The experiences and exploits of a college grad trying to make it in the "real world:" leaving school and friends in New England, moving south, and living with her boyfriend. Watch as I pretend to be an adult.
Note: The following represents my personal views on feminism/the feminist movement/etc. I am well aware that there are many opinions on the subject- these just happen to be mine. So if you don't agree, just stfu and gbtw.
Alright, here's how I think of the feminist movement. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, as homo sapiens evolved, improved, and started realizing that things like fire, tools, and civilization were pretty neat, these little things called gender roles emerged. Call it biological predisposition, call it chance, but men and women began taking on very different roles. You see this division of labor in nearly every "less advanced" society- now, the actual day to day tasks may differ, but the division always seems to exist. And from this great divide sprung the oppression of the female gender. I can't speak for all cultures, but in the case of western civilization, women were at best frail, silly creatures to be protected and at worst no better than animals. I feel that most of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of the Roman empire and christianity- particularly the catholic church. I may go into these arguments in a future post, but I've no space here. Ok, so we have civilizations in which women are chattle. Second class citizens. Women generally couldn't own property, receive proper schooling, choose her own husband. Generally two rolls were available: wife/mother, and religious servant (nun). A woman's life was pretty much dictated to her by her father and her husband. Sounds fun, huh? After a couple thousand years of this, surprise surprise, we got a bit fed up with it. So, we demanded access to schools, pitched a fit until they let us vote, and got lucky when a couple of wars came and killed off enough men that they needed us in the workforce. Pretty soon we found ourselves educated, working, and with a whole new voice...And realized that it wasn't as simple as getting the same opportunities as men; society as a whole had a lot of changing to do. Which brings us to where we are today. Clearly we have more rights now than we've ever had in the past. There are more women than men in higher education, women are making it into the top ranks of business and politics, and able to make choices regarding our own futures. We're working on pesky social issues like sexism, wage discrepancies, madonna/whore complexes, etc. But hey. It's a good start.
After 22 posted at 9:39 PM
