WHB Topic 12/16: What are your feminist influences, and how have they changed over time?

I've only considered myself a feminist for a little over a year, so that's not a lot of time to track the change. Then again, the seeds were there for a long time -- I was a feminist while ignorantly refusing to take the name -- and there's not a lot about me that doesn't evolve radically over a short period of time.

So here are a few of my influences, listed in rough chronological order rather than in order of importance.

My family. My mother, who has been divorce three times and (unfortunately) shunned love altogether, long ago destroyed any notion I might have had of soulmates or living happily ever after or any myth "they" feed young girls. She has always worked hard to provide for her family, as many as three jobs at once, just to be self-sufficient. I heard the stories from the first two marriages and I watched her third husband try to dominate her. Most of what I've learned from my mother is how I want my life not to go. But she also showed me that the traditional feminine roles will never do in this world.

Entertainment. I have always identified with the strong, independent women produced by popular culture. To name a few: Star Trek Voyager's Captain Kathryn Janeway, Chicago Hope's Kate Austin, Jurassic Park's Ellie Sattler, Batman's Catwoman. (Haha, remember, I was once 8.) I was addicted to soap operas for a few years, but was never into the starlets; no, it was the lawyers, the police officers (OLTL's Nora, GH's Alexis, ATWT's Margo, if you're conversant). But still, we all know how incomplete a picture these women always are, and how often very antifeminist they often end up being. They're the emotional ones. The ultimately dependent ones. The ones whose strength lies in their mothering. Yes, these characters helped form my idea of what a woman ought to be. I didn't often question it.

My first relationship. These are things I one hundred percent blame myself for; they just happened to emerge in the context of my first relationship. I became exceedingly girly. I could no longer open doors or jars for myself. I gave up my previous aversion to motherhood and fashioned a new career for myself as a homemaker. I started looking exclusively at grad schools in Pennsylvania to coordinate my future with his. I did what I thought I was supposed to do. When I realized all this, I was disgusted. Looking back, this has to be at least half the reason the relationship failed quickly. It scared the hell out of me and sparked a huge personal revolution. This experience paved the way for my emergence as a feminist.

Courses and professors. Freshman year, I made the mistake of using exclusively male pronouns in a paper for DHS. Yes, I have always hated saying "he or she," so I went with "he." Obviously, my intention was not to submit to any patriarchal language convention. But I'd never even given it a thought. She ripped into me for it, of course. I didn't really understand why at the time, but by my second course with her (the semester immediately following my first relationship) it was obvious. That semester, I took Masculinity in Film with DHS & Sara and European Feminism & Tradition with Katy. Two courses that literally changed my life. They showed me what feminism was really all about, not the immature conclusion I'd drawn before about the stereotypical "feminazi." And they provided me with a broad base of understanding of both historical and current social realities. By the end of the semester I was both a proud feminist and declared gender studies minor. Finally, I had found a passion in my academic career and a framework for my own beliefs.

Simone de Beauvoir. My love for Beauvoir has grown out of the influence of my coursework -- DHS introduced me to her in honors English, the first feminist writer I'd been exposed to, as such. Feminism and existentialism together was a mind-blowing revelation. Both were schools of thought I already belonged to without knowing it: needless, putting a name to these loose thoughts was both liberating and unifying. Both are, for me, inextricably linked in the person of Simone de Beauvoir.

Inga Muscio. Cunt is just a mind-blowing read. Every woman ought to read it, whether she affiliates herself with feminism or not. Her message of unabashedly loving and feeling comfortable with your body and sexuality is wonderful. After reading it, I truly felt more in touch with myself and "the natural order of things," however you want to define that. I love her for her honesty and individuality. Ain't got no vagina. Indeed.

Bloggers and the internet community. I've recently become involved in feminist discussion groups like We Have Brains and purposefully sought out feminist diarists. Getting the input of other feminists of all ages and backgrounds has been both fun and enlightening. Even when (perhaps especially when) I disagree with others' points of view, it helps me to clarify my own opinions. Altogether the internet experience has really advanced the development of my feminist ideology.

Literature and theory. To this day, one of the highest compliments that has ever been paid me is this: "You are becoming a feminist theorist. You know that, right?" Coming from DHS, who I admire and respect perhaps more than any other professor I've had, it continues to mean the world to me because it is precisely how I want to think of myself. I anticipate being in the process of becoming for a long while before I am: yes, I am in my infancy, I am culling information, I am being influenced by everything I take in. Virginia Woolf, for tearing it all down. Adrienne Rich, Betty Friedan, Audre Lord, bell hooks. Until I don't know what to think. Tear it all down again. I love the becoming. This break, I'll add Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva to this particular list of influences.

When I first adopted the label of feminist, it was part of an insistent cry for freedom that emerged from these depths of myself I'd never acknowledged before. I said and did things then that were necessary for my development, but I no longer need that crutch.

And it settled into this: I believe in gender equality. I believe in breaking down the social barriers between genders. So when you put the two statements together, what I actually advocate is this: erase gender roles. Start thinking in terms of humanity, not male/female. Love, not homo-, bi-, heterosexuality. Yes, there are biological differences between males and females. But none determine who I am, except in the ways society has decided they ought to influence me. Gender roles are so arbitrary. Let's break it down. Male and female identity is for reproduction. You are only for you.

On the other hand, my concern with this line of reasoning is the same as The Absent Student's: And I don’t know how you can take gender out of the equation without erasing women, so I am perpetually practising the doublethink of believing in things and not believing in them.

I think the practical answer has to be something like Sartre's conclusion in Search for a Method, which I'm currently reading. His philosophy of radical freedom (and whatever follows that -- which we cannot conceive now) cannot be achieved until Marxism runs its course and liberates all people in a practical way, so that they even have the framework for achieving true freedom. Feminism is the means toward a radical overthrow of the gendered cultural system. Liberate women first as Marxism would liberate the proletariat, liberate both men and women from these ingrained behavioral norms. That is what my feminism seeks. Only then can we even begin to understand our human possibility.

So I have changed a great deal. It's wax, wane, [de]center. Who knows what influences will lead to what conclusions in another year as a feminist.