The New Elitist Feminism. (I'm SO going to catch hell for this...)

I feel so conflicted right now...but all these thoughts are swimming around in my head, and they're screaming to get out...so here come the screams!


A little background...My parents divorced when I was 3, and primary custody was given to my mother.  As I've written before, my mom is a highly complicated, incredibly intelligent person who raised me while being exposed to her strong feminist belief system.  At the time of my being raised-dom, the 70's and 80's, there was a lot of good coming out of these teachings.  I went to grade school during the time of "girls can be anything", which I believe I greatly benefited from.  I was taught to never see myself as been less-than, simply because I was a girl.  I listened to a lot of Helen Reddy. But I also grew up kind of not seeing boys and men as truly "people".  I was very close to my father and my brother, of course, and I have had male friends my entire life.  Despite this, outside of my family, I don't think that I really saw the males in my life as having real emotions and perspectives on things. I have to add at this point that I do not blame my mom for this (really, mom). For whatever reason, this is just what I picked up.  I honestly don't have a reasonable explanation for this and am positive this is not what my mother intended. In my mom's defense, she grew up in a totally different era, and believing in something that could empower women was a very positive thing for her. She has accomplished a great deal in her life and I'm incredibly proud of her.


As I grew older and entered middle school and high school, things changed for me.  I loved clothes and makeup, and I still do.  I received a fair amount of grief about this from both my mom and my sister during this time.  They both accept this and have apologized for giving me a hard time about it.  It was a weird time for me. I still believed I could accomplish anything, but didn't put a whole lot of effort toward anything in particular.  My bedroom was plastered with pictures from fashion and beauty magazines that, of course, added to my already rock solid belief that I was a hideous troll.  I think I probably would have sold my soul for clear skin.


In my 20's, I believe that I experienced a fair amount of discrimination for being female.  I was horrifically sexually harassed at a job I had in college, something I haven't ever spoken much about.  Nothing happened to me physically, but the husband of my boss of the software company I worked for said vile, explicit, disgusting things to me on a regular basis.  I didn't tell anyone, and did nothing about it.  I also just didn't fully understand the psychology behind it at the time, that this loser was actually engaging in this behavior in order to intimidate me.  I wonder what that that paragon of male virtue is up to these days.  Also in my 20's, I met and married my husband Mike.  He is my best friend, and probably bore the brunt of  my leftover "men don't really have feelings" problem.  I've since gotten over this, obviously.  


I had our children in my 30's.  I clearly remember a moment after I'd had Maddie, and had gone back to work full time.  I'd been having a really hard time keeping on top of everything, and was exhausted and thought I was doing everything wrong, as most moms do.  My own mother said to me, "I think we did you girls a disservice.  We all worked so hard at being forces to be reckoned with in the working world,  we never really took the time to think about who would raise the babies."  I remember feeling supported, relieved, and shocked, all at once.  Jeez, mom!  I thought I did everything I was supposed to do...I got an advanced degree, I have a meaningful job, I have a great marriage and beautiful children.  And yet, what I discovered at this time is the whole "Superwoman" thing is a total and complete MYTH.  No one I know skates through this experience.  All the working moms I know freak out that their house isn't clean, stress over the fact that they aren't being good enough mothers, and lament about not being on their A-game at work.  The only thing that brought me peace with this is the acceptance that I won't and can't be perfect at everything.  Good enough has had to become...well, good enough.



Probably my favorite moment in the last decade in which I was the victim of serious sexism was simply ridiculous.  Many people have challenged our marriage and questioned the type of wife I am.  In this instance, it came from the husband of a former friend.  You see, I have this really irritating habit of having an opinion, in case you haven't already noticed this.  I don't tolerate being mistreated, and as a result of this, I'm not.  However, while in the presence of this person, I would be continually disregarded and talked over.  Women didn't matter.  It absolutely bothered me, but I tried to overlook it and roll with it for the sake of the friendship.  Then Mike shared something with me...this person had told him that he should really work on trying to "get your wife under control."  This was years and years ago, but still makes me giggle to this day.  Yeah, give that a try!  As a matter of fact, I think that was Mike's response to him...a sarcastic, "Ok, man.  I'll try that."  I remember being astounded that there were still guys like this out there. Good Lord, it still makes me laugh.


