If It’s Not About Choice, It’s Not Feminist

Another post related to feminism and motherhood! *Gasp*

I obviously believe that our culture’s treatment of women in general and mothers particularly are integrally linked.

I read a piece designed to infuriate me. It was judgmental and sanctimonious to the core. I realize I was being manipulated. It was designed to upset me and use that emotional response to bump hit numbers to be able to command more advertising dollars. I won’t dignify the piece with a link to it though. If you really want to read it so you know why I am so bothered, do a search for “I Look Down on Young Women With Husbands and Kids and I’m Not Sorry” by Amy Glass. Even though this piece inspired my thoughts here, my thoughts here can stand on their own, so you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to lend your implicit support to the people making money off of others’ emotional responses. You will still understand what I am saying here.

Any statement indicating something that women should or should not do is inherently not feminist. Feminism is about providing choice and options so that women can make the right choices for them. And the right choice for one woman might be different than the right choice for every other woman on the planet, but she should still be free to make that choice. Laws or social expectations that curtail women’s choice on an unequal ground with men’s choices are the ones feminism seeks to change. Should a woman be free to steal? No, because men aren’t free to steal. We want women to have the same legal freedoms as men.

A woman should be free to seek a career, even after having a family or while raising her children, even if she doesn’t need the money. She should be free to stay home with her kids if she wants without social pressure to work, especially if she has no financial need to work. Her husband should likewise have those same options and both should be able to make those choices without being told they are in some way inferior to people who made different choices. Women should be free to make their own medical decisions, even through pregnancy and childbirth. Obstetrics is the last refuge of misogynist doctors who want to tell women to lie down and shut up and that needs to change. Any argument that seeks to box all women into any choice, even if it’s the most popular one, is not feminist.

If a woman is making choices that make her happy, celebrate with her, even if those choices wouldn’t be right for you. The point is her happiness, right? There is no one-size fits all solution for all women. We all have different personalities, different wants, dreams, emotional needs and we all have different methods for trying to achieve them.

Any method that attempts to achieve the same ends but with force is inherently misogynist. No one, not even another woman, can know what is best for a specific woman better than herself. To tell a woman that you know what she needs or wants better than she does is the essence of misogyny. Rather than attempt to force one very limited view onto an entire gender, we should seek to free women to make the choices they feel are best for themselves, without fear of social repercussions. Denigrating women for choices we might not make ourselves is just rude.