The last day of the first week of the A-Z April Blogging Challenge finds us on F…

F is for… Feminist Movement

For those of you just joining us here, I am going through the alphabet discussing ideas great in theory but not so much in reality. Either through human interference, misinterpretation, overuse (the more must be better idea) or just plain bad delivery.

Today, for F, I chose the Feminist Movement and

Today’s Mental Moment …

is about how the Feminist Movement, a fine idea, vital in changing the roles available to women, and why it is a fail in many ways.

Once upon a time, way back in the …

Never mind it will take to long to start at the beginning.

I think, I hope, we are all aware of the feminist movement.

To clarify, I am specifically speaking of one of three distinctly recognized waves in the United States, the purpose of which was to change laws and for cultural change as well, in the view of women being less capable or less able to earn top salaries, hold certain positions, or do just about anything they want to do with their lives, during the time period of the late 1960’s through the 1980’s.

The first was in the early 1900’s and focused on educational and working rights, the right to vote etc, the second is the one we are talking about and the third is considered ongoing, hopefully repairing damage done to the cause previously.

I and my feminine peers, hell all of my peers female or male, were directly affected by the feminist movement active from the late 60’s to mid to late 80’s. Raised by the generations between the active ones of women’s suffrage and before the movement which I am discussing, the feminist movement caused so much confusion, it turned our society on its ear for lack of a better descriptive and caused women who are all in this together right? to turn on one another, men emasculated and everyone was wandering around with a dazed look not sure what to do.

The idea of equal rights and freedom of choice is spot on. The problem starts with assuming because the men already have this freedom and already hold top positions, earn top dollar and can choose to be anything they want to be without raising as much as an eyebrow, (unless, oddly enough they choose to be a stay at home dad…I also find it particularly ironic after the movement for the equality of women ) equal rights meant to be like men.

Like men meaning, masculine. Denying the very power of femininity, to prove we are worthy to have the things men have.

Why were shoulder pads the must have fashion accessory for the new class of business women? For any woman?

Why is it movies glorifying the rise of a woman from a lowly servitude position (as portrayed in said movie) to head of a multibillion dollar power corporation, typically usurping the authority of a man, were popular?

If they weren’t specifically about the rise of lowly to uberpowerful, the women in movies of this time period, the business women, were portrayed as ball busting bitches with nary a nurturing bone in their body and as often is the complaint about the menfolk, completely out of touch with their emotions? The ones at home with the children as slobs or stupid and of little consequence. At least until they exercised their right to be …like men.

Why was a polite gesture, one in days gone by a sign of respect, suddenly considered an insult, effectively dumbing down our standards of societal behavior in the area of good manners, rather than the standards kept, met, even exceeded ?

It makes one wonder if the real brass ring of the movement was to surpass the men rather than have the same freedoms they have.

Consider This:

The patriarchal society is not the way it has always been. Matriarchal societies existed in the ancient times, look at the pagans who worshipped the Goddess, and also ones where both God and Goddess were considered equally important, the Celts, the Romans, the Greeks.

Look at societies where women were considered wise and capable the same as men.

Matriarchal societies exist today, but are considered rare and fodder for amazement.

I don’t think the idea of equal rights was intended to return our society to one of matriarchal power, but I don’t think it was intended to erase the femininity, nor in theory diminish the worth of a woman who chooses to stay at home with her kids and run her household.

Yet because the standards of society did not value women, give them the same freedoms as men, nor view them as intelligent and capable in their own right, and expected them to only be running a household, not the world, something in the shift made a woman’s choice, once we won the right to choose just like men, only right if she wanted to venture into the uncharted territory of mendom.

The fact she had the ability to choose to stay at home rather than have no other options seems lost on many.

I want to have the same options as the men do, but I sure as heck don’t want to act like a man and fail to see where the theory got lost in translation to the only way we could be taken seriously is if we denied the things we were forced, or expected rather, and if we did not take advantage of this newfound wide open world, we were spitting in the face of those who suffered so much to get it for us…

The reason the feminine movement failed is because it caused lines to be drawn and where previously as a woman you had a sisterhood being treated the same way, now you have women pitted against each other over the values and standards of feminism.

It did not make us equal on the merits of being a woman but by nearly bullying our way into it.

While wearing shoulder pads.

We were treated unfairly as less than, and equality was only right but not at the expense of out feminine nature, at the expense of anything we already had . It is the fail of the feminist movement , to have to defend a feminine position.

That just reinforces the errant thought of men as superior. We are all equal in one thing and have our specific strengths as well as weaknesses.

Should we find equality on that one thing and not deny those strengths we are better as a whole and working as a team.

Our equality needs based on the fact we are all human.

To Your Mental State, whatever it may be.

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