The Feminist

My mother used to tell me she wished I had a sister.

I’m not sure what effect a sister would have had on me, but I doubt it’s the one she intended. Had the sister been older, no doubt she would have bullied me and bossed me around as big sisters of my acquaintance seemed to do. Had she been younger, I would have resented her, because my mother would have constantly tried to impress on me the importance of being a good role model.

My life should stand more as a warning than as an example.

My parents had so much difficulty having babies, though, if I’d had an older sister, they probably would have given up before I was born, which is probably why I never had a younger sister.
For myself, I never had much use for a sister, other than the belief that it would have allowed me to get bunk beds. I would gladly have forgone the whole idea of a sister if I could just have had a loft bed.

For a brief period of time, I did have the role of “big sister” thrust on me when a much younger cousin came to live with us for about a year. While I loved my cousin, I hated the fact that he had, albeit briefly, usurped my role as the baby of the family. Worse, it came just at the time I discovered that female puberty was about to ruin my life.

Being the youngest, I had the benefit of having my brothers as an example, both of how to be and what not to do in this world. I learned from many of their mistakes. Of course, many of mine were far dumber.

I think my mother believed that a sister would have had a feminizing effect on me. I doubt it. Despite her best efforts at trying to teach me how to mother my dolls, I still carried them around by the neck or the leg. They often sat in chairs in groups, my audience while I sang or read to them or gave some sort of performance. They were the friends I didn’t have – or the captive audience friends were never interested in being.

My mindset was never being a mother. Babies were kind of noisy and demanding, and as an introvert, I definitely need down time. I never saw my mother get any of that. My dolls, after all, only cried when you squeezed their heads.

From my earliest memory, I had it in mind to have a career. Of course, my chosen career – actor/writer/rock star – never came to fruition. But it never occurred to me that marriage and motherhood were all that important, despite being told by most relatives that those were the best I could hope for and all that I should aspire to.

Yes, I was born in the ’50s.

Obviously, I did not accept their sage advice.

I knew what I wanted, even if I had no idea how to get it. And I was very definite in what I didn’t want – besides motherhood. I did not want to be a nun, a secretary, a nurse or a teacher. While all are fine careers – for someone else – they were not for me. They were also nearly the only careers open to middle class women.

I always found it very strange that people who thought they knew me would suggest that I was going to become a nun. Up until about a year before I married, one of our parish priests would refer to me – me, not the super religious girls – as “our nun.” And every time he did, I said in my head, “Ain’t gonna happen, Father. Not now, not ever.”

But I digress.

I came of age a few years after it became fashionable to burn one’s bra. Hippies were the dominant force during my late elementary school days and most of my high school years. While I may have worn bell bottoms because it was nearly impossible to get any other kind of trousers for women, I did not embrace hippiedom.

I did not march to the beat of Sgt. Pepper. In fact that album made me leave my precious Beatles for Herman’s Hermits and the Monkees. I didn’t like shoulder length hair and beards on men.  (Well, until Queen.) The most psychedelic song I liked was the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” I wasn’t interested in the drug culture. I was interested in things staying where they were when I was nine.

But one thing I did insist on was equality. I spent my childhood railing against the family double standard. Any time I wasn’t allowed to do something my brothers did, it wasn’t because they were older; it was because they were boys.

“That’s not my fault!” I’d reply. Later, my response was, “Blame my father for failing to give me a Y chromosome, but don’t hold it against me!”

Ah, you’re a feminist, people would say.

No, I just believe that people should be treated equally, regardless of a gender that is out of their control.

In high school my “guidance counselors” would take a group of us for college counseling. When they would ask what we wanted to be when we grew up, two of the five of us would say teachers, two would say nurses and I would say, “I want to be an actor.”

That was immediately met with, “I don’t know anything about that. But my sister is a nurse.”
So, we would spend a half hour talking about universities that had good teaching programs and those with good nursing programs, and I was relegated to fending for myself. The best I could say of those sessions were that they got me out of class, where I would have preferred to be. Obviously, my “counselors” had no idea how to deal with someone who wasn’t going into good girl (feel free to pat them on the head) profession.

When I would complain, I was told I needed to be realistic. I didn’t want to be realistic, I wanted a career! I wanted fairness.

Ah, a feminist. That was really looked down upon by the nuns in the Catholic schools I attended.

No, I just want fairness.

A few years later, while attending the wrong university – where I didn’t get the training I was looking for – I ended up graduating with two rather useless bachelor’s degrees. The highlight of my college career, the only reason for choosing my second major, was getting to spend a semester in the UK.

And still I tried to insist on fairness.

Oh, you’re a feminist.

To quote Charlie Brown, “Good grief!”

While I never achieved my career goal, after another stint in a university, I did end up in a job that allowed me to afford to travel, at least.

During a recent conversation about feminism, I suddenly realized that what most women call feminism is all about girl power, and putting men down as “less than” them. It’s about women who were so insecure in their being that the only way they could feel empowered was to put down those who weren’t them.

I don’t know what those women are, but I don’t believe they are real feminists. Listening to modern women who call themselves feminists, I think the real deal is someone who knows what she wants and goes after it. It is the woman who doesn’t need to “find a man” to have an identity, but who also doesn’t need to put men down to feel good about herself. She doesn’t accept the idea that “Women don’t do that.” Being a woman has nothing to do with what you want as a career – unless, perhaps, you’re trying to break into the oldest profession.

I still have a problem with being called a feminist. I guess it’s just the fact that, since I’m not a jar, I don’t like being labeled.