Reference Frames

A while back the only place I hung out on the internet where feminism was discussed with any regularity taught me that it wasn't safe for me to discuss feminism on the internet.

When I talked about my feeling that as a woman I was apparently obligated to go out into Corporate America and fight to prove that damnit, I could, that my focus on home-and-family was a betrayal of my feminist foremothers, I got told that I was making things up, that that wasn't really a message that could possibly be conveyed by feminism. Sometimes I was told to give cites of Big Name Feminists who put forth precisely that position, because otherwise it couldn't possibly be The Message.

When I quit my nine-to-five, I was a wreck for months. Because I was letting A Man support me, and what Good Woman could let A Man support her when she was perfectly capable of going out there into the world and answering the bedamned telephone until she snaps and murders one of the clients. (I figured that when the phone ringing led to muttering "Shut the fuck up" and then picking up the phone to say "Cheery Office Greeting!", I should quit before I got them backwards.)

In order to stop the self-abuse, I had to stop caring whether feminism thought I was a Good Woman.

On a completely different place hanging out on the internet, a half-dozen people just said, effectively, "This stupid trend in certain bits of feminism that degrades women who choose to work at home or work as homemakers has got to stop." And nobody said it was a lie or a delusion or something to back up with cites -- everyone there knew what the problem was and believed it existed.

Now that I've found people who recognise that this notion is pernicious, why am I so goddamn sad?