Anyway. I wrote a while ago about how I don’t call myself a feminist anymore. I say that not being completely confident I ever did call myself a feminist in the first place. However it certainly was part of the environment I came of age in. So the beliefs and assumptions are all there in my awareness, able to be acknowledged and interrogated.
Sometimes I read something that does so in a usefully provocative way. After some years of reading mostly male writers, I seem to be finding interesting female writers as well. Mary Harrington is probably the one I read the most lately, as well as Caroline Ross, Freya India and Ruth Gaskovski. But there are others too, and this piece by Emily Hancock was enjoyable and thought provoking today.
I try not to over-focus on whether I’m a This or a That, or whether I’ve found a Way of Thinking that Explains Everything. I find such stances annoying, as in they annoy me in other people and sooner or later they annoy me even more in myself. But, I always have one ear open (two as often as I can spare them) for anything that will help me explain certain thorny matters to my daughters.
Mary Harrington calls herself a “reactionary feminist” and I’m not sure what if anything Emily Hancock calls herself. Anyway I’m not seeking another label. But if there is a kind of feminist who explores how to be a fully embodied being, how to find self-awareness elsewhere than consumerism, who can be ruthlessly honest, well maybe I could be that kind of feminist. Just maybe.
Edit: I have to add this quote from another of Emily’s essays:
“I don’t want to be a foremother who passes down a legacy of avoidance and disembodiment, I want to be a foremother whose legacy is one of facing hard things head-on, roaring reclamation, and tenderness for our innate female qualities and experiences.”
—An Ungovernable Pain
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