosh.
He would use the penknife, he carried with him everywhere, to peel the apple. He would start at the top of the apple, close to the stem, and work his way down and around. I remember the peel coming off in one long curl but it couldn’t have always. I have experience now peeling apples and know how impossible this is to do.
Once the apple was peeled, he would cut out a section and eat it, piece by piece, until the apple was gone. It seemed so elegant to eat an apple this way rather than biting at it tearing out chunks with your teeth as we children did.
I know now that, for him, this was also a practical way to eat an apple. He had false teeth and biting a whole apple would have been risky. I know this now because I am older and prefer to eat my apples in pieces as I worry about my teeth (not false yet) thinning out and cracking apart. Oh, the perils of getting older. The perils you don’t see until you are right there, still wanting to enjoy apples and wondering about the folly of toffee sticking to your cavities.
Red Delicious - 85 cent
Is that a birthday? ’tis, alas! too clear;
‘Tis but the funeral of the former year.
~Alexander Pope
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
~Li Po
We thought we were running away from the grown-ups, and now we’re the grown-ups.
~Margaret Atwood
You know, when I first went into the movies Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather. Later he played my father and finally he played my husband. If he had lived I’m sure I would have played his mother. That’s the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older.
~Lillian Gish
Watching my Grandfather I learned many things. I learned about gender roles. I learned about yearning.
I should have listened better. I should have asked more questions. I should have asked him to teach me how to sharpen knives.
I remember watching my grandfather eat an apple and offering me a piece/offering me peace.
We are too soon gone no matter how long we are actually here.
My mother's father
Sometimes It Hurts
In order to talk to the dead
you have to choose words
that they recognize as easily
as their hands
recognized the fur of their dogs in the dark.
Words clear and calm
as water of the torrent tamed in the wineglass
or chairs the mother puts in order
after the guests have left.
Words that night shelters
as marshes do their ghostly fires
In order to talk to the dead
you have to know how to wait:
they are fearful
like the first steps of a child.
But if we are patient
one day they will answer us
with a poplar leaf trapped in a broken mirror,
with a flame that suddenly revives in the fireplace,
with a dark return of birds
before the glance of a girl
who waits motionless on the threshold.
‘In Order to Talk with the Dead’
by Jorge Teillier
Je me souviens … Geneviève Bergeron, 21; Hélène Colgan, 23; Nathalie Croteau, 23; Barbara Daigneault, 22; Anne-Marie Edward, 21; Maud Haviernick, 29; Barbara Klucznik Widajewicz, 31; Maryse Laganière, 25; Maryse Leclair, 23; Anne-Marie Lemay, 27; Sonia Pelletier, 23; Michèle Richard, 21; Annie St-Arneault, 23; Annie Turcotte, 21.
My previous words of remembrance.
Moments
Whistler: “Bottom line is, even if you see ‘em coming, you’re not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come, you can’t help that. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. That’s when you find out who you are.”
Becoming, Part One
Season two; Episode 21
14 actions you can take to help end violence against women.
My previous words of remembrance.
Je me souviens … Geneviève Bergeron, 21; Hélène Colgan, 23; Nathalie Croteau, 23; Barbara Daigneault, 22; Anne-Marie Edward, 21; Maud Haviernick, 29; Barbara Klucznik Widajewicz, 31; Maryse Laganière, 25; Maryse Leclair, 23; Anne-Marie Lemay, 27; Sonia Pelletier, 23; Michèle Richard, 21; Annie St-Arneault, 23; Annie Turcotte, 21.
William’s Doll
My eldest nephew is about to have his first child any day now. The baby is overdue and both parents are on pins and needles waiting. Even today, my eldest nephew is considered old for a first parent: he’s thirty. Thirty was when I finally decided I was going to be child free the rest of my life. This was after taking care of other people’s children since I was thirteen and being aunt to twenty-one nieces and nephews. No worries here about family genetics being carried on.
My nieces and nephews are all into their teens and beyond. However, the generations are carrying on. Right now, I have six great-nieces and nephews. I don’t get to see them as often as I’d like. It would be nice to have a baby close enough to spoil. But that will only happen if I move out of the city and that’s unlikely to happen any time soon.
However, this is not my story. Today I want to tell you about my eldest nephew and my Thumbelina doll.
Here's what Thumbelina looked like in 1982; just after I purchased her
Or to be more precise – here is the story of M, his new baby sister and my Thumbelina doll.
I suppose, the first thing you need to know is that I am a product of the 1970s. I came to age as feminism was experiencing a comeback. I read Ms Magazine from the first issue on, I read the feminist Sassy and I believed that I could be anyone and do whatever I wanted when I grew up.
And then I grew up. I was in my early twenties. My older sisters were having babies and I was settling for a small life instead of the Auntie Mame existence I once dreamed of.
My eldest sister had just had her second child. A girl and suddenly M, just around three, was feeling out of sorts and not sure he wanted to be a big brother. I had recently bought myself the Thumbelina doll I had so desperately yearned for at seven and never got. M, my sister and the new baby would come to see me at my apartment and M would head straight to my bedroom to commander Thumbelina into his care.
When I was twelve, a radical new book, called William’s Doll was published. It is the story of William and his yearning for a doll to love. A doll he almost wasn’t allowed to have because he was a boy. I would like to think that we had come further then that stereotype by the time M fell in love with my Thumbelina but the reality was that we had not.
