five

i am a feminist.

i was not always. i was a feminist but. i was a shudder-when-i-heard-the-word. i remember the look on my mum's face when i told her that i didn't like feminism: shock mixed with disappointment mixed with disbelief. she must have heard my words over and over in her life: that i wanted equality, sure, but didn't those pushy women go too far in the seventies? that feminists were man-haters, mostly, that they were too extreme and had damaged the position of women with their agressiveness. whilst i wasn't totally anti-feminist in my ideals (i wasn't for all that women's natural place is the kitchen malarkey) i thought myself above all those loud women who burnt bras and wanted to send men to the moon.

i didn't think too much more about it until i got to university, when feminism suddenly jumped right into my head from the pages of my books, and made itself at home. i read histories of the feminist movement in england; feminist writing deconstructing social ideals on beauty, femininity, masculinity, motherhood and sexuality; gender theory. i could not believe that these gorgeous, passionate works existed and that i had not read them before. i could not believe that i had been so quick to disregard the women whose ideas i now embraced, and whose outrage i had (wrongly) seen as ill-placed aggression. feminist and gender theories have become integral parts of how i interpret the world around me. when i read an article that focuses on Rebecca Adlington's love of shoes instead of her gold-medal winning, record breaking brilliance, it's not just an article, but an example of how very certain, acceptable feminities are perpetuated. october 30th is not another day, it's Women's No Pay Day, the day when women receive their last payslip of the year and begin working for free thanks to the 17% gender pay gap. when i hear behaviour described as 'manly' or 'girly', i question why, and consider the implications of such descriptions.

i had typed out more examples, but the leviathan paragraph was a little intimidating.

i was very happy, therefore, to have a class on feminism and history on wednesday night; part of my course is a paper entitled 'Historical Argument and Practice', which focuses on conceptual, historiographical and methodological problems and themes in history (it's scary stuff, but good, so good). what could be better than thinking about these two things that i love AT THE SAME TIME?? the class was excellent, made my brain tick, but i got increasingly annoyed at the constant use of the word 'anger'. it reminded me of my years-old words, and how i had dismissed all these compex ideas with a patronising shake of the head, and a refusal to see the intracacies and importance of a whole intellectual world (and i don't mean academic here, i mean a world of thoughts and arguments and stories). One person, R, kept suggesting that the historian Judith Bennett's ideas (that we should explore patriarchies in history, as well as different forms and experiences of female oppression; that history can inform and enrich contemporary feminism; and that anger and emotion should encourage and stimulate the historian) advocated the writing of polemics, and that she wanted a stream of historical works that primarily furthered her comtemporary agenda. R believes that feminist history, as proposed by Bennett, can be nothing more than slave to the ideology of the author; it cannot be history proper, with a suitable level of objectivity, and it cannot hope to add to an understanding of the past, informed as it is by the present. add a few more 'angrys' and 'anger' to that, another 'polemic', and a derisive tone, and you have a fairer representation of R's tirade.

i was most concerned by the (wilful?) misrepresentation of Bennett's ideas. being informed and inspired by current ideologies and trends is not new to the historian, although an awareness of it is somewhat younger. using contemporay ideas as a framework for analysis is also well established practice; ask any of the social or economic historians who use marx, weber or durkheim in order to process and interpret their evidence. however, suggest that one of these ideologies should be feminism, and that emotion should be involved in stimulating historical enquiry, and you get conservative splutterings about history going to the dogs. point this out and you get called 'so postmodern'. you get the word anger said once twice too many times to count. and it scares me. it scares me because when i told my mum i was a feminist but, i'm pretty sure those weren't my words- and by this i mean i hadn't sat down and pondered feminism, and reasons for and against supporting it. i was parroting phrases that i had picked up from the bits and pieces i had seen on feminism- and what image did these snippets present? in a similar way, what struck me most about R's complaints was the firm insistance on the damage that would be wrought by feminist rage, regardless of the fact that Bennett's suggestions propsed a methodology similar to ones that already exist. feminism has become tightly bound to a language of dangerous anger, a language that is used to denigrate and dismiss it. even women and men who agree with feminist ideals feel uncomfortable defining themselves as 'feminist', because they associate the word with madness, extremeness and rage.

this is unacceptable. because if we are angry, there is a good reason for it, and even then, anger does not prevent the formulation of intelligent ideologies, or considered argument, or a desire to cooperate with men in order to improve society for both sexes. i want to live amongst people that don't flinch at the word feminist; that don't continually misuse one example of seperatist radicalism to prove that feminists cannot be engaged in rational debate; that don't expect me to justify my position with a 'but....' every time i identitfy as a feminist. and there is one way, a very good way, that i can think to make this happen.

i am a feminist. talk to me about it.