Bluestocking

[Excerpt from an interview on A Blog Without a Bicycle]

It is always worthwhile as an intellectual exercise to remind yourself why feminism is relevant in spite of the constant onslaught of the apathetic who claim that now we have the vote and a handful of us are paid wages almost on a par with men that we should shut up and stop whingeing. Once your eyes have been opened you can never see anything in the same way again: what once appeared trivial or harmless is revealed as a small component of a series of representations reinforcing the status quo, however subtly (in fact the very subtlety is what renders the effort so successful, as it assumes the appearance of being “natural”, that is, “meant” to be or “the way things are”, beyond the reach of social intervention).
Becoming a feminist reminds me of the scene in The Matrix when Neo is given the choice between two coloured pills: feminism is definitely the red pill, ripping you out of whatever uneasy compromise you may have had with your oppression and plunging you into a harsher environment of constant struggle.
From an early age, I was determined not to make do with my mother’s lot. She had been denied an education by her own mother, who used the excuse of not being able to afford the uniform to prevent her from attending the private school to which she had won a scholarship. Whereas my grandmother took out her bitterness at having toiled away on farms as the wife of an itinerant ploughman, giving birth to five children, and never being permitted to achieve her potential on her daughters, my mother was more generous in spirit and gave me every possible encouragement to improve my chances through study. Fortunately for me, I was able to benefit from a social mobility, which has been almost completely eliminated in contemporary Britain.
My mother stayed at home during the day, cooking and cleaning, before working part-time in the evenings as a hospital cleaner and, once she had obtained the relevant qualifications at college, a domestic supervisor. Having been brought up in a working-class environment it never occurred to me that I would not have to earn my living independently.
At school, I was reviled as a “swot” and for my denunciations of marriage. Again, it was a fairly inchoate sense of innate injustice that inspired me, an abhorrence of containment, stifling, like putting on a corset and pulling the cords so tight you can never breathe freely again – I still had not even heard of feminism. Outcast status left me yearning for company. When I converted to Christianity at the age of 14 at a “Christ is the answer crusade” meeting in the local city hall, I swallowed the teachings of the church wholesale. I felt that I belonged, fitted in for the first time, so poured every ounce of devotion into the fellowship. The message preached was one of utter subordination and obedience to men. The wife must accept the authority of her husband. Women could not occupy any leadership positions in the church either. The most that a female believer could aspire to spiritually was heading a prayer or house group, but only if its membership was exclusively feminine. As soon as a male put in an appearance, he was in charge. Divinely ordained superiority.
For a few years the relief of being accepted outweighed any reservations that might have caused me to question the doctrines. Then the anarchy of sexual desire threw my faith into turmoil. Two of the men wanted me as their girlfriend. I felt completely trapped. I couldn’t be expected to take such a momentous decision (not even a relatively innocuous kiss on the lips was sanctioned outside marriage), God had to intervene and reveal His will to one of them. I had to abdicate all responsibility to follow the teachings I had absorbed, yet I was supposed to submit to both suitors, which presented me with an intractable dilemma. I attempted to express my desperation in a short story, a thinly fictionalised version of what was happening, a copy of which I gave to the pastor. The result? I was punished by being forced to burn the story along with all my other writings. It was all my fault. I must have led them both on, teased them, played them off against each other. So much for my dutiful, righteous passivity. I was accused of false prophecy and the demons that had possessed me had to be cast out. With the emotional distance I have now, it all seems perfectly absurd, yet I willingly embraced humiliation rather than renounce my God.
The situation had still not been resolved when I left for university, but, away from the direct surveillance of the fellowship, I slowly began to extricate myself from its grip. This was no easy undertaking: my immortal soul was in jeopardy. We had been taught to sneer at the “established church” in a most uncharitable and intolerant fashion, so a more conventional, non-charismatic brand of Christianity offered no refuge. The choice was stark: stay with the new covenanters or face eternal damnation. I responded by devising my own set of beliefs, a bespoke blend of pantheism and reincarnation with cosmic balance (as opposed to sin) thrown in for good measure, my primary and more urgent concern being to demonstrate my spiritual purity in spite of the mockery of my detractors. This involved purging my body of meat. Blood was the carrier of life and consuming it blunted sensitivity. I lived as a vegetarian for eight years.
In the meantime, I became a single mother and started in remunerated employment. Although a friend from university never tired of extolling the virtues of Simone de Beauvoir, I had never really listened to her. In my isolation abroad, cut off from all support networks, I purchased a copy of The Beauty Myth, the first feminist book I read. I had my reasons, transgressing more than one norm with my unrepentant unattached state and having put on 30 kilos during the pregnancy. After that, I spent a substantial proportion of my disposable income on feminist literature, one bibliography leading to another.
It was not feminism that finally freed me from the residual guilt of religion, however, but Emile Durkheim’s masterpiece The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.
Feminism equipped me with an interpretative framework with which to decipher my experiences and place them within a wider context of discrimination and oppression. Feminism is an emancipatory project beneficial to women and men alike. It focuses on the here and now and demands an end to inequality, unlike the sop of religion, which might afford some comfort, a compensatory fantasy of better things to come for the conformist (I am tempted to say defeatist). It both absolves and imparts a greater burden of responsibility. It engages with arguments, never shying away from controversy. It quickens the mind and removes the fetters of passivity. It glories in its subversiveness: feminists will always challenge the dominant social order.

Labels: feminism

posted by Chameleon @ 12:36 PM
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