After much soul searching – Thumbelina was mine – I had wanted her so bad. Could I give her away so callously? I never once thought that because M was a boy he shouldn’t have a doll. Eventually, I gave Thumbelina to M. His father was not happy. I’ll give him credit though; he never once said “take it back.”
M loved Thumbelina to death. I wish I had a picture of what she looked like after he was done with her. She was all ragged and bare with no hair left. She had, so obviously, been loved to death. I was good with that. I feel that every toy should be loved to death: be dragged around through the mud, the trials and tribulations of childhood.
My sister told me that every time she was busy feeding and changing the baby, M would be doing the same with Thumbelina. I look at M and his baby sister today and I see a proud big brother and I hope that my gift of Thumbelina helped M learn how to nurture and love and father.
I’m glad things I have changed. I’m hopeful that we, as a society, are more willing to not restrict our choices because of gender. This is one of the advances that give me hope.
M grew up to be a farmer and a hunter and a man’s man. I’m confident that he remembers the gift of a Thumbelina doll as I watch him love and nurture the children he encounters.
It’s a long journey M is about to embark on. Babies are a lot of responsibility.
Hurry up, little one; I can’t wait to meet you!
Hello
Let me introduce myself. The who, what, where, when, and why of me.
I am a daughter, sister, and aunt. I am the third eldest of nine, split between two families. My mom and dad were divorced before I was two and my dad remarried. My mom has dated the same man for over twenty years so I consider myself to have four parents. All of my grandparents are deceased. I miss them, the older I get the more questions I have for them.
I am one of nine. My family consists of two sisters, one brother, two half-brothers and three half-sisters. All of them are family. We reside in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba – I don’t get to see them as much as I would like. At various times of my life, I’ve been closest to each of them. I miss not knowing them as well as I use to. That’s what happens when you grow up – you get further away from those you love.
I am an aunt and a great-aunt. I have twenty nieces and nephews. These include full nieces & nephews, half-nieces & nephews and step-nieces & nephews. Again, they are all family. I also have a great- niece and three great-nephews. Only one of the original nine of us is still married (for over twenty-five years) to the first person they loved. Three of us, myself included, currently have no children.
I am old. Okay, technically middle-aged. I turned forty-eight on my last birthday in the Spring. Some days I feel younger and some days I feel older and is this what forty-eight is supposed to feel like? I’m still waiting to figure out this whole age-life connection!
I am single. I guess, technically, I am divorced. A middle-aged divorcee and what does that make you think of? Right: a sex-crazed, man hungry, lonely, older woman. Hah! I was briefly married in my twenties. It lasted two years legally – four years from first glance to divorce granted. I like to think of it as my quickie Hollywood romance when I think of it at all. Which is seldom – most of the time I don’t even remember that I was ever married. I’ve had one other serious relationship; it lasted five years. Right now, I’m extremely single, as I have not dated for over ten years.
I am fat and mostly healthy. I know that many of you think that one cancels the other out. I walk anywhere from a half-hour to an hour a day and my weight has stayed basically the same for the last fifteen years. I couldn’t run a marathon but I can & do walk to most of the places I need to get to.
I am a feminist. A “Helen Reddy I am Woman” feminist. There are those who would consider me a radical feminist – but they would be wrong. There’s a couple of blog post just in this paragraph alone.
I am a bookworm. A word worshipper. I read around three books a week, ten magazines a month and I write. I read everything, anything – song lyrics, fiction, non-fiction, picture books, young adult books, poetry, newspapers etc. – but only in English as this is the only language I know. I’m waiting to master English before I move on to a second (or third) language. I give books as presents, pass on my used books & magazines to my family and I’m sure sometimes they wish I would give them something cooler.
I’ve lived in Calgary, Banff, Canmore, & Medicine Hat in Alberta; Saskatoon, Prince Albert, Weyburn, & small-town Saskatchewan and Montreal, Quebec. I’ve seen most of Canada from Vancouver Island to Montreal. I’ve been as far north as La Ronge, SK. I want to go East and to the Far North (Yellowknife, Dawson City). I’ve touched a toe into the United States- want to go to San Francisco & Disneyland & Broadway. The last time I was overseas I was a babe-in-arms – only London haunts my dreams and maybe Loch Ness.
I miss Montreal the most because of the connections I made there. It’s where I went back to university in my thirties and it’s where I grew up the most. There’s another blog post or more there.
I was born at the tail end of the baby boom (1960 – I remember the young Elvis how handsome he was), came of age during the 1970s (bought the very first issue of Ms. magazine at thirteen) and became a working adult during the boom of the 1980s (I worked in childcare & was poor). I never even considered, growing up, that I would live and work and grow into the millennium. When you’re young you don’t look that far ahead!
Why? Why am I doing this? Why write a blog? Why delve into the essence of who I am? I’m intrigued by memoir and confession and living vicariously. My real life is quiet. My fantasy life is legion. My inner life, like everyone else’s, is gigantic.
I’m using a pen name, a pseudonymon, because I want to explore and talk about all of me (all of us, all of it)! The blood, guts, tears and sex that make up life. But I don’t want to hurt or embarrass the people I care about.
So here you have it. All of it. The who, what, where, when, why and how of me. Or at the very least, an introduction to it!
My plan, for now, is to blog weekly. See you next week!
P.S. The time stamp on this blog is wrong 
P.S.S. I have figured out how to tell the correct time 
gigi (not necessarily)
