“Women are still not respected in America because they’re women,” my female friend said to me yesterday. We had just seen the movie Barbie and I made the mistake of wondering why power was seen as a good thing when the Barbies had all of it, but a bad thing when the Kens had any of it. “The Kens are as respected in Barbieland as women are in the real world because of patriarchy,” she explained to me.
Curious her thought process, I asked how women are disrespected for being women in America. She told me women don’t have the same rights as men, that women have to be afraid to walk down the street yet men don’t, and that it’s much harder for women to find career opportunities than men. I calmly mentioned that women can vote and own anything a man can, that currently more women graduate from college and graduate school than men and hold more jobs in the college-educated workforce, and that we should expect men to be more protective of women—which would mean more men in more protective roles like police officers, security guards, firefighters, etc. Of course, my mere questioning the notion that women don’t have the same “rights” as men sent her into a tizzy.
Because a real feminist—a progressive feminist—doesn’t question the drivel being peddled to her daily.
You know, the idea that women shouldn’t want to be women at all.
A progressive feminist should seek authoritative and financial power. She should want to scratch and claw her way to the top of a corporate ladder. She should recoil at the thought of pregnancy and savagely fight for a woman’s “right” to terminate the life of her unborn child inside her womb. She should turn up her nose at the thought of motherhood, avoid any sacrifice for her children, and if she does sacrifice anything, complain about it nonstop. She should find love and marriage to be akin to slavery and avoid it at every cost. She should expect to live in a completely safe world—but one without male cops or men who dare to protect her. And the most ironic of all—a progressive feminist should welcome men into women’s only spaces… as long as they say they’re women, too.
My female friend is right. Women are disrespected daily simply for being women. Or at least, for wanting to be women.
I’ve certainly felt disrespected for behaving in a feminine manner—for performing female-driven roles. Strangely, however, I have felt more disrespected by women than by men.
When I was a teaching high school English in an inner city school, my male students from certain misogynistic cultures told me they didn’t respect women. They told me I should be teaching kindergarten because I was “too nice.” People in my life thought it was noble that I taught in an inner city school, but often referred to me as a “schoolteacher,” which conjured images in my mind of Anne of Green Gables. Women close to me told me I didn’t know anything about the “real world” since I was teaching in a high school. The “real world” to them was corporate America – you know, where you sit in an air-conditioned office and send emails back and forth to people who are also sitting in an air conditioned office sending emails. There’s free coffee and doughnuts and you can get up to pee whenever you want. At my inner city school, I had to knock cockroaches off my computer before I could take attendance every morning, we couldn’t drink from the water fountain due to lead contamination, and I had a 300-pound gang banger tell me “snitches get stitches.”
After teaching, I was lucky enough to earn money as a professional writer. I wrote (and still write) contemporary romance novels and screenplays. It is a popular and lucrative market. Yet, whenever I tell people that I write contemporary romance, they chuckle to themselves, suggesting the romance genre is unintellectual and unimportant. My movies have been watched by tens of millions of viewers, of whom most are women. It’s clear romance is important to a few people in the world. But since the market is comprised of women and because stories center on love, such a career is considered inferior.
Finally, I was blessed with my next full-time gig: stay-at-home-mother. I have multiple children who I love spending my time with. Is it exhausting? Yes. Emotionally draining? Yes. The biggest blessing of my life? Yes multiplied by one thousand. I love being a mother and I cherish every moment with my children who seem to be growing up before my eyes. My job is laborious and tiring; my job is frustrating and stressful. It’s also unpaid. (I am privileged, I do agree, that I don’t have to earn an income outside of the home and I am fully aware how much more exhausted I’d be if I’d have to.) Though I work all day long, my work is not seen as work. And I have never felt so much disdain and disrespect about my job as a stay-at-home-mother as I have from other women. They look down on me. They say, “You don’t know what it’s like in the real world.” “You don’t work,” they say. “How can you stand being with your kids all day?” They look at being a stay-at-home-mother the way I looked at the cockroaches on my public school laptop. I can see it in their eyes: I am a pathetic excuse for a human who contributes nothing to the world.
Every job I’ve ever had has been seen as inferior – by other women. Yet every single job I’ve ever had has been part of a female-dominated or female-centered industry. So what does that tell me? Women see women’s work as inferior. Women see being a woman as inferior.
If we women didn’t see being a woman as being inferior, we wouldn’t try to act like men in order to gain respect. We’d demand respect for simply being women.
So when progressive feminists tell me they want women to be treated with the same respect as men, I can’t help but smirk. They’re full of shit. Why should women have to act like men—to work nonstop, not want to be pregnant, be violent toward their own offspring, to crave power at the expense of others, to what to physically dominate—in order to be worthy of respect, in order to be seen as superior?
The Barbie movie highlighted the ways in which Barbie has taught girls they can be or do anything. But what about being ordinary? What about being a mother? At least the character Gloria in the movie questioned that. Do we have to be doctors and lawyers and presidents and astronauts in order to be respected? Do we have to hate being in female bodies in order to find joy in life?
Can’t we just demand respect for the amazing things we women can do that men can’t do? There are a lot of things men can do that women can also do. But there are some things women can do that men can’t do. (Of course idiot progressive women are happy to hand off these remarkable, female-only abilities to men—that’s how much they detest being women.)
I love being a woman. I love being feminine. Sure, I wear pants. I swear and fart and burp, too. Sometimes, dagnabbit, I act like a man (wink). But I’d prefer to be seen as worthy and respected just for being a female human. I’d like Americans to see “women’s work” as worthy of respect, as dignified and important, as meaningful and rewarding.
How can we expect men to respect us if we don’t respect ourselves?
If progressive feminists want to make gains, they should start by treating all women—even women who act like women—with respect.