lazy feminism

I did the title for this post at the beginning of october and now I can't really remember what it was going to say.

It was probably something to do with women's hour or another radio 4 show and I vaguely remember getting riled up about what a group of women were saying. Possibly they were talking about how young women today have not strong desire to pick up the feminism torch.

I have never felt attracted to the feminist movement. In my teens I stubbornly felt that the term was stupid, surely it should be man-and-woman-ism? For men and women to be equally regarded and respected for their attributes, no? Anyway, thanking people of the past for struggling for equality when it really was necessary, I have never felt that my gender does me a disservice.

Once at university I was invited to be involved in a project to create a piece for an exhibition at the women's library in whitechapel. The place has links to my old university and I had been involved in a curatorial project there. The problem was, they gathered together some of us female students and some female tutors and sat us around a table and introduced "what women want". We were to select a theme from a selection including 'choice in childrearing' 'equal pay' (a paraphrase these as I swiftly wiped the nonsense from my mind) and make a piece of work about it. We were also asked to 'workshop' some ideas using artifacts from thier collection, discussing and then placing them under the appropriate heading. I fumed and shook a little and then left.

Excuse me? These issues were not relevant to any experience I had had and yet these women seemed determined to give me a voice to express my terrible suffering. Please perpetuate our continuing beef and anger and now that we have no easy strife to express, let us continue to complain that we are downtrodden by the men of the world?

Anyway, so far I am yet to be persuaded that there is a need for a contiuing of the feminist struggle and that any strife I may suffer is most likely down to my choices or inabilities or a general crapness of attitude in society. Don't forget, most people are a kind of low-to-middling-level shit.

My thinking about the lazy feminism was that many women have realised that being a kind of anti-feminist female makes life easier. It can be advantageous, and without much overt effort, to fall back on female charms. That not being a feminist can mean you get into a club for free, have help with putting up shelves and have a bloke at work carry a box for you. You get to be lazy. Women, much like many other humans, like not to have to work so hard, people are lazy. I guess feminism has gone out of fashion because it means you might have to get your hands dirty.