As parents, why bother reading feminist theory? We already have plenty to think about on precious little sleep. We read about how our children learn, think a lot about the best kind of toys/activities/books/food (Wooden? Organic? Non-fiction?), and worry about how they will adjust to school, new siblings, a move to a new home. We think about climate change, about air quality, about whether or not they play outside enough.
If we have daughters, we think about whether they will limit themselves in school. Whether they will learn how to be bold and brave, whether they will know how to choose friends that build them up rather than make them smaller and whether they will be safe at parties when they’re too old for us to shelter them.
If we have sons, we think about whether they will limit themselves in school as well. Whether they will learn how to be compassionate and just, whether they will know how to choose friends who respect their peculiarities rather than bully or threaten them into sameness, and whether they will really and truly understand what ‘no’ means at parties when they’re too old for us to tag along.
If we are not white, we worry about whether our children will be passed over for opportunities because of their race, whether they will be targeted by the police for harassment, whether they will internalise the thousand microaggressions they are subject to every single day. We worry that our children will be called angry or aggressive when they stand up against injustice.
If we are white, we worry that our children will internalise white supremacy and continue to participate in the social structures which disadvantage their non-white peers.
We think about what meaning our lives hold as mothers. As working mothers, as mothers who do not work for pay, as mothers who have male partners, or no partners, or female partners. We wonder sometimes if we will ever have the time and energy to think about national politics.
We wonder if we are feminists.
If you are asking yourself questions about how to raise a strong girl, what to do about the ‘princess phase’, whether or not your son is acting aggressively towards his baby brother because boys are more prone to violent outbursts, how to even begin talking to your children about race, or whether or not to talk about that boy in your child’s class who wants to wear dresses, then I have a gentle prescription for you: an article or two of solid feminist thought. You don’t have to puzzle through this alone. Other people have asked these questions before - sometimes for hundreds of years, with different answers along the way.
There’s not one feminism. There’s not one answer, one way to pass the Feminist Test. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says, we should all be feminists because we want our sons and daughters to have equal options in this life to be who they want to be, follow the dreams they want to follow, love who they want to love.... to be free.
So it is in this spirit that I’m sharing this very informal series on feminist theory - a basic introduction to the most useful themes and thinkers, an overview of the history of feminist thought to give us all a bit of context, and then some highlights of some of the fields feminism interacts with like art, music, and religion.
I am open to suggestions about what we should be reading and discussing. I have been out of the ‘feminist game’, as it were, for about 10 years. I have not been reading the most up to date theory out of academia and I look forward to discovering some new things as this series progresses. This is a collaborative effort. Please help me fill in the gaps.
My framework for our Fridays looks like this at the moment:
Introductory concepts: social construction of gender and race; intersectionality; power and privilege; compulsory heterosexuality; queer theory; transgender theory; can men be feminists?
Secondary concepts: Waves/camps of Feminism; motherhood; neoliberal capitalism and its discontents; a bit more on gender and the ‘trouble’ with it; Womanist thought/ Black feminisms; pronouns; transnational feminisms
Feminism and...: art, media, film, religion.
So if you’re game, we’ll jump back in next Friday with a look at compulsory heterosexuality (it’s more fun than it sounds!). For this week, I’ll leave you with a link to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s brilliant article. You can find her doing a Ted talk on the same topic here as well.