Ain’t I a woman?

I’m not really sure what I just watched here.

This is a trailer for a new documentary about the so-called rise of women in the conservative movement – which I suppose you could more accurately call the increased influence of women in conservative politics and culture over the last 40 years or so. That in itself is curious… Didn’t Democrats nominate a female vice presidential candidate back in 1984? Aren’t the majority of female office-holders in this country Democrats? So why are we suddenly fascinated with the women that a gasping-to-death conservative movement is *finally* letting have a seat at the table?

That’s topic for another post. What I really don’t understand about Phyllis Schafly, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and even the popular motivational speaker Sarah Palin is this: It’s totally possible for a woman to be a political or social conservative, and even pro-woman. It’s patently illogical for a political or social conservative to claim feminism, or at least to claim that they’re better for women than any other political party.

I’m not talking about “what’s good for me personally” feminism. I’m talking about “what’s good for women as a whole” feminism. It’s blazing bullshit for an individual woman to be privileged enough to get a first-class education, be able-bodied enough to look good on TV, have a husband willing to watch the kids while you travel the world giving speeches, and then actively work against other women getting equal pay, having child care and being able to get student loans.

It’s this mixing of politics and culture-war horseshit that gets me. When I elect, say, a Senator, I care how she or he will vote when funding for Social Security conflicts with funding for a new fighter plane. I could give two purple shits what she thinks I should be teaching my future children about premarital sex.

But that mixing is exactly what some of the women in this trailer appear to be doing when they talk about how The Feminists™ have destroyed What it Means to Be a Woman. What the hell does THAT mean? Being a mother is a political act? What about being a father? Anything?

I’m a woman. I frakking LOVE being a woman, too. And I love men just about as much as I love being a woman. Every day, when I leave from the house I bought by myself when I was 25 and head to my job, I know how much I owe to the women who went before me. I know how different my professional life is from my mother’s or grandmother’s when each was my age. I know I didn’t do any of this alone.

I know that I can go to work dressed like a woman, and not (to quote Harrison Ford in “Working Girl”) like a woman thinks a man would dress if he were a woman, and still be taken seriously. I can direct a meeting full of men and take for granted that they’ll listen to me, because I outrank them. I can (though I choose not to at this point) do all that and still be a wife and/or mother. And the reason I can do all that is because of the work of feminists, not “mama bears” or whatever the frak they call themselves.

You know what else? My male co-worker can bring in his five-year-old son for an hour or so when his child care falls through, and it’s not an issue. That’s also thanks to feminism.

Seriously, what the hell is this “real woman” crap, and why the hell would I want to vote for someone who presumes to put me in a box that she’s defined for me? Especially when she serves an ideology that STILL uses gendered slurs to critique women it disapproves of?

And don’t even get me started on that “I’m not a victim” crap. Just because you acknowledge that there are systemic decks stacked against you (like, say, legal marital rape) doesn’t mean you submit to those systemic problems. Um, doesn’t the fact that we are calling out gender, race or class prejudice mean we ARE NOT submitting to them?

When hear the Schaflys and the Coulters and the Malkins and even the Palins talk, I flash back to middle school. I can’t be the only one who had several female classmates that had just discovered sexism, but whose “I’m just as good as you” quieted when the teacher needed someone to move something heavy, only to turn into “but I’m a girl, I can’t carry that, WAAAH!”

Look, feminism isn’t easy. If women want to demand that we’re treated as full human beings, that means we have to give up our pretty-princess-on-a-pedestal status. And, while some days I’d love to not have to worry about my retirement or cleaning the gutters or balancing the checkbook, it’s worth it to have control over my own life. It also means that I have a responsibility to pull other people – men and women – up behind me, not knock down the ladder I just climbed up.

You don’t get to claim that you’re pro-woman when you’re nominated for high office and then cry “skirt!” when it’s time to carry the proverbial overhead projector. You don’t get to claim with a straight face that having a functioning uterus makes you better at budgeting or writing legislation. And you really, really don’t get to tell me how to be a woman. I’ve been one for 30 years now. I’m good, thanks.