International women’s day today…it’s a bit heartbreaking for me to think that such a day is simultaneously a celebration of the sex that literally brought every single one of us into this world, and a day where sexism is something we’re made accutely aware of, especially on the internet.
The Ho and I have been talking a lot about “feminism” and women’s issues the past couple days, actually. I can’t remember precisely what brought it up, but it was something to the effect of someone, a women, being criticized for dressing in a sexually attractive manner. Another instance today was someone attacking women who strip or work in adult films, as in, how can women do such things and call themselves feminists. Doesn’t it defeat the purpose, or destroy their credibility.
The answer to that is that to make such a statement illustrates precisely what women’s rights movements and feminism are actually trying to fight; at least *my* understanding of those terms and movements. I’m sure that some would disagree, or at least turn the attention of issues of self esteem, or sex trafficking, etc…but that would actually refract from the issue of feminism or women’s rights, which is to say in a word: freedom. Wrapped up in that, I see the issues of equality, respect, security, choice, and power blossom. They all come back to freedom, which is to say that women should be free to do as they please. Free to every right that a man has, and it *IS* that specific comparison, because what feminism fights against is the *gender* inequalities that persist in our world today.
Feminism should not fight a women dressing in a provocative manner, or someone from taking clothes off to make money. Those can be, in fact, expressions of sexuality, and women’s sexuality is something that has been controlled to an extent wholly different from that of men’s sexuality, mostly BY men. Is there another side to the adult film/stripper issue that involves horrible things like sex trafficking and rape, and all those things? Absolutely. This we know for certain. BUT, those things are NOT inherent to the activities themselves, not all or even *most* of strippers or porn stars are in such situations, and even if they were (which they’re not)…to take a moral stance for someone else and tell them what they’re doing is wrong and take steps to shun them, or tell that that they can’t do such things…THAT is taking a woman’s freedom away and taking away her right to choose how to live her life for herself. That is something I intensely disagree with.
I was raised when I was young by just my mother, one of the most fiercely independent and strong people I’ve ever known. The equal and better of any man, and I mean that literally. There was a time in this country where she wold not have been allowed to vote. To this day, she earns $0.70 on the $1.00 that I can make as a man. She is told by men (and other women, too) what she can and cannot do with her body, especially when it comes to sex and pregnancy. All of these things are true because women have been deemed insufficient in unequal to their male counterparts to decide for herself. I think about those things being true for my mother, and it affirms for me that all those things are horribly, horribly wrong and unjust. And, that is why I’m a huge fan today of International Women’s Day, and I plead to those who would find themselves fighting such words as “feminism” and understand what’s really being said: that women should be free to be women, whatever form they choose.
Getting off the soapbox, today was a great day 😛 I was tired, but it was a good day. I’m sitting here realizing that I have so much work to get done on various things outside of editing, I’m going to take the day tomorrow to do them all. I feel very uneasy about it, but I would honestly feel the same if I were deciding to do an editing day tomorrow and not do all this other stuff. The key will be me scheduling out the day, make sure I get everything done that I need to. I’m going to go do that right now, so I will bid you adieu. I’ll see you on the flip.
No credit for tonight’s artwork, unfortunately, it wasn’t listed. I did get the image from 70s Sci Fi art