sheling's Open Salon Blog

Feminism: The Modern Con

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 06:03:11 -0400

"The most straightforward definition of feminism says that is a movement for social, cultural, political and economic equality of men and women. It is a campaign against gender inequalities and it strives for equal rights for women. Feminism can be also defined as the right to enough information available to every single woman so that she can make a choice to live a life which is not discriminatory and which works within the principles of social, cultural, political and economic equality and independence."

http://ezinearticles.com/?Definition-of-Feminism&id=1697184

Recently, the BBC showed a series of programs that asked how the feminist struggles of 50 years ago impacted upon the lives of women today. One show in particular followed the lives of several married couples and examined how careers, family, household maintenance and budgeting was divided between each spouse as well as examined how the couples felt about feminism.

I remember watching couple after couple (all, to be fair, fairly pleasant people) surprise their other half with their definition of feminism, and being surprised myself at how poorly feminism was defined generally; in my mind, only one woman got the definition right:

"Are you a feminist?"
"Yes, I think I am."
"And what does that mean to you?"
"Well, it's about choices, really. I could go to work and have a career; I know I'd be supported if I made that choice. But I want to stay home with my children - this is where my work is at the moment. But the choice is there."

I remember a surge of pride for this one woman - a stay-at-home-mother of three children under 5 who managed the family's 2-acre farm as well as the children and household. She was utterly at peace with how things worked - though described the division of household labour as "so traditional as to be almost embarrassing" - because, in her own words, "I could change my mind and do something else at any time".

Lucky her.

Feminism has become passe. It's become one of those things that has outgrown itself and seems to lack relevance any longer. Women are equal now, right? Girls go to university, run companies, pop out babies, marry and dominate various fields. The media loves to pour over stories of how Maggie, mother of 3, 44, from Manchester has just finished a nursing degree and is now a manager with her local NHS trust. Well good for Maggie. These figurehead totems around which all the rest of us are meant to worship are coming to represent something of a false-positive when it comes to the shape of modern feminism.

As children, women are programmed to believe that we can have it all: family, career, husband (who will support us no matter what), success, longevity, respect, fair pay for good work blah blah blah. But the truth is, feminism is still limited to playing the game according to the rules that a male-led society has given us girls.

This isn't feminism. This is being allowed to sit at the grown-ups table because we've been good. The truth of the matter is, equality - for the majority of us who haven't made men-friendly choices and followed the post-modern route of university-marriage-kids - still doesn't exist.

I'm feeling like I've been conned at the moment, and not by men but by these "radical feminist" types who seem to think that, actually, feminism isn't about the right for women to make their own choices, but, instead, it's about a woman's obligation to seek out inequality and challenge it. These radical types will discount my circumstances because I didn't take the fight to the guys in the usual way; I didn't take a man into my home so that I could fight over the division of household labour and raising the children. Nor did I go to university so that I could take the struggle up in the workplace and make my demands to get equal pay (even when I take time off to have babies).

Ironically, perhaps, it is these feminists who are now limiting my equality - within my own gender. I am, apparently, a "less-than" woman; a bad soldier; a poor feminist. And all because I did it wrong.

I've always seen my life in three distinct sections: the adventure, the family, the career. I never fussed over university when I was 18 because I didn't know what I wanted to be and figured that I still had the first two stages to figure it out in. So I lived and had my adventures. I did my dumb stuff, gathered my stories and got hold of a solid notion of who I was. I didn't challenge men (at least not deliberately and within the sphere of equality); I didn't need to: I never felt that equality was an issue and, besides, being a woman at that age was a huge advantage.

The naivety of my approach became solidly obvious when children fell into the mix; my lack-lustre approach to relationships left me destined to sink with a family that also viewed me as an outsider: by the time I was 23, I had lived a life so different from their experiences and expectations that they had no reference with which to work from. And they certainly did not wish to take this strange new kind of creature as they found her. Nor, indeed, did they believe that there were yet choices for me to make. Feminism does not exist within my family: once you pop a child out, your own life is over.

Now comes the time when I'm looking to the Sisterhood for a little help. One of their own wants to start on her third stage - the career - and needs a little help with it. And, given my circumstances - 33, single, disabled child, urge to go study at uni - you'd think they'd be leaping at the chance. I'm pure poster-girl material, no?

No. I'm really not. Ironically, it's men and women who don't classify themselves as "feminists" who are giving me the greatest push. And it's the hardcore feminists who are telling me that, actually, my fight is already lost. Apparently my choices have rendered my Modern Woman Membership Card irredeemable at the point of sale and I need to get out of the queue and put my choices back upon the shelf.