These have all been my experiences that have evolved from being brought up by a feminist, and trying to forge my own path.  However, there is a "tone" to some feminist-like voices these days that literally make my stomach hurt.  A very good example of this is Jezebel.com, an online blog that I've mentioned before. To be fair, they don't identify themselves as a "feminist" site per se.  Jezebel is described as: a blog aimed at women's interests, under the tag line "Celebrity, Sex, Fashion. Without Airbrushing.The Jezebel manifesto states that the site "will attempt to take all the essentially meaningless but sweet stuff directed our way and give it a little more meaning, while taking more the serious stuff and making it more fun, or more personal. Basically, we wanted to make the sort of women's magazine we'd want to read." One of the site's guiding principles, according to Holmes, is to avoid saying "misogynist things about women's weight."  Okay, that all sounds fairly benign and positive, right?  Let's address women's issues, inform the masses, and have some fun.  Yeah...not so much.


Their recent salivation over ripping Jason Russell to shreds has gone to new lows.  In response to his recent breakdown, they write, "We're not sure how to adequately express our shock and disbelief at the news that Jason Russell, one of Invisible Children's co-founders and the star of the Kony 2012 campaign, was taken into custody last night for drunkenly masturbating in public. But, as Jezebel's own Erin Gloria Ryan put it, "Wasn't the entire Kony 2012 campaign essentially this white guy masturbating in public?" Holy Moses, ladies, HATE much??  They've been after this guy since day 1, and why?  Because he's a white guy.  How does this further the cause of women in our country?  How does being snarky, sarcastic, obnoxious, and just flat out MEAN help empower women?  You know what this kind of crap does for us women?  It makes us look awful, mean-spirited, and petty.  I will say that there were plenty of comments on the site that stated what I just did...that if Jason is truly having a breakdown, it's not something to laugh at.  They truly ought to be ashamed of themselves.


It's possible that they have intended for their site to be purely entertainment based, but that's not what it has turned into.  It has been touted, at the very least, to be pro-woman.  Yet, look what else I found?  This was dated February 10, 2012. "On Wednesday, Jezebel.com posted screenshots of a woman being raped. They didn’t post the video, because the video had been removed from the Internet. Luckily for everybody, though, Jezebel had screenshots from the video, so even as the victim may have been feeling relief that it had been wiped from the Internet, hey! Jezebel still has screenshots. Like a white knight on a trusty steed, raping and raping and raping and raping and raping the victim with every pageview. And because Jezebel is a responsible website, the editors… apologized? Explained? Justified? Justified their action in a short and sour editor’s note."


Jezebel.com, what, in the name of God, ARE YOU DOING??  They've also covered the foolishness regarding the birth control debate quite a bit, but have chosen to focus on the fact that it's all white males making the decisions.  Really?  Hmmmm, read this:  "Yesterday, a Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed Republican Debbie Lesko's HB2625 by a vote of 6-2, which would allow an employer to request proof that a woman using insurance to buy birth control was being prescribed the birth control for reasons other than not wanting to get pregnant."  Last I checked, Debbie was a woman's name.  So who is to blame?  The GOP, or just all men ?  Jezebel, could you even attempt to be fair?  I hate what's going on with regard to contraception in this country, it feels like we're living  in maybe 1975 or so.  But it's simply not fair to put all men at the end of the barrel of your gun. (I know you don't like guns, I don't either.  I was just trying to make a point there.)


I was raised to be a strong woman, and I am one.  I also love and adore the men in my life.  My husband and my son have my heart.  My father made a profound impact on my life. My father in law is one of the kindest people I have ever known. My male friends have all helped me to see that just because men don't emote as much as women does not mean they don't have emotions.  I am proud to work alongside with many dedicated educators who work long hours for piddly amounts of pay.  I have tremendous respect for my pastor.  The list could go on and on.


To the people in today's media and on the net who have hidden behind being proponents of "women's issues"...Guess what?  Being mean doesn't make you smart.  Hating men doesn't make you any more involved or informed.  Being incredibly insulting doesn't make you clever.  We can all empower women, our sisters, our mothers, our daughters, but we don't have to cut men down to do it. Jezebel.com, I will no longer visit your site or read any of your articles.  I hereby announce my boycott.  Oh, I'm sorry, was that sexist?  I will be girl-cotting your site.   Lose the tired old rhetoric, stop whining, and grow the hell up.