Moving Forward

(In response to readings for Tuesday, February 1)

The reading “Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon” in Manifesta brought up some ideas about feminism that I hadn’t thought about before. The author cited Gloria Steinem’s idea in Revolution from Within about “the huge hole that grows in a woman who is trying to be equal but has internalized society’s low estimation of women” (135). Rereading this statement, I think what the author is talking about the disconnect between striving to be equal and society’s ingrained state of inequality, but when I read this for the first time, I thought about something different. It made me think about, if we keep on focusing on inequality, will we ever be equal? If we keep on dwelling about all the ways that women were treated unfairly, will we ever be treated fairly? It seems as though one of the downfalls of pushing hard to show that women are equal is that it suggests that we were unequal in the first place. I am not sure if I am being clear in this point, but to draw somewhat of a parallel is the example of affirmation action. Affirmative action’s goal is to bring diversity and equality to the workplace, but a downfall of this plan is that many people think by giving minorities an advantage, it suggests that they need this boost because they are less capable and unequal to their white counterparts. Therefore, it reinforces the idea it was trying to disprove. I think something similar can be said of some of the feminist discourse. As I mentioned in my last post, I always think finding the positive in every situation will get you a lot farther than dwelling on the negative. One aspect of the feminist readings that we have read so far in Women’s Studies that makes me uncomfortable is the focus on past inequalities. Maybe it is because I am living in Third Wave feminism, but I am of the mindset to focus on the positive things that are happening in the feminism right now and put the past behind where it belongs. Maybe the solution is not this simple, but sometimes dwelling on past events holds us back from moving forward.