A close friend has recently challenged me over the way I seem to have written myself off at 33. I hadn't realised this was the case until, furious with the accusation, I started to really consider how I'm approaching my life these days. And then I realised he was right. But where did this dismissal of my own value come from?

Sadly, it's not my generally-evil family, or even the idiot men I've surrounded myself with in the past. It's other women who make me feel like I'm already past my prime and should give up and accept my lot already. This is the danger we typical girls face these days: the media loves to talk up women who do stuff successfully, but it makes the rest of us (who don't have our ducks lined up quite so tidily) feel like we will never deserve such lofty praise unless we're also prepared to live more (ironically) traditionally feminist lives. And when it comes to the popular hard-hitting feminists (And I include every TV-haunting witch and columnist except Bonnie Greer), well, I've already made my choices and they didn't involve struggling to reach the top in a man-dominated world so I've not proven myself worth anything at all yet: I haven't earned my membership into the estemmed ranks of continuing-the-struggle feminists.

This, frankly, is nonsense. It's a con. Feminism was never meant to be about the struggle, but about what's to be gained at the end. It's like saying the emancipation of black people was about rioting - not the eventual equality they were aiming to gain, or like saying disability equality isn't actually about people becoming more aware and accepting of disabilities but just about not using the word "retard" anymore. Likewise it's saying gay people just don't want to be called fags anymore and all the other issues - marriage and fair tax-breaks etc... - are irrelevant.

No, this is incorrect: feminism isn't about whether I've struggled in a man-led world or not, but about the choices I should have still coming to me: it's not about whether I'm woman enough to wear the label, but about whether I'm human enough to keep trying.

As with so many civil rights movements, feminism needs rebranding. It's original purpose has been lost during the efforts to make it accessible, acceptable and part of modern-day life. The word "choice" is no longer associated with feminism (as the BBC documentary so nicely demonstrated). And, worst of all, those women who, we are told, are still fighting the good fight now imagine that they get to cast the rules that the rest of us have to follow if we're to merit equality at all - whether it involves our lives in general or simply the feminist movement alone.

Which is ironic, if you think about it: Feminists have become a woman's worst enemy.

Autism: What's up with that, anyway?

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:03:35 -0400

Yesterday it became official: Fate is a bitch with a cruel sense of humour and I am the mother of a child with autism.

The crazy part is that though I'd been working for three years to secure a diagnosis for him; though I understood exactly what kinds of support it would finally make available to us; though it settles instantly the question of whether he stays in his current, difficult, mainstream school or not, when it finally began to settle in, it left me devastated.

Families of other autistic children that I'd met during the course of my struggle had warned me that while the formal diagnosis - when it eventually comes - is everything you've been hoping for, it will still hit you like a train. I figured they were overstating for drama's sake. But they were utterly and completely correct and now I understand exactly what they meant.

The diagnosis was delivered right at the start of a three-hour wall of meetings that began at around 10am. The meeting schedule left me no time digest, consider and react to its deliverance at all. Worse, its existence was a key factor in the following meetings so I was raising it in pragmatic, cerebral terms and talking about its implications for hours before I was able to just pause, breathe and feel about it. Finally when the meetings ended some fifteen minutes before I was due to collect my son from school for the day, I went for a "Wow, that sucked," cigarette and was suddenly bowled over.

"Bowled" is not a good word for what happened. But I can't think of a better one and bowled might, perhaps, conjure up an image of a hard, fast cricket ball destroying a set of wickets.

I've never experienced anything like it; a physical force hitting me hard in the stomach would have felt no different. I lit my smoke, took a breath and, BAM! I was doubled over and struggling to absorb the news that had been delivered - now I look back at yesterday - with obviously shitty timing. For a while it was a struggle to breathe, even. It was all pure reaction - no emotion, no tears, just the shock of the diagnosis hitting me with a physical force.

But worse than the unexpected doubling over; worse than the having had to wait three hours before being able to react at all was the very first thought that went through my mind when I - at last - was able to begin framing the diagnosis within a personal context: It wasn't me; I didn't do this to him.

I didn't realise - had absolutely no idea - that I'd been carrying around with me some kind of guilt about having been such a bad mother that I had, somehow, disabled my child. And for all this time? I look back 24 hours to that moment and my heart breaks a little that anyone (let alone stoic, "Let's get this over with" old me) could have ever entertainedsuch a sad, heavy thought.

