here come the girls...?...

Far too often I hear women of my own generation rejecting feminism. Such is the stigma surrounding the ideology, created by decades of reactionary comment that even women who have benefitted from a century and half’s worth of activism feel that they have to distance themselves from the movement. This has become more apparent to me recently due to an increased furrow into women’s and gender history for my degree. Whilst I realise that this may bias me, and indeed many women of my age believe that most, if not all, of the battles in the course of the fight for gender equality have been won, I still believe that the feminist cause is one worthy of support in the present day. Those female friends of mine who dismiss the cause of their sisters often argue that they support equality but that feminists go too far, insinuating that they wish to enforce a form of oppressive matriarchy. However, I feel often they confuse the real aims of feminism with the exaggerations of the reactionaries (often concerned to maintain a privileged position for men) and with those of feminism’s more radical currents. The likes of Sheila Jeffreys and her Love Your Enemy? The Debate Between Heterosexual Feminism and Political Lesbianism, (1979) which questioned the commitment that heterosexual women could have to the feminist cause, has been jumped upon by some as “exposing” the “true” aims of feminism, and left many women uncomfortable identifying themselves as feminists. The fear for many women seems to be that by embracing feminism they reject their femininity (something not helped by Germaine Greer’s recent comments about Cheryl Cole being too thin to be a feminist) and potential relationships with men, in whatever form these may take, but this is not and does not have to be the case. Mainstream feminism today focuses upon cementing and protecting that which as been won and by ensuring that misogynistic practices in the workplace, at home and in politics which have gone unreformed are reformed and protecting against a resurgence of such ideas. This is thus a call to the women (and indeed the men who have as much right to self-define as feminists) of my generation not to disown feminism. It is an important movement which secures practical equalities such as the vote, property ownership and education and also ensures that women are not relegated to the position of the ‘second sex’ merely due to natural processes such as menstruation, pregnancy and lactation. Without it and the other reforms and civil rights and social rights movements it inspired many of us would not enjoy the positions and choices we do today.