I'm a Feminist, But I Do the Dishes
If you have ever listened to The Guilty Feminist, you would have heard the first segment of the show – I’m a feminist but. But I get my bikini line waxed. But I secretly despise the woman who just got the job I wanted. But I put filters on my Zoom meetings.
The point is, even the staunchest of feminists get ‘caught’ doing, feeling, and saying things that don’t totally line up with feminist ideals. The makes a joke of it, getting us laughing at our hypocrisy. “Feminism should not be another thing for women to feel guilty about,” Deborah Frances-White told Stylist. “By joking about things, we make ourselves stronger.”
Well, I’m a feminist, but I do a heck of a lot of the stuff women have historically been expected to do. Jokes aside, can you – can I – be a feminist if that’s true?
“A gender stereotype is a generalized view or preconception about attributes or characteristics, or the roles that are or ought to be possessed by, or performed by, women and men,” defines the United Nations Human Rights Council (in very official terms). “A gender stereotype is harmful when it limits women’s and men’s capacity to develop their personal abilities, pursue their professional careers and/or make choices about their lives.”
The problem with gender stereotyping is that it traps a person who may not feel trapped at all. A woman may go her whole life perfectly and naively content to be the cleaner, the prize, the cook, the taxi, and the house manager. She may not feel contained, but unless she has made a conscious effort to think through the reasons she has taken on these ‘hats’, she may in fact be missing out on something, more.
When I was growing up, I spent most of my days with my mom and sister. As a single mother, mom didn’t fill a woman’s role - she filled a person’s role, a parent’s role. She worked hard. Made sure our house was tidy. Helped with homework. Made us food. Sorted out bills. Did DIY (actually, no she hired people for that). She didn’t have the luxury of figuring out if she was feminist or not – she just got on doing what needed to get done. As we got older, she gave my sister and me a lot of responsibility. We learned the art of cooking and cleaning at quite a young age. Not because we were girls. But because we were people who needed to survive in the world. She also taught us about spending, saving, and tithing (look it up). She made sure we could drive as early as possible so we could get ourselves around. She encouraged us to study hard. To make friends. To try new hobbies.
To make us well-rounded people.
And she did a good job. I feel like I was incredibly well-prepared for the real world as an adult.
And yet, when I got married, I brought with me the expectation that I needed to be the woman in the relationship, as in, I needed to fulfil the woman’s role. Perhaps it was church upbringing. Perhaps it was just culture. But the expectation was there, reminding me of what I needed to do to be a good woman.
My husband never held the expectation over me – it was all a solo meandering going on in my own head all the time. And it was heavy. I felt like a martyr, giving up things (however, I’m not actually sure what I was giving up because all I really wanted to do was read a book on my own) I wanted to do because the dishes couldn’t wait, the baby was crying, the guests needed food, the floors hadn’t been cleaned. Woe is me that I should have to do this, as the woman.
I’m not sure when I started to shake it off, but sometime in my late 20s, I shook. I remember reflecting on why I did what I did, and asking if I was I happy for it to stay that way. And do you know, I came away from the inquisitive process content my roles, minus a few things that I raised with my husband, were ‘gender stereotypical’. I was doing what I wanted to be doing. It was a choice I made. And as a woman, I felt empowered by that choice.
But one thing I am very conscious of is that I will feel I have failed as a mother if my boys leave this house thinking it is a woman’s job to do this, that or the other. That as boys, as men, they are entitled to have a woman do ‘her role’, the one they saw their own mother doing.
And it is for this reason that I talk to them what feels like probably too much, about the fact I am not their maid. I am not their servant. It is not a woman’s job to cook and clean for you. I love you and I have chosen to be the primary one to do those things for you. But because I want to, not because I have to. Well, I suppose I do have to cook for them. But I do make them pick up their shoes.
Feminism isn’t, I don’t think at least, a one size fits all. It is diverse, multifaceted, just like the women who ascribe to it. My feminism may look different than yours. And I think that’s okay. Because ultimately, I want women to have choice, to have opportunities, to have freedom, just as much as any man. I feel like I’m operating in that freedom, so yes. I am a feminist, but I do the dishes.