It's been a hard twenty-four hours and the emotions still aren't making any sense: Where's the satisfaction and triumph at having stuck to my opinion and not yielded when so many "professionals" tried to dismiss my worries? Where's my sense of personal vindication for the many, many decisions I've made that go right back to when he was tiny that were based upon my gut instinct telling me that he simply couldn't do whatever it was?(My refusal to attend mother and baby groups remained - until yesterday - a contraversial issue that was still regularly doing the rounds at meetings and assessments) Where's the optimism that comes from knowing that, finally, his needs are defined and recognised in such a certain, undeniable fashion? And what about the simple relief at finally being able to approach support groups and family networks and get some help?

Nope. None of that is factoring in at all; my son is autistic ("Placed upon the spectrum by a significant margin with enough evidence at this age to prompt further Asperger's Syndrome-specific enquiries later on.") and I nailed it so completely so long ago... and I so badly wanted to be crazy. It took me a long time to be able to use the word "disabled", and I suddenly hate the phrase and everyone to whom it's an alien concept that happens to other people.

Comfort is a cold thing when you're a parent facing something like this: the grief is deep, pronounced and constant and with it comes a huge wave of guilt that you can feel so much loss about a child that you love so completely and who causes you so much joy and pride on a daily basis. And the juxtaposition is raw and ugly, like the earth after a quake has hit. It's an unfair (and, in many ways, cruel) balance to have to strike, frankly; his medical definition breaks my heart though he's no different to how he was yesterday or the day before or the day before that.

In a way, I guess, I'm grieving for myself and for those sweet maternal dreams we women make when pregnancy hits the third trimester and we start to fantasise about our future lives with our children. I didn't have big plans for Euan - his life is his own and I only get to hold his hand until he's ready to do it alone - but to have so many of those automatic preconceptions that I imagined so easily rendered irrelevant is difficult to accept.

Of course, there's the old "It's only autism" chestnut that I've been using whenever anyone expresses even the slightest degree of sympathy for my son and I. And that does hold some truth: there are parents who are facing disabilities so much more pronouced, fundamental and serious than Euan's that I feel almost selfish to be indulging myself over something relatively trivial.

But, unlike with many of the more serious childhood diagnoses, there's no real "But..." to it. Seriously life-threaning disorders can bring inherent comfort at the fact that the child is still alive at all; other conditions and diseases can be managed or treated all together and there's something concrete that parents can do to feel that they're contributing in some way to their child's welfeare: autism builds a bubble around a child that even parents can struggle to penetrate at times, which makes trying to be proactive seem often futile. And always with other childhood issues, the bond between mother and child remains untouchable - with Euan and I, it's always been at stake

Autism is insidious: It lacks both definition and limitations. And while it's making a fairly obvious future-genius of my son, it's also steadily robbing him of his childhood and his emotional connections with other people. For example, he has never once cried when I've left him somewhere. Attachment separation just doesn't exist for him at all.

So, I'm thinking, I can try to be stoic and brave and so very British about all of this, and refuse to admit how deeply this has struck me - in spite of all the time I've had to watch it approach - or I can acknowledge how I feel and react accordingly; nurse my broken heart, deal with my emotional reality, find a way to settle that cruel dilemma.

Because the sad fact is that out of my son and I, I'm the only one currently capable of doing that at all.

In Response To: '"Precious" Actress Will Never Work Again'

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:03:11 -0500

http://open.salon.com/blog/kevin0719/2010/03/11/precious_actress_will_never_work_again

I just read an article by Kevin Broccoli (Seriously, does anyone know if I can embed the name of the author and the article I'm quoting here? Is that an HTML trick I need to learn?), '"Precious Actress Will Never Work Again' which seemed, at first, to harbour a certain amount of truth upon first glance. However, now I'm thinking about it, I think that his - and Howard Stern's, who is the spine of the piece - take on the Hollywood machine is simplistic and incorrect.

The essence of the article is this: Gabourey Sidibe, talented enough to warrant an Oscar nomination (Hmmm, more to say on that later, too) is too overweight to ever be considered for future roles. Oh, and she's black.

Then the author lists some movies where black actors were nominated or awarded and then, apparently, never worked again. As if the world in general passes over black actors and they are still at a significant disadvantage when it comes to their careers.

"Halle Berry hasn't been able to match her Monster's Ball acclaim. Jennifer Hudson settled for small roles in "Sex and the City" and "The Secret Life of Bees." Forrest Whitaker turned in a revelatory performance in "The Last King of Scotland" and then did a guest spot on "E.R.""

