So I have no idea what was wrong with me last night. I'm hoping that it was just a combination of being tired and having my period being right around the corner. I don't know why but I could not stop crying and nothing was helping. The good news is that I feel much better today and am very ready to get back to my busy life. I have to mail a bill, call the cable company and cancel the cable, read for Monday(yuck), go to class, after class I'm hanging out with a friend, then steak with my roommates, then D&D(yeah, I'm a geek I know), and finally, I'm going to see the LCP show tonight. I have a very busy but hopefully very fun day planned. We'll see how much of this I can get done.
Some good things did come out of last night. I learned that I am pretty devoted to posting here now even when very upset or busy. I also thought of a few good topics while I was at work last night. I think I want to talk about female empowerment and what it means to me to be a feminist.
I know that since feminist has come about many people think wrongly that it is about women hating men and thinking they are better then them. Guys, trust me on this one, any straight woman who has ever been dumped has at on point or another said that she hates men. Let's face the facts. Men and women are cruel to each other and it is understandable that we often dislike each other. Feminism is more about empowering women to fight for the right to be equals. Women should be able to work and have a family. If they work the same job as a man they should make the same money. Women should be allowed to be doctors, lawyers, soldiers, football players, and anything else they want.
Now I have gone on this big rant about how women should have all of these things in order to be equal to men. But then there also needs to be other changes for men too. For example, they shouldn't be the only ones signing up for the draft. Men shouldn't always have to pay. Men should be treated with respect too. Men should be allowed to be nurses, teachers, hair stylists or stay home with the kids if they want to.
If we are to be truly equal no job or role should be barred from either sex. The reason I am writing about this is because in class yesterday I found myself defending the novel length poem we had read from feminism. It made me a little angry that feminist were not seeing the story as empowering to women despite the age it was written in. They seem to have forgotten that the main character did something very unheard of. She refused to marry a man who proposed to her because she wanted to be an artist, a poet. By the end of the book the main character recognizes the importance of love and asks him to accept her. But this is only after they have both gone through a very long change and have learned where they were wrong. Aurora, the main character, only accepts her lover only after he accepts her as a poet. Feminists say that she is giving in and saying that marriage and love are more important than art but if that were true she very well could have married the man, who thought a woman could not be a poet, from the beginning and there would not have been a story. She only agrees to marry him after he is willing to give up the belief that she can't be a poet. And when she does agree she does not say she will give up her poetry in exchange for married life.
We have come a very long way from thinking that women can't do things because of their gender but we still have a long ways to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment