Lamenting The Course The Feminist Movement Verred Toward

Sgt. Mom on the feminist movement:

Increasingly, a number of matters began to bother me: how conventional courtesies like opening a door for a woman were somehow conflated with economic and political injustice, and how being a feminist in good standing meant having to meet an increasingly rigorous set of strictures. Reading through MS Magazine, as I did devotedly during the years that I was in active service, the message became clearer and clearer: you weren’t really counted as a (large capital) feminist in good standing unless you were a vegetarian-pagan-lesbian-single-parent-of-color-employed-by-a-university-and-serious-victim-of-the-patriarchy, and also eschewed leg and armpit shaving and makeup into the bargain… and if you had the misfortune to be white and middle class, better get down and do a lot of groveling apologies for it.So, as I had internalized the early principles of strength, independence, and freedom of choice, the feminism of the later period brought about a certain amount of cognitive dissonance: You mean, I have fought my way into a twice male-dominated field (broadcasting and the military), borne and raised a child on my own, built a fairly happy and successful life— and you want me to insist that I am a desperately unhappy and downtrodden victim? That the military, which was really rather accommodating about medical benefits, child care, and family requirements was this horrible patriarchal, brutal establishment dedicate to squashing the sisterhood? There was nothing said about how damn good it felt to exercise authority, what an absolute kick it was to go out and make things happen; it was all sitting around with the sisterhood, moaning about how downtrodden, and how very superior it was morally to be a perpetual victim.Mind you, the military was not one vast warm fuzzy support group that the traditional feminists envisioned as their ideal society; it is rather a brutally efficient meritocracy; do the job, get the perks, earn the pension and the status. Over twenty years, I worked with the people who were incompetant ninnies, and people who were who were totally squared away professionals. There was no coorelation between competance and posession (or absence) of a dick.