Halle Berry did take on a trilogy of steadily deteriorating performances with the X-Men (I love the movies, but her role - "Storm" - especially, sucked). Then there was the James Bond outingand several other plum action roles. Fine, the woman can act, but if she's wanting to show off those skills, she's really not reaching out for the roles to help her along there, eh? On top of that, she loathes junkets is reputedly difficult to work with and, let's be honest here, 9/10 times will turn in a performance that lacks shine.

Jennifer Hudson is a singer who - though she may have won a HUGE televised talent show - is still establishing her career which is primarily as a recording artist. And for a large black woman, her modelling career seems to have taken right off, too. She's a fledgling gathering awards from everywhere. Given her stonking voice, it's entirely possibly she only wanted small roles so that she could focus on her primary vocation... just a guess.

Forest Whitaker is really not a hard-done-by newbie, however. His list of credit - acting, directing, producing both on TV and in the movies is impressive and distinguished. It's not as if he needs to worry about future work.

This may sound dismissive of the struggles that black performers still face. But the point is there are but a handful of actors in Hollywood who don't need to struggle for roles; the rest of them strive and compete no matter what their circumstances may be; for years there have been complaints that there are no "solid" roles for women of a certain age, for gay men (who don't want to be straight in their careers) and can anyone name for me a mainstream disabled actor? No.

So along comes Howard Stern and, in typical style, makes a comment that everyone tries super-PC-hard not to agree with: an Oscar-winning fat black actress will never work again, and all Hollywood producers are wankers.

Firstly, I take serious issue with the notion that, somehow an Oscar is the highest accolade an actor can garner. The Oscars are the only awards given by people in the industry. Movies campaign for them; it's absolutely the least impartial form of recognition imaginable, frankly. Very rarely do movies get anything save the "lesser" awards (tell that to a friend of mine who is obsessed with sound production) on merit alone.

So it's entirely (and sadly) likely that our apparently-downtrodden Sidibe got her Oscar -because- she's an overweight black actress. Especially after Poitier, Berry and Washington were all so effusive in their acceptance speeches about how Hollywood is finally recognising the talent of black performers, "black" seems to be very much a word of the modern movie zeitgeist.

Colour aside, however, there are more people to blame than the big, bad Hollywood producers if it's true that, actually, imperfect black people can't get decent roles. Producers only make the movies that become available, after all. They don't, for example, write them. Nor to they represent the performers, nor do they cast them.

Today's industry is no longer exclusively Hollywood-based; the entire US has become a movie-making machine, with New York asserting its importance in production and promotion; festivals like Sundance bigging up the indy movies which - 10 years ago - would never have seen the screen in a theatre and performers being taken from all over the map, not just Hollywood. It's arguable that, from the States alone, we're seeing more diversity in our movies than ever before.

And that's without counting Britian, Europe (okay, the French scene is kinda crappyright now) and then further afield - Eastern Block movies are being given startling recognition; Korea and Japan have long-since headed up the horror stakes, and let's not forget how "eastern animation" is no longer just about cartoon gore classics like "Fist of the North Star" and other anime titles.

For crying outloud, our local graffiti hero Banksy just put out a movie.

So given the huge diversity of movies available, how is it that anyone can claim a black actress of considerable talent will never work again and be taken seriously at all?

Because it's us who buys the tickets, and movies in Hollywood are made based upon what makes money.

Hollywood is very, very good at making money. Andit uses that money to good effect. There's nothing wrong with a decent huge-budget action thriller, and beloved the world over Pixar would be nothing without some seriously hard-grossing box office takings.

Ultimately, however, the majority of paying audiences will not shell out cash to go see a large woman - whatever her colour - unless she's in a comedy role. Just as they don't like films about gay men or strong women or anything that challenges them to step outside of what they call "entertainment". And when your business is getting people to pay you money, you aim to give them what they want.

There is a thriving indie scene; there are talented writers who do write these roles and challenge people to go to new places with them in their work. There are agents who represent the non-perfect performers and casting directors who will see ability, passion and talent however it is packaged.

But you won't see it in Hollywood; not because the producers are all twats, but because we won't pay to watch it.

"Why do I write?"

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:03:29 -0500

"Hey, look, it's a nifty and interesting site - thanks, Stumble!"

Within moments, I'd fallen in love with Dorinda Fox (the math homework entry) and found something highly quotable for the site where I usually write my shit ("Thinking About Math and History While CLeaning the Bathroom). Then I discovered "Placebostudman" and Net Love happened.

I read an interview someone had written with him as their subject (Sorry, no source for that one - when Net Lurve takes places, Link Saving stops), and I did that thing I always SWEAR I'll never do again, but always end up repeating anyway: I wrote him.

