Women’s studies, feminism and life as a girl

copyright julie laurin

I’m a human being who happens to be a woman.  Because I was born this way, some people look at me differently.  Some people can’t look me in the eye at all. Some people only look at my chest.  Because I was born this way, it’s assumed that I like boys and that I like to wear dresses and that I know how to sew a button.  (I don’t.  I failed Home Ed.)

People like me fought to get the right to vote, the right to work, the right to say “no”.  People like me fought to be heard, to have a voice, to love one another and to have that love recognized. People like me fought to play with G.I. Joe’s instead of Barbies.  People like me fought to wear trousers instead of skirts.  And people like me fought to be able to be addressed as “President” instead of being asked to fetch coffee for the boys.

copyright julie laurin

And people like me wondered where our voices had been through history and why they’d been erased or left behind in obscure books.  And people like me wanted to study the subjects largely ignored by scholars at the time: medical research and ethics for women, the history of women, the role of women in society, the application and perception of gender bias in society, women’s roles at home and in the workplace, pay equity, violence against women, cultural approaches to femininity and sexuality, and so much more.  The ivory tower was largely blue and then one day, there was a little pink department that said “hey, people like us, come over here to learn more about yourself and about the world, from a different perspective, one that won’t leave you out”.

As I grew up, I read an old copy of “Our Bodies, Ourselves”.  It was probably from the early 80′s.  I kept reading and re-reading it because it was finally something that I could relate to.  Later on, I read more literature on women and noticed something new: it wasn’t doing it for me anymore.  I had friends taking Women’s Studies classes who began spelling the word “woman” in various ways: “womyn”, “wimmin”, “woommon”.. whatever.  And it became “herstory” not “history”. And then I just couldn’t keep up anymore.  It seemed that my friends were always correcting me. At one point, I saw a poster on the university billboard advertising a conference for “REAL women”.  So I commented to my friend that this is something that we should attend but she laughed and said “Julie, you don’t want to go to that. They’re not feminists. They’re uber-conservative and traditional and aren’t open to lesbians.”  So, I stood there puzzled and said to her, “wait, aren’t we all women?  Don’t we all want the same rights?”.

copyright julie laurin

And so it was.  People like me were starting to draw a line between the traditional gals and the femme-nazis and the old-fashioned feminists and the who-knows-whats… all of a sudden, I couldn’t recognize who was like me anymore.  But I think the men recognized themselves rather easily. They were the people that still owned the corporations, the House, the Senate, the mayor’s office, the baseball diamonds and football fields, Wall Street, Main Street, the Quicky Mart, the gas station and the laboratories.

Feminism became associated with radical feminism only.  That’s how it was painted by mainstream media (oh right, owned by the boys too).  And then, people like me who used the title “feminist” were assumed to hate men.

Even today, articles like this are written.  People like me huffed and puffed and roared and called um, whoever wrote this article, “You big jerk!”. But it didn’t make me angry.  It made me sad.

Because we haven’t really begun to address the issues that still exist.  And it’s not a Women’s Studies course or degree that will save us.  I think we have to stop dividing and start saying we’re human first.  I think we need to get rid of Women’s Studies and do what should have been done in the first place: make the courses a regular part of History or Sociology or Social Work or whatever program they should be affiliated with.  Begin a new program and series of courses for Gender Studies and Sexuality Studies.  Why Gender Studies instead of Women’s Studies?  Because I think that academia needs to study both genders and gender issues in general, not just women or just men.

Most of all, we have to move on and apply what we’ve learned and maybe even unlearn some of the crap that we have learned and fix the workforce.  Because women are still underpaid and, in some places, they’re still expected to get coffee and change the dishes in the dishwasher and clean out the fridges.  Some women still get passed on for jobs because they might get pregnant.  Just a few years ago, I was even asked in an interview, “So, are you married?”.  We need to move away from secretive models at work that always benefit men more than women.  For example, salary scales.  Men are notorious for being better at salary negotiation than women are.  By not publishing the salary scales, you’re almost guaranteeing that women in the same position as men will earn less.  Yet, there are countless women in Human Resources that have yet to address this issue.

Instead of revolutionizing the workforce, we’ve chosen to do things the way that they’ve always been done.  We work long hours, neglect our kids, postpone our plans just so we too can climb up the ladder.  Why don’t we change it instead?  Why don’t we show people that aren’t like us how we can make things better instead of trying to prove ourselves?  I speak of the workforce as a first priority but similar revolutions need to occur in healthcare and education.

copyright julie laurin

It’s not my fault that I was born the way that I was born. And it’s not yours, either. And if you’re a boy, I know that it’s hard because you’re sometimes expected to be someone that you don’t want to be. It’s alright, eventually, we’ll become just like you and then maybe we’ll be equals and then we’ll be better than you. We’ll be your Prime Minister, your doctor, your lawyer, your CEO, your professional sports star, your celebrated director, your Army Generals, your oil barons and your Pope. We’ll make you take care of the children, cook for us, clean for us, we’ll remove your right to vote and make you fight to get it back, we’ll beat you when you don’t bring us a beer and we’ll create wars so you can all go kill each other.

Because that’s what human beings do. From oppressed to oppressors… it’s always the same story when the approach doesn’t change. Shouldn’t people like you and people like me just get together and become… people?

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