Feminism and me: five things

Evil Mommy tagged me for this, the perfect ready-made topic for yet another sick-kid day.

Five things feminism has done for me:

1. Feminism made it okay for me to be smart. I did a fair amount of acting dumb to fit in as a young adolescent, but my parents made it very clear that they valued my intelligence and expected me to do so as well. I've already written about how they steered me well away from anything that smacked of old-style "girl stuff" in school -- no home ec, no typing, no pep squad.

2. I didn't have to get married for sex and I don't have to worry that an unplanned pregnancy will derail my life.

3. Back when I worked for pay, I was able to work in my chosen field rather than just the old secretary/nurse/teacher roles, and I was able to get jobs and keep them without having to play any sexual or subservience games with my bosses or co-workers.

4. I manage the money in my marriage. When I was at UT, one of my history professors said that as a young newlywed, she'd had to go before a judge to get permission to invest money as part of a club she was in. Apparently a woman running loose with money was highly suspect and subject to legal scrutiny. I've never encountered any of that. People seemed to have learned that money is money.

5. I'm allowed to be healthy. Unlike my mother and her friends, I was never told not to exercise on the grounds that it would damage my uterus. I, not my husband or my parents, get to make my healthcare decisions. I don't have to keep cranking out babies until I drop, either.

Now, with all that said, I'll also address Amanda's query as to what feminism still needs to do. Looking over my list above I'm struck by how most of my feminist benefits stem not only from social progress but from class privilege. Freedom not only isn't free, it's pretty expensive.

The smartness thing seems to have been innate, although I feel it slipping away with each night spent tending a barfing toddler. But sexual and reproductive freedom are most definitely the privilege of those with money. A teen who accidentally gets pregnant and doesn't have the money to abort may find herself shotgunned into a bad marriage that lasts years before she's left destitute, undereducated and overburdened with kids. And the overall healthcare-money connection is so strong in this country that it just about goes without saying.

As for work, the fact that I was encouraged to work outside of traditional women's jobs was a function of my parents' upwardly mobile expectations for me and the fact that they could afford to live in a school district that placed a high premium on academic achievement -- funded through property taxes. My schools had me and some of my friends taking the SAT or PSAT for practice every year from 8th grade on as a run-up to the National Merit competition. Meanwhile, across town in a poor district, my dad taught in an unairconditioned classroom where the indoor temperature often reached 100 degrees. Guess how much test prep the smart girls there got?

So the one item on my wish list for feminism is for it to create a social structure in which you don't have to pay to practice your theoretical rights and freedoms, where they are accessible as a matter of course, as part of the human decency we would ideally accord each other no matter what physical form we take.

And now I tag you all -- what's feminism done for you, and what should it do next?

Image found at The New Charm School