Why I’m not a feminist–a note from my younger self
When I was 23 and in my final semester of grad school, running the student newspaper, my two friends and I took over the opinions page to explain our various feelings about—wait for it—why we were not feminists. (Spoiler alert: We all very much were. I think we thought these were edgy takes.)
I found that column a couple of years ago during some seasonal cleaning, right about the time I found the list of qualities I wanted in my future husband. I read them both. I shook my head at young Heidi and threw them both out.
I’ve thought a lot about that column in the years since. My years of LDS teachings about the proper place and duties of women ooze through the whole thing. The contortions I and so many women twist ourselves into to be obedient to the teachings, to justify the statements from leaders about wifehood and motherhood with the reality that I had big plans for my career and no plans for marriage. After a recent conversation with friends, one of whom was having a baffling conversation with an old friend who refused to question anything the church taught, I returned to that column.
The entirety is here if you wish to read it; I’m going to share excerpts. I have lots of good things to say about my mom; I will not refute any of them now. I think she was mostly happy with her life, and she never told me she wished she’d made different choices or felt pressured into stay-at-home motherhood. I’m not going to speak for her.
But I am now going to refute the things I said, about which I was definitely wrong, and I’ll speak for me. Buckle up—23-year-old Heidi went all in with the blissful cognitive dissonance of, well, a naïve Mormon woman who’d never questioned anything around her.
We’ll start here: “I used to consider myself a feminist. (Note: I was 23! When did I consider myself a feminist—as a teenager? And I’d aged out of it by my early 20s? Based on what life experience, exactly?) No man would run my life, no society would tell me what I could or could not do or what I was capable of, and no notion of propriety was going to stop me from doing what I wanted, no matter how historically unfeminine my career or life choices were.”
Y’ALL. I left the LDS Church the day after the U.S. presidential election last year. It wasn’t the only reason or the biggest reason, but the catalyst that day was I was tired of men running my life. For more than 40 years, I let men tell me what to wear, what to eat and drink, how to spend my time and money, with whom to spend time and what dreams I was allowed to have in my life. The notions of propriety and (un)femininity were coming from inside the house.
More: “To me, that’s what feminism is all about—choices. Knowing I stood up for my right to choose my life path and for the right for other women to choose their paths without hindrance from a government or society determined to keep women in our places.”
That IS what feminism is all about. Did I choose my path without hindrance from a church society determined to keep me in my place? Because I actually did have reasonably progressive parents, and I still planned to get married and have children and stay at home and not use those two degrees and three years of work experience I was about to have on my resume. (Though I would wait until I finished college to do that. See? Progressive.) I grew up in a church not being told, “choose the life path that works for you! Try a little bit of everything! What do you want to be doing in 20 years? The world is your oyster,” but instead, “here is the path for you. It’s the only path. You will be good at it because it’s your gender role. To want anything else is a sin. To not find fulfillment in it is a sin.” (Fun fact: I have aunting stories that make it clear that nurturing was not one of my skills. Yes, one does end in the ER. Another ends in an epic tantrum. Nurturing is not innate to all women.)
Back to my 23-year-old self in her *cough* wisdom *cough*: “Unfortunately, somewhere in the last few decades feminism and I have parted ways.”
Oh, honey, you’d only been alive for two decades. Would you have been happy with Sonia Johnson’s feminism? If the answer is no, you might just be confused. Or a pick-me girl.
“Many mainstream feminists and feminist organizations no longer promote views with which I agree. And what’s worse is the current rhetoric being served often does not improve the welfare of all women. Sometimes, those statements and actions even cause women’s rights to regress or condemn decisions made by women.”
Well, having been alive a lot longer, I can wholeheartedly say we should condemn some decisions made by women—not in their own lives, necessarily; that’s none of my business. But women in politics and women in general church leadership—or women in our Relief Society meetings—do a lot of damage when they force their patriarchal views on other women. So let’s condemn, or at least challenge, those.
More: “Women who stay at home are viewed as traitors. (Note: I … don’t think that was true then? Or now? I think that was my internalized patriarchy putting that on society. I’m sure there were some feminists who went further than I did, but that wasn’t mainstream.) Women who don’t believe in abortion are being brainwashed by religious zealots. (Whoops. Told on myself a little bit there, didn’t I?) …What happened to choice? Why doesn’t the National Organization of Women fight for the rights of soccer moms just like they do for businesswomen?”
Fun fact: NOW does, and in 2005 did, fight for the rights of stay-at-home moms. Right about this time, NOW was lobbying for women’s health, fought for better education for children, fighting against proposed laws to make welfare harder to access for women, picketing stores because of sex discrimination policies, allying with women with disabilities, establishing an advisory committee on mothers’ and caregivers’ economic rights, marched for peace and more (see NOW’s website). That’s the organization that had “left me behind.”
This was pointed out to me, I will note, by three professors in the women’s studies department at my university. They took my two friends and me out for lunch and very kindly pointed out that we didn’t know what we were talking about. They were right. I am so grateful for them.
Another fun fact: It’s the National Organization FOR Women. I didn’t even do enough research to get the name of the organization right.
Then I wrote this: “Women have options. We can work just about anywhere, we can go to college, we can play professional, collegiate or recreational sports without being called lesbians. (Note: And internalized homophobia has entered the chat. It was not OK to ever worry about that.) We can stay home and be homemakers, run a business or climb Mount Everest. And, we can bear children and be mothers, something the stronger sex will never do.”
Cool, young Heidi. That was the bar? I could go to college and play sports without people thinking I was gay. Major accomplishment, that. And maybe we can work just about anywhere, but that doesn’t mean we are working everywhere, it doesn’t mean we’re getting paid or promoted fairly and it doesn’t mean the same options are available to women. And having children? Women are punished for that. They’re punished for staying out of the workforce, and ironically, they’re punished for staying in it after (and before) having children. The motherhood penalty is real. And the “stronger sex?” (Oh, young Heidi. The internalized patriarchy is dripping out of this piece.) The previously linked blog from YWCA Pittsburg notes that “fathers are typically boosted for their status as parents in what is often called the ‘fatherhood bonus.’”
And then there’s this: “Somewhere feminism has lost its way. It shouldn’t be about putting women over men.”
That sound you hear? It’s a deep, from the bottom of my gut sigh about how little I understood about the patriarchy in which my brain had marinated for two decades. Feminism was never about putting women over men. The movement has always been about uplifting women, yesàtoward equality, not superiority. Feminism wasn’t lost. I was. I’d been told my entire life that there was one way to be a good woman, one path. Those choices I talked about—did I actually believe they were available to me? Or was college and playing soccer and maybe a year or two of working good enough before I made my “choice” to do what I’d been told my entire life was my God-given duty to do?
43-year-old Heidi will close with this: I recall an Institute lesson in which the teacher said the only way we truly had agency was when we had real choices. If you are told you can choose but there’s only one “choice,” it’s not agency.
It’s funny how what I learned in church gave me the tools to leave what the church taught me behind.
Author’s note: I finished writing this and then picked up “At Last She Said It” by Susan Hinckley and Cynthia Winward to dive into their section called “When Women Are the Problem,” which landed differently after my peering into my own soul a bit. Their book, which I highly recommend, is available at Bookshop.org (support indie bookstores!), and you can listen to their podcast episode of the same name , which I also highly recommend.
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