Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Old Friends...

I just got home from a goodbye happy hour for a good friend moving to Maine this week... I got to see some old and dear friends from my time at NARA and it was really nice. Ate beef for the first time in a long time... The place was "Irish" and had little to no non-beef options, save the requisite "Chesapeake crabcake" on every menu down here. Sigh. We'll see how that goes over tomorrow morning...

Anyhow, I'm just really proud of my friend. She's leaving a good job, good money, and good friends to move in with the person that she loves. She feels all this pressure of modern feminism to choose career happiness (quote unquote artificial ideal of success) and I call bullshit. If family, partners (gay or straight) and love is more important to you than a high profile job, then that's great. The point of women's struggles was to create a world where women could CHOOSE how they shaped their lives. I have no problem with women who want to be stay-at-home moms as long as they are doing that because they WANT to, not because of some male-oriented, Christian ideal. Just as I think choosing to never have children (like myself...probably) is fine and dandy. My friend is one of the smartest women I know and very successful... but her heart is in Maine. And instead of following along with the new social pressures that discriminate against women who want love instead of prestige, she's going for what she wants...

And that's what a feminist looks like, bitches.

1 comments:

Emily said...

Amen! Let's get beyond the black and white divisions: "housewife, dedicated to husband and 2.5 kids, doesn't know anything about outside world, anti-feminist" and "working woman, abandons latchkey kids to the influences of deranged secular culture, anti-religion, feminist." Nuance, anyone? Oh wait, I forgot, we lost that forever when we elected that shithead we call president.