Why is it necessary for anyone to be a feminist anymore?
1. Violence against women has been rising among college age women for some time now, and I read a campus article that many young women ACCEPT it as the price of having a boyfriend.
2. Women still don’t earn the same pay for the same job. For those who think the Lily Ledbetter bill will fix that, watch how job titles are changed and assertions are made that it is NOT “the same work.”
3. The sexist comments — and behavior by Jim Favreau in the recent photo — suggest that it’s still acceptable to undermine women as “hysterical” or “hormonal.” During the primaries Clinton was derided as “riding her husband’s coattails” and now there is discussion that BILL will actually be telling her how to be Secretary of State. How much more can you discount a woman’s abilities and work than this?
4. Women are still more likely to live in poverty — whether through males not taking financial responsibility for their children, divorce, widowhood or simply outliving the money available to them.
5. Women’s careers are still penalized by taking the option to be parents, and men who choose fulltime parenthood — even for a short period are pitied and looked upon as “lesser.”
Anyone who cannot see that these things are still occurring needs to consider whether they even SEE what real equality for women IS. What it is NOT is being told “you just want a vagina” by those who see nothing wrong with celebrating the HISTORIC Black Presidency (still male) when REAL CHANGE would have been the FEMALE who was running — if we had been able to see her as a person in her own right and NOT just as some kind of extension of her husband. She was penalized for all his errors (or perceived errors), incapable of accomplishing the Senate race without being married to him, yada yada yada. I will not live to see the time a woman is taken as herself and elected to the Presidency.
When Caroline Kennedy runs, I suspect she will find out she is not herself but “JFK’s daughter.” Caroline and I lost our fathers the same year, although I was a bit older than she was. When someone like myself (and Hillary was more like me than Caroline Kennedy is) has a chance at becoming President, or even Senator, then women will have equality politically. My roots are even more humble than Obama’s.
