What Is Your Feminist Story?
Here’s mine: In the seventies, we were farming and not bringing in enough money, so one parent needed to go to work. Most farming folks would send the wife into town to work. But women didn’t have the options for decent paying jobs that men had then, and even for the same job they didn’t get the same pay. And in our case, my mom had grown up on a farm (with a progressive father who taught her to drive a tractor) and my dad had grown up in the city. SO–my mom climbed on the tractor and did all our farming, and my dad went to work driving a truck.
You got to know this was an oddity. Newspapers would periodically do articles on it, and I KNOW my dad would have taken crap about it in this small community. My dad was very independent, and I’m sure his reaction was the polite version of "F off".
Anyway–that’s how I grew up–with two practical, feminist parents. I still think it’s cool.
It would have been practical for most men to work outside the home, seeing as how most farm women could have farmed, but most did not bc that was "not the way it was"-men officially did the farming. It took guts to do what was right for our family, a willingness to step outside of society’s constraints and into the other gender’s role-in my mom’s case, that of farmer, and in my dad’s case, that of farmer’s spouse. It just was not done, at least around here
I shoulld have added that this was discussed much in our family, bc it was noted by others often. Women’s rights were discussed, too. My dad was down with it.
Wow-these are interesting stories, and very telling! I understand better how you are thinking. Do you understand how I think, now?
[phpbay] tractor, 200, “91952″, “tires”[/phpbay]
I was raised by a woman who wrote the first feminist screed on the Salem Witch Trials of the 17th century. I had two a dad, later a step dad, and later still two of her live in boyfriends (not at the same time) to be followed by her later live in girlfriend….My ma was a yeller, she yelled a lot, especially at her significant others. Among my earliest memories are of my mother throwing a coffee cup at my father.
I was raised on a daily diet of feminism and communism. I was taught that I needed to avoid male privilege which as a poor kid growing up, I never found.
I had been a remedial reader early in life and I hated social studies/history/English classes. I had got poor grades in these subjects and even failed them on several ocassions.
I was real good at science and math; they were my best subjects.
My mother taught me to hate my father and distrust most men and to be self loathing.
When I had taken an aptitude test in 8th grade and returned home from school saying I wanted to be an accountant, my mother told me I was too smart for that (the fact that my dad had been an accountant and she had taught me to despise him seemed relevant).
Even though I was good at math/science and not so good at social studies/history and could not stand the subjects, my m steered me towards a liberal arts education instead of a good engineering school.
I dropped out of college, in part because I had been steered away from what i was good at and toward what I was NOT good at.
Despite my mothers support of communism, she refused to take me in for even a few months while i got myself back on my feet financially so i could go back to school. I would need to move to Michigan where my mother taught so i could go to school tuition free since she taught there, but she wouldnt take me in even for a few weeks despite all her talk of communism.
When I got the best paying job I ever had as a laboratory technician at a university, despite my excitement, she was disappointed.
Despite all her feminist ideals, when i told her i was gonna get married for the first time, she asked me "how was i gonna support her?", not "how were we gonna support each other?"
When I was disabled and my mother came to visit cuz my wife had earned her masters degree, her and her sister were there asking me about what I do with my time, as i began to tell them, they changed the subject and went back to ignoring me.
I have been attacked verbally by many feminists, not just my mother for not agreeing with them sufficiently.
One day i told my mother I did not like to call myself feminist anymore cuz it excluded men, instead of arguing her point, she began to scream at me over the phone.
I still support some feminist ideals like equality, but I think men should have concern, too, not just blame (that is the kind of equality that I support).
wow, and that is a feminist story to you… amazing how feminists take credit for the hardships of other people. did your parents ever tell you they’re feminists to begin with? just because your parents found a way to practicality doesn’t mean they’re feminists. and if they ever told you they’re feminists because of that, no wonder you think practicality is synonymous to feminism. it’s not.
still doesn’t make sense why they should be labeled feminists and let feminists take credit for their hard work.
well i was brought up in a very lower class family, before i was born we (my siblings and parents) couldn’t even afford a TV, which is what indirectly lead me to communism (considering i was part of the ”proletariat”) eventually i became a communist anarchist which lead me, again indirectly, to the problems between men and women and how feminists claimed to be fighting for equality but were in fact only fighting for women rights as they slowly took away the freedoms of men, i do believe men are now seen as the inferior gender in the western world, while anti feminists fought for mens rights (unsuccessfully) that’s why i became an egalitarianist, which fitted in with my communism