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I am tired of this so-called “fight for equality”. Equality for womyn has been a disaster for womyn. Equality hasn’t been worth a tinker’s damn so far. What have we gotten from it? To be honest, all we have gotten is men and male-dominated media defining what “Women’s Issues” are, which has fragmented womyn by their feelings about these issues; what little we have obtained has been through the men throwing us a sop now and then to keep us from getting “uppity”. I’m sorry, Sisters, but what can be given by others can be taken away by them as well.
We have started to define success by male terms. WE have been co-opted into the patriarchy. Instead of ignoring their so-called “Women’s Issues” which tie us to patriarchy, we have been so happy that they deigned to notice things that matter to us that we didn’t even see the shackles that were placed on us all by accepting their notice. Equality has made womyn buy into patriarchy. Look at what running for political office does to womyn! Most womyn, to get anywhere politically in this system, have to act more male than the men in their strategies, while having to simultaneously be almost stereotypically feminine in their outward displays to keep the men from feeling threatened. They have to compromise themselves and their integrity until they are just as icky as the men they run against, and they start to see things from the patriarchal point-of-view. All the while, the very system they are trying to participate in denigrates their assertiveness while mocking any signs of “female weakness”.
I’m sorry, but feminism is not about womyn becoming like men, nor is it about us losing our womonsouls to claim some kind of male-defined power or authority. Feminism is about womyn being truly free. Free to make our own choices, whatever those choices are. Free to celebrate our wonderful uniqueness. Free to realize that we are worthy just as we are and that we don’t have to try and turn ourselves into pseudo-men to be valuable human beings. For goodness sake, most men aren’t very good at being men, why should we have to be better at it than they are?
We need to rethink where feminism is taking us because right now we are on a road where the bridge to something good is broken down and currently leads to nowhere except a bad fall. I’ve seen too many feminists playing patriarchal power games or belittling other womyn because their choices are different from the ones those feminists say womyn are “supposed to” make. Excuse me, but I want to know who decides what womyn are “supposed to” choose. Don’t all those “ought to”s and “supposed to”s and “should”s sound an awful lot like patriarchal nonsense? We have had thousands of years of male-dominated societies telling womyn what they are “supposed to” do; what womyn “ought to” choose; how womyn “should” feel. No one is telling me those things any more except me! I am certainly not going to let another womon, just because she has assumed that her notions of feminism entitle her to dictate to her sisters, tell me what to choose, what to do, or how to feel!
Womyn need to get radical about feminism, and I mean radical in the actual meaning of the word, not the distorted meaning that the media has given it. I mean back to the roots of feminism and its meaning for womyn. If we keep defining feminism the way that male-dominated society lets us define it now as being about “equality” and “women’s issues” we’re never going to truly get rid of patriarchy. We have to stop reacting against patriarchy and we have to quit listening to the lies their media tells to keep us quiet. We need, in other words, to put the whole failed system behind us and move on with our lives right here, right now! Not in some distant, never-arriving future, but now, we need to realize how irrelevant patriarchy truly is, how weak and bloated and corrupt it is, and just realize that it only has power over us if we give it that power. We need to live as free womyn every moment of the day and night. Don’t dream of what the world will be like for us when patriarchy is gone and then sigh and wish “if only that could be so”! Dream of what the world would be like without patriarchy and then live your life that way right now!
This is where feminism needs to go: beyond patriarchy. Discard it like an old, used tissue in the ash-heap of time and go forward. Be free! Physics teaches that observer and observed affect one another on the deepest levels, there is no outside reality! There is only the reality that all of us shape daily by what we see and hear and feel and know in our hearts and souls to be true! So get off your lazy psyches and create reality the way you dream it to be and don’t be afraid that live that dream and make it real!
