Feminism is Sovereignty for all.
This misconception that feminism is man-hating women trying to get on top is a misconception working against all of us. Feminism is many things, and it’s about all of us.
Yes, feminism is about women’s rights and ending sexism—it’s looking at the social constructs of oppression, and violence, and the messaging about gender, bodies, family and work dynamics, sexuality, and love. It’s women educating themselves and taking power into their own hands. It’s using one’s right to vote, and one’s privilege or voice to influence social change.
Feminism is also dismantling the prescribed gendered roles, and what it “means to be” both a man or woman (let alone any gender or sexual identity in between). It’s being acutely aware of the oppressive internal programming that has taken place in all of us so we can step out of prescribed behavior that is a disservice to our own good.
Feminism is understanding women’s issues are not the same for all women, and that feminism is not just about women. It’s not about the equality of men and women either, because all men and all women are not treated as equals. Most importantly, feminism is about empowering everyone so that no one is trapped by chains of dependence and power. Feminism is about sovereignty for all, because “nobody’s free until everybody’s free” (Fannie Lou Hamer, 1971).
Feminism is seeing women in political seats of power, and it’s politics that advocate for women’s rights. It’s equal pay, and a woman's right to choose. It’s health care, childcare, and paid maternity and paternity leave for all.
Feminism is illuminating and dismantling the dysfunction of violence and sexual objectification in the film and entertainment industry, the pornography industry, and the beauty and advertising industry. It's seeing how vastly these things affect our behavior and treatment towards one another and ourselves, and how they shape what we believe love and sex to be.
Feminism is stopping sexual and domestic violence. Feminism is stopping the flood of missing and murdered indigenous women. Feminism is creating more sustainable and holistic support models for rape, molestation, and domestic violence— both within one’s community and within the legal system.
Feminism is teaching young men to stop other men from acts of violence. It’s having the courage to speak against “light-hearted” misogynistic, or homophobic comments. Feminism is also not denouncing or blaming all men.
Feminism is looking at the flaws of the greater system, strategically paving a new way, and not just pointing fingers at individuals and specific groups.
Feminism is women waking up to where they doubt and belittle themselves because of societal programming and claiming the power at their fingertips. It’s women finding the courage to use their voice, claim their boundaries, and their eros, desire, and passion in their innate state. It’s women healing their trauma, and finding reverence for their bodies. It’s women claiming self-esteem and seeing their beauty inside and out. It’s the end of wasting money on make-up and waxing, or starving one’s self with the latest diet, nor is it hardening one’s self, or closing one’s heart down to be strong.
Feminism is dismantling heterosexuality, and cisgender as the default. Feminism is women being aware of how their bodies work — how their reproductive cycles work so that they can manage their fertility without the government's permission, or by birth control that has an excess of harmful side effects. Feminism is transparent and unbiased sex education. Feminism is knowing the standard medical practices for pregnancy and birth, and anything related to one's reproductive health — it’s educating and advocating for one's self regarding one’s body and options.
Feminism is sharing one’s experiences of womanhood, manhood, domestic violence, rape, miscarriage, abortion, birth, conceiving, motherhood, menopause, partnership or lack of, and one’s sex life to end the stigmatization of what all those things are “supposed to be.” Feminism is women empowering, encouraging, and respecting other women. It’s saying no to competitive manipulation, abusing one's sexual power, or throwing daggers of jealousy and judgment at one another.
Feminism is men respecting other men for denouncing the aggressive, alpha, toxic male devoid of emotional tenderness. Feminism is when fathers stop fearing for their daughter's safety because the culture of violent masculinity will have crumbled, and feminism is when parents stop fearing that their children will be queer because homophobia will be a thing of the past.
Feminism is realizing that if there is a hierarchy of power — we are all trapped by it.
Not only is the power on top an illusion, it doesn't serve the man on top as he or one may think. The privileged may seem like they are winning on all fronts — but the privileged have the choice to be the scoundrel and enjoy their freedom abandoning those beneath them, or to be a slave in service to the oppressed. In a sexist, racist, ageist, and classist society that impedes our fellow human's sovereignty, we all have these two choices -- to be a slave or scoundrel. The only way out of this dilemma is sovereignty for all.
This dilemma plays out down the vast chain of sexism. This is true between men and women. White women and women of color. Straight women and queer women. Rich women and poor women. We are each left with the choice to enjoy our privilege and be scoundrels turning a blind eye to the dysfunction and injustice, or we can be a slave burdened by the fight for those beneath us.
Until the hierarchy crumbles, and we are interdependent by choice, not by necessity, a disharmony will be fed that deprives us all. Whether we realize it or not. None of us can definitively change this alone. This problem is far bigger than any one of us. It’s much farther reaching than one can reach. It’s much more vast than one can see.
There is no easy way to overcome this because it requires us all to wake up and see. All we can do, is wake up one by one, and see. We must see the programming, the violence, and the separation that has been invoked within us because once we see we cannot unsee, and therefore are forever changed.
With Marigold love,
Abby
