Love this quote

One of my favorite permas (don't know her personally but basically always love her comments and posts) over at Exponent II recently left a reply to another commenter in which she said the following:

"It is an old anti-feminist canard to claim that what feminists mean when they claim equality is that they want to be “like men on men’s terms.” I want nothing of the sort. I’m perfectly happy being a woman. I would not want to be a man. I don’t want to be like men, whatever the hell that means. I want to be myself. And I am absolutely the equal of every other human being out there, regardless of their gender or sex. Claiming equality is about worth, opportunity, access, etc. It has absolutely nothing to do with trying to turn myself into the exact same thing men are. And I personally do not know of any feminist that claims that “equal” means being “like men on men’s terms.”

... I get so very tired of people (whether overtly and actively anti-feminist or not) attributing to feminists the desire to be just like men and dressing up that notion in the “equal” means “same” mischaracterization."


I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. I get flustered at the idea that somehow my enjoying "man" things makes me less "feminine", when in reality I'm just a person who loves to do things.

I love to sew things for my kids, run through the rain and mud, keep my house tidy and welcoming, drive my huge truck with the dog hanging her nose out the back window, pick big bunches of lilacs to make my office and kitchen smell good, dig in the garden and stack heavy timbers to make raised beds, read books, take apart and reassemble small machines to make them work again, drink tea, go backpacking, cook fun food, eat good food, work/write/teach/publish, come home to my kids and snuggle them while we read stories or watch a movie, budget money and manage it, dream big about a house in the country....lots and lots of things.

Negotiating these things only becomes a problem when we assign each of them to some sort of realm with invented boundaries, and then establish one or the other of the sexes as somehow being the inherent steward of each realm. Why can't we just accept that there's a vastly diverse variety of interest and talent across the spectrum of humanity, and then (in the event that we desire relationships) value complementarity and its benefits within those relationships??

Life would be so much easier, and people would probably be much nicer to one another.