Women in the home

I've been thinking recently about sexism and all of its many subtle forms. My feeling about this is that if you aren't a woman, you just don't understand what it's like. And yes, I understand that women don't fully understand what it's like to be a man either (and please excuse my use of the gender binary here, while we're at it, but it illustrates my point). But it's different if you're a woman.

I think this is mostly an issue with the good guys, the ones who don't believe in "father knows best" and who generally respect women, or at least most women. But those same guys are blind to what it's like to be a woman in certain situations. Maybe it's because they themselves aren't overtly sexist and so they don't think about sexism that still exists, not just in the attitudes of individuals but in societal constructs and systems.

For example, most decent guys don't really understand what it's like to be a woman in a male-dominated office where guys complain about their wives and make the occasional joke at women's expense. They don't understand the hypersensitivity about salary and career advancement because they weren't raised knowing that their sex makes 77 cents to every dollar that the other sex earns. They don't walk that fine line of being assertive at work without coming across as a bitch, and they don't have to worry about hemlines and necklines being appropriate at all times. And because they never had those things in their consciousnesses, I just don't think they can really relate.

But maybe the biggest area that I don't think guys can fully understand is the threat of sexual harassment and sexual violence that women are always aware of somewhere, even if it's just in the backs of their minds. They don't see why a woman would be so upset at a casual joke from a male higher-up at work about how she might sleep her way to the top. They don't understand the nervousness about walking home alone at night. They don't understand that constant vigilance.

They might be able to understand it on an intellectual level, but I don't think they can understand it on a real, visceral level, really see how it permeates into a woman's consciousness and awareness at all times. The same way that I can imagine how I would feel if I were required to wear a burqa at all times, but I can't truly know what it's like. Your experience colors who you are as a person and the outlook that you bring to everything in your life. And men, growing up removed from these issues of which women are so aware, just can't enter into it and really wrap their heads around it the way women can.

But so many men can and do respect women, not because someone taught them they have to necessarily (although that's part of it) but because it would never occur to them not to. The Washington Post ran an article recently about how women and men are becoming more and more equal when it comes to family decisions, and I think what's most telling is that most of the guys I know would be shocked to hear of families that were structured any other way.

I love that the feminist movement right now is all about choice. I know that we're still bogged down in the details, that great rhetorical wars rage on wherein women criticize one another's choices, but the fact that we can make those choices to begin with makes me so happy. We don't have to be CEOs and high-powered lawyers to be successful, happy, feminist women. But we also know that if that's what we want, we can go after it and nobody should be able to put us down for it.

I sometimes wonder if maybe feminism will come full circle and more and more women will start making the choice to stay at home and run the household instead of working in the public sector. Even if that does happen, and it may well, I don't think that would be a step backward, and that article points to why. Staying at home doesn't have to mean what it used to. You can still be an involved, equal partner in the relationship and in the family, whether or not you're working outside the home. That's where the real victory lies.