" I'm new to all this.

Not just OS but Disabled Land, too, even if my passport there has "proxy" written on it.

My family doesn't -do- disabilities. When I was diagnosed with depression a decade ago, it was bad enough - under-the-rug-type of embarrassment followed causing a schism that eventually lead to my bitch mother stealing my first child and me decisively breaking contact with every member of ym family who stood by and watched.

And that was just depression.

Then, life happened and, suddenly I've got another child who is Different To Everyone Else and - without even as much time to wonder how I feel about this - I'm having to suddenly (and ironically) fight to get his disability recognised.

It pisses me off enormously that the disabled have to be judged and tagged by the well-bodied and -minded. How the fuck are they meant to know anything about anything? Fine, the facts are all there, the list of diagnostic criteria is available. But, like the male midwife who figured he'd give giving me a lesson in breastfeeding discovered, what the fuck does anyone KNOW unless they've been through it themselves?

The "Abled" (The abbreviation I'll use for those with allegedly sound bodies and minds from now on) have a spectacular luxury when it comes to their wholeness, aside from the patently obvious "Everything works - hoorah!" point of view. They can't know what it's like for something [i]not[/i] to work, and the Empathy Bus only goes so far before people have to get off.

My son is 4 and autistic. However, he's lucky / unlucky enough to have an obvious case of Asperger's Syndrome. Lucky, because he's, at least, highly intelligent and high-functioning. Unlucky because he's just not quite odd enough for those of the professional medical persuasion to want to hurry up and diagnose him so that we can start getting the help we need.

And yet, these Abled folks - to whom disability has become somewhat passe - flatly refuse to acknowledge that a 4-year-old can be in nappies while explaining to them how the Gulf Stream works. Worse, they don't see his extreme obsession with geology and astronomy to be a disability at all.

This is because they have the luxury of not having to. And this, more than the constant battle I've had for the last three years, more than the way it's still suggested that my bad parenting has somehow MADE him autistic, more than the way my opinions are ignored and my involvement never sought, pisses me the fuck off and starts me off on the "The Abled are Utter Cunts" road, which I invariably hit at full speed and drive along until the tarmac runs out.

Then I find your blog.

I still feel like an interloper - I'm not disabled myself, though (perhaps I offer this like foreign currency to a taxi driver at an airport) I'm not a stranger to pain with my severe endometriosis, but I'm still essentially Abled. It's an oddly uncomfortable place to be when you've seen the alternatives and struggled with the Abled to get any kind of recognition.

However, when strangers in the street start approaching you to talk about your child's autism, it becomes pretty fucking clear that the Abled Doctors and you don't really share the same point of view anymore.

Your blog seems to "get" this, though you're a long-time resident of Disabled Land. But, the truth is that the Abled are a bunch of granted-taking fuckers for most of whom a little more compassion and imagination wouldn't be lost on. I'm grateful for the words you've written (expect another incredibly long, dull, oddly-bitter letter to follow when I've trawled through your archives and have collected more quotes), as I am for the honesty you type them with. Oh, we're ALL ABOUT being aware of the disabled, the elderly, the ethnic minorities... but that doesn't lead to acceptance because, still, the Abled are able to refuse to consider what life is actually like for people who HAVE to deal with this shit instead of simply choosing to.

I tried writing something similar on a site I occasionally visited a while ago, and the reception was largely "Oh, Shel, you do like to make a fuss over nothing. We KNOW that life for the disabled sucks!"

Abled fuckers.

With that kind of love you can only get from an admiring stranger,

sheling x"

I try to take life brightly and happily, but, seriously, sometimes you just HAVE TO LET IT OUT.

Anyway. Conversation ensued and I wrote a profile (which makes me look like a Crazy Person) and then I wrote this, my strange introduction to a community that invited me to raise my game.

Hullo!

A final note - it's mindblowingly awesome to have lots of little formatting buttons at the top of this window here, though I apologise in advance for the length of time I'm going to need before I start using them fluently and stop doing things like capitalising and using BBcode to convey my sentiments. But it also present with a strange contradiction - the bio section offers no formatting options whatsoever. So my wonderfully formatted, carefully crafted bio ends up making me look as if I can only run-on-sentence and then end on a non-sequitor rant.

While this tends to be true most of the time, I was so hoping it wouldn't be that obvious form the get-go.

I look forward, hugely, to reading more of the articles and entries on OS - it's so refreshing to find a group of people who can write AND think at the same time - a challenge I frequently fail to live up to.

Shel x